Lies

 

 

“Yes, I kicked the ball,” I said, feeling a surge of anger. “But it’s not my fault. Mac chased after the ball on his own. I didn’t tell him to do that.”

“Liar!” Tabitha said. “You kicked the ball and said, ‘go fetch it.’”

“That’s not how it happened!” I said.

“Have you told the truth since you got here?” Tabitha said. “Own up to what you did and what you said, Bertie. Be a good person for once in your life!”

Panic shot through me.

“I did not tell Mac to chase after the ball,” I lied. “And besides, everyone knows to look both ways before crossing the street.”

Clenching fists, Tabitha stepped toward me, but Howard slid between us. My mom was shocked into silence.

“Enough! Calm down, girls,” Howard said, looking at Tabitha, and then at me. “This isn’t the time or place.”

My stomach gurgled. A thick black fear bubbled up around me like one of those prehistoric tar pits that sunk dinosaurs. For the fiftieth time in the last six hours, I sleeved away tears. “None of this is my fault,” I repeated, even if I didn’t really believe it myself.

“Bertie, not another word,” my mom said, her face showing anger.

“Nobody believes you, anyway,” Tabitha added. “It should’ve been you who got hit by that truck, not Mac!”

“Tabitha Morton!” Howard said, knitting together his eyebrows. “Apologize to Bertie. You will apologize this second, hear me?”

It was pretty sure it was the first time Howard had remembered to call me “Bertie” and not “Bernice,” but I couldn’t be happy about it.

Looking up at her father, Tabitha gave him a simple and defiant “No.” Then she pointed down the hallway. “Look, it’s Mac. They’re bringing him out of surgery, Dad.”

We all turned. Orderlies were wheeling Mac to his room. Without speaking, we all moved closer to Mac. His face was ghostly white, marked with cuts and bruises. Eyes shut from the coma. Bandages were wrapped around his head like a turban. His right arm and leg were locked in casts. An oxygen tube pumped air into his nostrils, and monitors blinked and beeped all kinds of readings and measurements that only doctors and nurses understood. He looked so… so little and so hurt.

Howard and Tabitha hurried alongside the orderlies as a nurse opened the door to Mac’s room. Taking Mac’s left hand, Howard spoke to him. “Hi, Mac, it’s Dad. Tabitha and I are here for you,” he said, his voice trembling. “Bertie and her mother are here, too. Your family is here, Mac.” He mopped sweat from his forehead with a Kleenex and sighed. “If you can hear me, Mac, this is what we need you to do. We need you to believe that you can be well again. Will you do that for us, buddy? Will you? Because we believe it. We believe it so much.”

Gut-wrenching. Mac, Howard, and Tabitha and even my mom were paying the price for my stupidity. How could I have let him run into the street? I rubbed more tears from my eyes.

“We need to give them some time alone, Bertie,” my mom spoke in a hush, eyeing me suspiciously.

It seemed like she wanted to give me a hug, but she wouldn’t allow herself to do that. Instead she gave me a twenty-dollar bill. Did she see me differently? Placing her hand on my shoulder like a football coach, she said, “Go get some air and something to eat. And if you can, say a prayer for Mac.”

“I’ve said a hundred prayers already,” I mumbled. “But I’ll say a hundred more if it will help. A thousand more.”

Mom was reading me. My trembling fingers. My damp eyes. My jagged breath. She must’ve known that Tabitha was right, that I had done something unforgivable. “I’ll text you when it’s okay to come up,” she said.

Do you ever get that no one in the world wants to be near me feeling? That’s what I had. Only it wasn’t just a feeling, it was a fact.

I stepped into an empty elevator. I pressed the “one” button. The “two” button lit up. I pressed “one” again. The “two” button lit up even brighter.

Down I went. My phone pinged with a text.

You need to start paying attention, Bernice.

I gaped at the screen. The Caller ID read “From The Unknown.”

Ping

Another text.

Get off at the 2nd floor.

Ping.

The final text.

Time 2 begin, Bernice.

My eyes widened. Begin what, exactly?