All he had to do was push. All I had to do was roll. It would be so easy, so quick, the whole thing over in seconds. She’d been drinking. What a tragic accident. She had her whole life ahead of her. I closed my eyes and waited for … something. Rapture. Peace. Joy.
“Two.”
But instead, what seized me was mere terror—an animal will to live. I heard, or imagined I heard, Nell’s voice calling my name. My eyes flew open. “Wait,” I said.
“No,” said Theo. Still straddling me with his knees, he pressed my shoulders against the damp plywood and held me down. “One.”
I screamed and automatically began to thrash, fishlike, in his grip. His hands clenched into my shoulders, as if to flip me over. He was stronger than I—the thought registered dully in the back of my mind—because he was growing into a man, and I was not, and in the end there was no way around that.