MYA AWOKE TO sunlight. Her pupils adjusted, and she looked to the right side. Luke’s head and neck were caught in a hole in the windshield, his ratty seat belt unwound like the unfurled tape in a cassette. Mya tried to say his name, but she couldn’t open her mouth and couldn’t find her voice, and instead she moaned. Her seat belt was tight, her side of the windshield smashed open, and she saw her blood on the door and steering wheel and looked down to find it on her pant leg as well. The inside of the cab smelled like iron. She tried to say, “Oh, God, what happened?” but it sounded like she was gargling mouthwash, and the warm blood spilled down her chin and the front of her T-shirt. Her tongue found the space where her back teeth had been, and Mya jerked her torso back and forth in her seat but couldn’t break free.
Her neck wouldn’t move, but she could turn her eyes to the left, and she looked into the aching blue sky. So perfect, not a bad thing could go wrong beneath it. “Help me,” Mya tried to say. “Somebody help.” She hurriedly scanned around and noticed the trunk of a small sedan hanging over a mangled and badly bent guardrail. She began to cry. She didn’t know how much blood they’d lost, but her body felt lighter and unburdened. What had she done?
Luke was right here, and she loved him, and he had to know that. “I love you,” she said, and it came out as a grunt, but his body still didn’t move. She squeezed her eyes, looked back out into the sky, and searched for clouds that would move for her, to show her what was to come. Not a single cloud moved, and she wanted to scream just to feel less alone. She looked back up and said, “I’ll never ask to see another vision ever again, I’ll never do another thing wrong. Strip me of it all, I swear, strip it, just take it away. But send someone for us. Please, God, I don’t want us to die right here.”
Mya felt a weight move above her, like a bird’s nest being lifted from the crown of her head, and for the first time she witnessed the cloud, darker than a ripe blackberry, more frightening than a gathering tornado, like deep space or a black hole or just an endless nothing. It moved out through the broken windshield. Her heart rate quickened. She wanted to touch it, but it moved steadily away from her and across the road and up, like a helium balloon disconnected from a child’s wrist. She watched it fly away, and then she wanted it to come back, because at least when it was with her she was still alive. She didn’t know if this meant she would now pass into whatever came next, a “whatever” she wasn’t prepared for. “Come back,” she said, but it moved up faster, and a single white cloud in the sky broke open and swallowed the blip of black. Mya waited, for the world to go blank before her, for her thoughts to cease streaming, as they might have already for Luke, whose blood trailed down the hood of his truck. She was Zoe, just dying, all the same no matter how it comes, no matter who you are. She deserved this little death, all alone. Why wasn’t it here, why wouldn’t it come? She wished to go now, not to prolong it anymore. At least then she would’ve made up for all the wrong. But Luke was good, had always been so good, and it wasn’t right for him to die too. Mya closed her eyes for death to come and settle, and she said, “Just me, strip me of all my power. But leave Luke behind; please don’t take him too.”