Figment. Part 1

Figment.

Elizabeth Woods.

For Rachel.

ONE.

I stared out the window of Becca's car, the side of my forehead pressed to the gla.s.s, avoiding my st.i.tches. The dark pine trees slipped by in the blue-tinted Connecticut New England twilight. No rain tonight. Not like the night of the accident. The road had been slick then, gleaming with moisture. The car had slipped a couple of times, climbing the steep hills. I remember clutching the side of the seat, but Davis had just grinned at me and purposely wobbled the steering wheel a few times to scare me even more.

"I hope he's home." My voice was still hoa.r.s.e from all the screaming I'd done in the hospital. Up ahead was the turnoff for Davis's house. Please be there. I hadn't seen him since the accident three nights ago.

"You'll never see him again." My father's voice, low and intense, whispered through my head. He'd sat down by my hospital bed when he told me that, his face pale and creased.

"I will!" I'd shouted at him. He'd said the same thing before. But this time, instead of raging at me, Dad had just dropped his head into his hands as my mother patted his shoulder.

"Zo, are you sure this is a good idea?" Becca slowed the car a little. "I mean, seriously, you were just discharged this afternoon. You're still . . . raw."

I could feel her eyes lingering on the bare patch at the side of my head. It was one of the first things I'd noticed myself when I woke up in the ICU. The bald spot as big as my palm, and the crusted scabs at the corners of my eyes. But when I saw the black st.i.tches crisscrossing my abdomen like an insane charcoal drawing, I forgot about my face. The twisted metal from the hood of the VW had pierced my belly like shrapnel, the doctor had told me. It had taken them six hours in the OR to extract it all and sew me up.

"He might not even be there, Zo. You haven't been able to call him, right? Didn't you say your parents took away your phone?" Becca sounded a little nervous. She traced the steering wheel with one hand, around and around.

"I just need to see Davis, okay?" The words burst out louder than I'd intended. But I was so sick of everybody treating me like I was made of blown gla.s.s. I forced myself to lower my voice. "I have to talk to him. Who knows what my parents said to get him to stay away?" My father was an attorney. His nickname in court had always been PB-for Pit Bull. "He hasn't been answering any of my e-mails. Dad could have told him he'd press charges if he didn't stop seeing me."

My throat clenched as I spoke. My parents and I had had every battle possible over my relationship with Davis. Ever since he'd come by my house one overcast winter afternoon, coatless, hatless, hands stuffed into his pockets. We'd gone for a walk and hung out at the elementary school playground until way after dark, then gotten coffee at Kaldi's. It was the first time I'd missed my curfew, and they'd had it in for him ever since. "They're so convinced he's a bad influence."

Becca cleared her throat and gave me a significant look. I knew she was thinking of the whole computer hacking incident at school earlier that year. It had been just a tiny thing, but Davis had almost been expelled over it. He'd broken into the school's grading program, but he hadn't actually changed anything. When I'd confronted him about it, he'd said he just wanted to see if he could. "And now I know," he'd said, and laughed, like always.

Another thought niggled at the back of my mind, one I didn't speak aloud. There was always the possibility that my father had paid Davis off-offered him college tuition at Stanford, his dream school, if he never saw me again. But Davis would never take a bribe like that. Right? My throat felt dry suddenly, and I took a swig from my water bottle. Not even if he really needed the money. He always needed money.

"You know they've been talking about taking me to London."

"How come?" Becca turned down Davis's street, barely inching along, she was driving so slowly.

"They say that Dad has some big case there, but I know they just want to get me away from him." I felt sick, just talking about it. "They've already bought the tickets. Tomorrow, six in the morning. Mom keeps saying she hasn't made up her mind yet if she and I will go." I leaned forward, antic.i.p.ation rising in my stomach. Davis's house was just at the end of the cul-de-sac. "It doesn't matter, though. I'm not going. I already told them that."

Headlights suddenly loomed in front of us, momentarily flooding the car with light. I gasped as a blast of brightness and sound flooded my senses, blaring like headphones turned up to maximum volume.

The car spun bonelessly, the wheel slipping through Davis's fingers, the guardrail growing larger and larger in the windshield, the hot rubber smell of the brakes, and my own voice screaming Davis's name.

The images flashed in front of my eyes like strobes. Then, just as quickly, they were gone, leaving me with only the mundane swish of the approaching car as it drove past.

"Stop the car," I managed to say. Becca pulled over to the curb, and I shoved open the door, leaned out, and vomited on the asphalt.

"Oh, d.a.m.n, this isn't good." Becca got out and came around to the other side of the car. She crouched down by my side. "You are not okay. Look, Zo, I know your parents cut you off from Davis." She seemed to choke a little on his name. "But maybe we should just, you know, back off a little? He . . . um . . . he might need to recover, too."

I wiped my mouth on my sleeve. "Please don't tell me you blame him for the accident, too. Becca, you have to help me," I pleaded, willing back the tears. But when she just looked away, I grabbed my crutch from the seat beside me and slid the plastic cuff over my forearm. I'd walk the rest of the way.

I pulled myself from the car, wincing at the pain that knifed through my leg and abdomen as I stood upright.

I gritted my teeth and forced myself down the sidewalk. Davis, I'm coming. I'm coming, my mind chanted. Why hadn't he returned any of my e-mails? Why hadn't he come to the hospital, broken down the door to see me? I stumbled against a fire hydrant, barely catching myself. Was he hurt? My parents refused to give me any details.

Heaving myself upright, I stumbled a few steps farther. My leg was on fire now, bolts of pain shooting down into my sneaker. I could see the white clapboard house up ahead. The lights were on downstairs. And in Davis's room, the one just over the porch. I strained to see if he was inside, but the sheer curtains were drawn.

Then a shadow pa.s.sed in front of the window, someone tall and lean, with broad shoulders. "Davis!" I tried to call, but the name was lost in my grating breaths. I twisted around. "Becca, he's there!"

She was back by the car, huddled against the side, holding her phone to her ear. She straightened up quickly and stuffed the phone into her pocket. "That's great, Zo."

"Who were you talking to?" I asked slowly. She sounded encouraging, but her voice held a touch of insincerity.

She lightly touched the outline of the phone in her front jeans pocket. "No one. Patrick."

"Patrick's in Kenya." I steadied myself on my crutch and hobbled closer. "Bec. What's going on? You're acting weird."

Becca seemed to struggle against something inside her, and then her face crumpled. "I'm acting weird?" she burst out, tears starting in her eyes. "Zoe, you're the one who made me drive you out here in the middle of the night when you can hardly stand up. Look at you. You're a mess. Your eyes aren't even healed from where you-" She seemed to stop herself with a conscious effort and took a deep breath. "You don't even realize . . ."

"What?" I swayed forward, trying to look into her face. "I don't realize what?" As I spoke, something tickled at the back of my mind. Something I was supposed to remember. Something I'd been told . . .

Then the memory wriggled away like a minnow as another car purred up the street behind us. I turned around, throwing up my hand as the headlights blinded me for a moment. The car slowed and stopped a few feet away.

My father's Volvo.

I whirled around and stared at Becca, but she dropped her gaze and fiddled with the zipper on her sweatshirt. "I'm sorry, Zo," she whispered.

"You called them?" I asked incredulously. "I trusted you!" The pain shot nauseatingly through my leg, but I ignored it. I stumbled forward, trying to get to Davis's porch, but the tip of my crutch slipped on a piece of loose pavement. I started to fall.

"Zoe!" My father caught me around the waist. I twisted like a fish on a hook, fighting to free myself. I glimpsed his lined face, his graying hair falling over his forehead.

"What are you doing out here?" His eyes were anguished.

"What do you think? Trying to see my boyfriend!" I struggled against the arm wrapped around my shoulders. "Dad, please, I have to- I have to see him-" My voice was clogged with tears that streamed down my cheeks. I wasn't even sure who I was talking to-Becca, my parents, or whichever Fate had destroyed my body and stolen my boyfriend in one life-shattering instant.

My father's voice hardened. "Get in the car." His fingers gripped my upper arm with painful strength as he forced me toward the waiting Volvo.

"Becca! How could you do this to me?" I screamed.

Becca stood numbly by the curb, hands dangling limply by her sides, tears dripping onto her sweatshirt.

My father opened the car door. "Get in."

"You're hurting my arm." I wrenched myself away and whimpered involuntarily at the pull of my belly st.i.tches. I cast a last glance at Davis's bedroom window. The shadow was gone.

Inside, my mother twisted around from the driver's seat. Her face, lit by the weak yellow dome light, was knit with anxiety. "Zoe, what were you thinking? We were frantic when Becca called. You could have ripped out your st.i.tches."

I stared back at her and folded my lips. I hadn't taken a painkiller today, and I saw her clearly for the first time since our blowup in the hospital. I'd woken up to find myself strapped to the bed with elastic restraints, blood clotted at the side of my head where I was missing the patch of hair. I'd convinced the big nurse with the pockmarked cheeks to unfasten me, but no one would bring my cell phone. And when I'd asked about Davis, the nurses just repeated, stone-faced, that I'd have to wait for my parents. Wait for my parents. Wait for my parents.

I asked about Davis first thing when they arrived, and they told me I couldn't call him, couldn't text him, couldn't message him. And that was when I lost it. Screaming so loudly, I couldn't speak above a whisper the next day. Grabbing a folding chair from beside the bed and throwing it down the hallway. The strain in my shoulders as the big nurse pinned my arms back again. The sting of a needle in my thigh and the cottony fog that followed. My parents' faces, molded into creases of distress, looming over me as I finally lay back in the bed.

My mother was talking. "-you're still hurt, Zoe, and now you're running around at night like this-"

I stared out my window as the headlights of Becca's car loomed brightly, then swished past.

My father turned around. His mouth was set firmly. "Zoe, we know you've been through a ma.s.sive trauma." He paused. "Your mother and I have been trying to decide if it's best for all of us to go to London, and tonight has done it. We're leaving on the six o'clock flight tomorrow morning. We'll spend the summer there."

A thrill of horror shot through me, but I just shook my head, willing my face not to betray me. "No. I'm not going. I'll stay with Becca." I kept my voice flat.

My mother traced the steering wheel with her palms. "There're too many memories here, honey. Too many-" She glanced again at Dad.

"Too many reminders," he finished. "You need to rest and relax."

"Well, that's great. I already said I'm not going, though." My voice was wobbling now, my veneer starting to crack. I clenched my fists down by my sides.

"Yes, you are." My father's face was granite-hard. "You can't be trusted here. You proved that tonight." He signaled to my mother. "Let's go, Mary. Start the car."

In a flash, I saw myself trapped in a dark airplane, thousands of feet in the air, while Davis stood on the tarmac, staring up at the tiny lights of the plane, calling for me to come back. "I love him!" I cried out. "You can't keep us apart!" I lunged for the car door, grasping at the handle, but-nothing. The child locks were on.

Furious, I turned to my parents, now sitting silently, heads bowed, my mother's fingers frozen on the ignition key. "You can't keep me trapped like this." My heart was pounding out of my chest, and sweat sheened my face. The car seemed to be growing smaller and smaller, like the room in that Edgar Allan Poe story, until I was sure the metal walls would crush me.

My father nodded to my mother, and the car started.

"No! No!" I heard someone shrieking as if from far away. With a start, I realized it was me. My fingers closed on the tiny silver charm in my pocket. An infinity symbol. Davis had pressed it into my hand just before we got into the car that night. I'd still been holding it at the moment we went over the edge. My heart contracted thinking about it, and I closed my eyes against the memory of Davis's ice-blue eyes searching mine when he folded my fingers over the warm silver. I remembered scrabbling for it on the floor of the car with the blood still running warmly down my face.

The white headlights, the gray of the seats, the blackness outside all swam together, blurring in front of my eyes. I blinked hard and turned around for one last glimpse at Davis's house. Then I saw him, sprinting after us in the street, his blond hair flying back from his forehead.

"Zoe!" He shouted. "Wait!"

"Davis!" I lunged again for the car door. "Stop! Stop!"

But my mother kept her foot on the gas, as if she didn't even hear me. He ran even faster, and, for a moment, I thought crazily that he would keep up. But as the car picked up speed, he slowed and stopped. His chest was heaving as he stretched out his hands toward me. And then we turned the corner, and he disappeared from sight.

I couldn't stop screaming until I was home in my room.

This time, they locked the door.

TWO.

The car hurtles up the hill, climbing toward the embankment. I tuck my legs up under me, curling up against the chilly night air that blows through the half-open window. Beside me, Davis gestures emphatically. His mouth opens and closes, but no words come out. Still, there is something he wants me to know-he's insistent, his eyes intense, his mouth twisted into a hard line. I strain to hear him, but I can't, and this makes him angry. He tries again and again, mouthing the invisible words. All the while, his foot presses the accelerator, and the car climbs faster and faster.

I can see the top of the hill now, the guardrail to our right blocking the sloping ravine scattered with pine trees. The pavement is wet, slickly gleaming. Stop, I try to say, but I can't get the words out. Instead, the car tops the embankment, and, for an instant, I can see the whole city spread out beneath us, a thousand tiny glittering stars.

The curve of the road looms, and then I feel the tires slip, the car lurching sideways. I grab the door handle with the crazy idea that I can hold the car in place if I just try hard enough.

But I can't. I can't hold the car on the road, and the mind-rattling impact of the guardrail giving way blasts every other thought from my brain. We are launched into the air and then hit the ground, the car landing on its side just as I black out.

I jerked awake, drenched in sweat, the sheets tangled around me. The window was in the wrong place, and for a moment I stared at it, disoriented, until I realized where I was: a small damp flat in London. My parents were asleep in the next room, and Davis was three and a half thousand miles away.

Slowly, I lay back in the bed. The sheets were cold, uncomfortably clammy. I brushed my sweaty hair from my face and tried to breathe more slowly. Just a dream. Just a dream. Except the awful thing was-it wasn't.

Longing for Davis suddenly overtook me, and I turned my face into the pillow, sobbing briefly. I pictured his eyes gazing down at me, mocking, gentle, and his cheeks, rough with a three-day beard. His big, thick hands. I always teased him that his fingers looked like they'd been mashed flat by something. Another wave of grief pa.s.sed over me, and I closed my eyes, waiting for it to pa.s.s.

When I felt like I could breathe again, I pushed the covers aside and fumbled for my crutch beside the bed. Carefully, I eased onto my feet, trying to ignore the stiffness in my abdomen. At least the st.i.tches had dissolved, as the surgeon had said they would. I now sported an impressive scar that stretched across my entire stomach, as if someone had tried to gut me like a fish. Davis would have told me it was bada.s.s.

I limped into the tiny kitchen and opened the fridge. Even the milk tasted different here-too sweet, somehow, like the powdered milk they used to give us at summer camp. I took out a package of vanilla cookies, too-biscuits, I corrected myself. The first time I'd heard that, I pictured what comes with sausage gravy at a diner.

I poured the milk into a mug and lowered myself gingerly onto the sofa. Everything felt wrong here, askew, like I was seeing the world through a wavery mirror. The air smelled different, wet, like mushrooms, and the sun hadn't come out in four days. I hadn't spoken to a soul except my parents. The computer was in my parents' bedroom, so I couldn't e-mail or message anyone. Davis. Of course. Who else would I be thinking of? Not Becca. I wasn't ready to talk to her yet, not after what happened the night before we left.

My cell phone was gone, too. I didn't know if Mom had it, perhaps, or if they'd just tossed it. But there was no way they were letting me get in touch with Davis. It was all working out perfectly for them. I set the mug down hard on the windowsill, willing myself not to throw it at the gla.s.s pane. I needed some air.

Back in my room, I stuffed my feet into my sheepskin slippers and pulled a hoodie over my tank top and striped pajama pants. I found the apartment keys in my mother's purse on the dining table and carefully cracked open the front door, eyeing the strip beneath my parents' bedroom door. They probably wouldn't like me sneaking out at four in the morning. But the bedroom stayed dark, and, with a sigh of relief, I slipped out into the cold, gray-carpeted hallway.

The elevator doors slid open, and I stepped inside. But I must have pressed the wrong b.u.t.ton, because, to my surprise, the elevator jerked upward instead of down to the lobby. A second later, the doors opened to reveal a vast, unfinished s.p.a.ce hung with heavy sheets of plastic. Curious, I stepped out.

By the light of the city coming in through the windows, it looked like the big area was one whole apartment. The penthouse, maybe? Whatever it was, the place was obviously still under construction. The walls were divided by raw studs, and the floor was unfinished plywood. Tarps, stacks of ladders, and buckets of drywall sat in the corners. I walked softly around the perimeter, then paused at the huge picture window, which was daubed here and there with putty. I closed my eyes and immediately saw Davis beside me. This imagining had become almost automatic in the last week-anytime I was alone, even for a moment, he would swim up from the depths of my memory and appear, laughing, his bleach-blond hair falling into his eyes, draping his arm around my shoulders.

I rubbed my fists into my eyes, feeling the tears leak out from under my lids. To distract myself, I gazed down at my original destination: the makeshift courtyard formed by our building and the three others ab.u.t.ting it. It was lit by a couple of weak spotlights and held a concrete fountain and some shrubs, with a few stone benches scattered around. Someone was sitting on one of the benches, and, with a start, I realized he was staring up at me. I quickly stepped back from the window and huddled against the wall. Had he seen me?

After a minute, I peeked around the window frame again. The guy was still looking up, and, this time, he waved. d.a.m.n it. I really didn't feel like talking to anyone. But then the guy waved again. Come down?

Great. I sighed. Ignoring him would be so rude.

Back in the elevator, I made sure to press the L b.u.t.ton firmly. The lobby, with its depressing arrangement of fake flowers, was mostly empty, of course. A man in a suit was just disappearing through the gla.s.s front doors, pulling a rolling suitcase. My mother had told me that the building was mostly other Americans, overseas for business.

I turned toward the back doors of the lobby and stepped out into the courtyard. The air was still dark, chilly with the moistness of very early morning, and held a faint, sour tang. The fountain splashed and burbled alone in the shadows.

The boy was sitting in the same place. He was about my own age, with s.h.a.ggy, unruly brown hair and thick eyebrows. "Hey. Sorry, I hope I wasn't intruding, waving like that. I just thought, um, maybe us insomniacs could hang out." British accent. I looked at him carefully. He wore dark jeans and a tattered plaid shirt with close-fitting sleeves rolled to the elbow. Tattoos up and down both arms.

The boy offered a crooked smile. "Unless you're tired, of course. It is four in the morning."

I smiled a little. "It is? Is that why it's dark like this?"

"Usually is at night. I'm Oliver, by the way," he said.

I shook his hand. The palm was big, warm, and dry. "Zoe." I sat down stiffly on one of the benches, propping my crutch nearby, and pulled my sweatshirt tightly around me. I could feel the chill of the stone seeping through my pajamas.

"So, is that your flat up at the top?" He leaned back and crossed one ankle over his knee.