THE NIGHT MOM DIED, I was in Angela’s room watching the rain through the windows, because we hadn’t heard from her—she was supposed to be home from class hours earlier and Dad kept calling and getting no answer, so Angela and I were trying to keep distracted playing Monopoly or some old game like that, when the flashing lights of two police cars pulled up to the house, the officers climbing out wearing caps protected by plastic coverings, the water rolling off the surface into the puddles that formed between the driveway and the front lawn. Angela and I went to the top of the stairs as Dad met them at the front door, dropping to his knees on the hard-tiled floor before the officer even made it inside.
Angela sprinted down the stairs ahead of me, her screams met by his cries. I stopped at the bottom step, across the faded blue carpeting of the living room, an ocean of medium pile texture between us. Dad stood up and held Angela, waving me over, but I didn’t move—I wouldn’t move—I thought if I stayed long enough on that bottom step, I could avoid the news they’d already heard, the news I never heard because I refused to move from the stairs the night the officers pulled up to our front door to tell us our mother was dead.
Dad said time would make it easier. Not better, just easier. But I didn’t want easy. I didn’t care how hard it would be or how long it might take. I wanted better. It never got better.
Not completely.
Dad didn’t either.
He drove me to the hospital Sunday morning to get stitches for my cut, after it bled overnight and reopened on my pillowcase, crimson stains on the cotton. Mindy’s been admitted with more severe injuries and I haven’t heard from Jeff—his phone going straight to voice mail the couple times I tried. I don’t know what happened after I left but it can’t be good.
Nothing is good.
“Well I didn’t think it was possible, Cyrus,” Mindy says. “But the second date was worse than the first.”
She’s sitting up in the hospital bed, her back in an almost upright position, and she’s got her legs spread to the limits of the gown, the sheets askew at her feet.
“Date?”
“You know, the Joyce Manor concert. Our second date.” She laughs to herself. “Maybe we’re not meant to hang out outside of school.”
Her laughter turns into coughing then a few violent wheezes, forward in her bed. She had trouble breathing when she got home and her mother rushed her to the hospital. I went upstairs to visit after the doctor stitched up my wound.
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll survive,” she says. “Gnarly bandage, by the way.” She points to my cheek. “How many stitches?”
“Six.”
“They say probably not, but it’s the ‘probably’ that’s concerning.”
The doctor who applied the stitches said I might have a concussion—I’ve had a headache all night—so we took X-rays to check. The results were negative, which is actually a positive. Hospitals are confusing.
“I think there’s a cream or something you can put on that helps with scarring. I’ll ask my mom.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I appreciate it.”
It’s awkward seeing her like this—in the hospital with her gown spread wide, twelve hours after we watched the husky die at the side of the road. I think she saw Jeff and I kiss. Before the accident.
“How are you feeling?” I say.
“Not horrible.” She closes her legs and lifts up a bit. “Cracked ribs. Punctured lung. But they’ve already fixed that. The lung part. So, I’m breathing okay. They took me off the oxygen and I’m on painkillers so—”
“Did you say ‘punctured lung’?” I step closer to the bed, approaching from the side. “You neglected to mention that in your texts this morning.”
“Yeah. Sorry. Apparently, I could have died if we didn’t go to the hospital last night.”
“Are you serious?” She lifts her hands to her head, shaping her hair to part it in the middle, away from her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell us that last night?”
“I didn’t know I had a punctured lung, Cyrus.”
“I know but—” I set my hands on the metal railing, gripping tight. “Wow.”
“Yeah.” She scrunches her nose like what happened was a mild inconvenience, not a potential death sentence. She plays with the sheets as she speaks. “I mean, my chest was tight and my ribs were sore but it wasn’t until I got home that I realized I couldn’t actually breathe. Must have been the adrenaline or something. All better now, though.”
“Wow.” The sunlight through the windows shines on her smile. I don’t know how she’s smiling. “Do you know what caused it—a punctured lung?”
“The steering wheel, I guess,” she says. “My mom always told me I put the seat up too close and I guess this is why.”
She shifts forward to pull up the sheets and winces this time.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. It’ll take the ribs a little longer to heal, they said.”
“Are you going to school tomorrow?”
“Funny, Cyrus.” She can’t help but roll her eyes. “I’ll be in here at least a couple days.”
She’s hooked up via multiple tubes or wires to various monitors, her gown hanging low off her neck, the sun and the room’s fluorescents casting a split-layered light through the open blinds. We’re at Wellspan York, the nearest hospital to Dallastown, a fifteen-minute drive Dad and I made in silence after I woke up with blood on my pillowcase.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s not your fault. Even though I was distracted by you kissing Jeff in my backseat.” My heart drops into my feet like an elevator on speed. “But I don’t think I ever would have spotted that dog racing out from the woods. Might have been better that I didn’t have time to react, you know.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.”
“I mean, not better for the dog, of course.” She dips her head.
I haven’t had time to process what happened with Jeff and the husky at the side of the road. What we did in Mindy’s backseat before the accident. What the stepfuck did to him when he went inside last night. My face was a throbbing ball of ache once the adrenaline faded. I’m trying not to think.
“Where’s your mom?” I say.
“Getting us lunch. I am not beat for this hospital food.” She points to a tray on the table beside her, a mound of untouched mash potatoes and half-eaten meat. “Speaking of which, I have to offer my resignation from your band. The band with no name and the distinctive singing of the dear departed Jeff, which yes, I know Jeff is not dead but he is departed from my life and that’s why I can’t be in the band. I’m sorry.”
“Wait—what?”
“Yeah, you see my mom forbid me from driving without her again or driving at night, or you know, leaving her sight, since I was supposed to be at Sharane’s last night and not in a concert in Philly, which I did not admit to but I had to give her some reason I was out on the highway so late and I blamed it on the band. I’m not supposed to speak to either of you again, actually.”
She reaches out to me, touching my hand on the railing.
“But I’m ignoring that part. The ‘you’ portion of it, at least. Because listen, Cyrus, you’re a great guy and I know you and Jeff have something special—more than something, apparently.” Her skin feels clammy on my skin. “And we don’t need to talk about that. Honestly, I’m not ready to talk about that. But the thing is, I can’t get past what he was about to do to that dog. I can’t.”
I can’t either. I keep seeing its eyes.
“And I know the dog was in horrible shape, which was my fault.” She shakes her head and releases my hand. “I’m not excusing my fault in all of this, believe me. It’s haunting me. And thank god, he didn’t follow through because this would be a whole different conversation. But what he did was insane, Cyrus, to even consider striking down that poor helpless creature. I just don’t know how someone could do that.”
She blinks a few times in the fractured light and I think I should tell her what will happen to him if he gets sent to that religious school, how his stepfather treats him, how desperate he must have been. And he didn’t go through with it—that has to mean something.
“I don’t think I can be friends with him anymore, Cyrus. I don’t know how you can, honestly, but I’m not forcing you to choose or anything.”
Mindy looks past me at her mother, coming into the room with a tray full of food.
“But thank you for stopping in to visit me, Cyrus, this was sweet,” Mindy says.
“Who is this?” her mother asks in a heavy Korean accent. Mindy emigrated to the United States when she was five and her father didn’t come with them so she lives alone with her mother in Red Lion. She never talks about her dad.
“This is Cyrus,” Mindy says. “He’s in my grade.”
“Cyrus?” her mother says. “Is he one of the boys from last night?”
“No,” Mindy says. “This is the boy from the movies.”
“Oh, I see.” Her mother’s mouth forms a half-smile, one side rising up from her chin. “Well, it was nice of him to come. Would you like some lunch?”
“Oh no, I’m okay,” I say. She must think Cyrus is a much more common name than it is. “I was just, I have to go. My father’s waiting in the lobby.”
“How nice of him,” her mother says, exchanging places with me by Mindy’s bed, so quick I don’t realize I’m leaving until I’m out of the room.