Collision Course(23)
Author: S.C. Stephens

She talked about some of her nicer customers while we ate our meal. She always only mentioned the nice ones to me, both at the diner and the hardware store. She usually held back anything painful, and a split second after I wished she’d open up to me, I realized just how alike we were. I didn’t ask her to spill her secrets, and let her keep her own demons, just like she usually let me keep mine.

Between a forkful of food, she casually tossed out, "I saw the sheriff today at the diner. He says hello."

I smiled softly and nodded, resuming my eating while I thought about that. Sheriff Whitney had been the first one to find me that night. I don’t know how long I’d lain in that ravine, in and out of consciousness, but his voice calling down to me had been as miraculous to me as the fact that I’d managed to live through that ordeal with only a few scrapes and bruises.

He’d scrambled down to me, immediately prying open my door and checking my pulse. I’d weakly looked over at him, at his silver hair and silver-blue eyes. He’d looked almost unreal to me at first. Of course, my vision had been swimming in and out as icy shock had flooded through me. But I’d still taken in the tan, crisp uniform, splotched with mud, his knees even saturated with it, like he’d fallen a few times on the way down to me, and the impressive black belt, holding his cuffs and gun. As I’d stared at the silver cuffs, I’d wondered if he’d use them on me when he shoved me in the back seat of his car, for surely, he’d arrest me. Lil’s beer had spilled all over the seat, soaking my jeans, and I knew I reeked of it.

But he hadn’t. His face softened with sympathy as he checked my vitals. Then he’d told me, "Everything will be alright, Lucas. I’ll take care of you."

I’d had no idea what that meant at the time, and honestly, I still didn’t, but he’d moved away from me then, checking on my friends while calling for help again on his radio clipped to his shoulder. I’d closed my eyes so I wasn’t tempted to watch him examine Lil. I’d already seen her. I’d already shed tears for her, a lot of tears. I didn’t want to do it again.

The shock kept me in a sort of frozen numbness as I waited for the ambulance to get me out of there. With Sheriff Whitney’s help, the paramedics managed to get me back up the steep hill in some sort of odd stretcher thing. As they were about to close the doors behind me, I looked back at the sheriff watching me with an intensely sad expression.

"My friends?" I whispered.

He closed his eyes briefly and then shook his head at me. That’s when the numbness of my shock induced state wore off. That’s when I’d started sobbing. I think I sobbed all the way to the hospital.

I sighed as I peeked up at my mom. She had a soft smile on her lips as she ate her dinner. I suppose to her, the sheriff was a happy memory, he did sort of save my life, after all. I picked at the food on my plate while I thought about the next time I saw him…later at the hospital. I don’t know how long I’d been there, but I’d been tested and scanned, poked and prodded. An IV of some fluid was dripping into me, and I could barely keep my eyes open as I’d laid in my sterile bed, while my mom sat beside me in a chair, holding my hand, eyes red and bloodshot from crying. I’d lethargically looked over at him as he’d entered the room, still looking muddy and disheveled. He’d met eyes with my mom and walked over to gently put a hand on her shoulder. Looking back up at me, he exhaled softly, his eyes overly moist.

"I’m sorry, Lucas. We tried…Miss Tate was already gone." He looked down while I swallowed back more tears. Tate…that was Lillian’s last name. He looked back up again and continued in a thick voice. "We found Mr. McCord and Miss Carter not far from the wreck…they were both unconscious, barely alive."

A surge of painful hope went straight through me – Darren and Sammy were alive. My mouth dropped open to ask where they were, how they were, if I could see them, but his face shut off my questions. He had fallen into despondency and my mother beside me gave a soft sob. I shook my head while he gave me news I didn’t want to hear. "Miss Carter…died, shortly after we found her. There just wasn’t anything we could do for her."

A tear leaked down my cheek…not Sammy. I closed my eyes and prayed that he’d tell me Darren made it, that I wasn’t alone, that I hadn’t killed them all. Please don’t take them all.

A soft exhale met me and my entire body tightened in anticipation. "Mr. McCord…had several internal injuries. We thought he might still…" I peeked my eyes open, my body shaking with tension. Sheriff Whitney’s face looked worn and haggard when he met my gaze. "He died in the ambulance, Lucas. I’m so sorry…they’re all gone."

I shut off my memory of breaking down into near hysterics after hearing the fate of my friends. Even so, flashes of screaming, crying, yelling and trying to damage anything around me, filled my head. I’d been so wild with grief, that the sheriff had had to restrain me, pinning my arms down on the bed. I’d had no control over myself…but, how often do you hear that three of the people you love most in the world are gone? Hopefully, not very often.

I looked away from my mom’s soft smile and pushed my half eaten plate from me. I couldn’t finish it now; my appetite had vanished with that last memory. Softly, I excused myself and stood from the table. Mom looked over my face, concerned, and asked if I was alright. I lied and told her I was, that I was just full, and then slipped on my jacket and walked out the back door.

I sat on the back step and stared at a football in the yard. It was the ball from my dream with Darren. In reality, it had been out here. I picked it up and gripped it in my hands, relishing the familiar feel of it – the ridges under my fingertips, lining up automatically in the correct spot, the bumpy texture of it, sending more pleasant memories my way. I flexed my arm and faked a pass, keeping the ball in my hand, but allowing my body to remember the instinct of throwing. It relaxed me and I did it a few more times.

Sheriff Whitney. I wished Mom hadn’t brought him up. It wasn’t his fault that I associated him with something so horrid, but I did. He was actually a very nice man and was one of the small handful in this town that believed me. Of course, he was a man of facts, and my blood had tested clean so – boom – innocent. If only everyone else could be so easily convinced.

He’d visited a few times over the summer, mainly talking with my mother in the living room while I was curled up in a fetal position on my bed. But he did stop in and tell me everything would be fine, and eventually everything would get better. He always put a reassuring hand on my shoulder and spoke in that soft voice reserved for those on the verge of an emotional collapse, which, I suppose I had been. Maybe I still was.

I tossed the ball in the air a few times and nimbly caught it. Sheriff hadn’t charged me with anything. Not manslaughter, not reckless driving, not an MIP…not even a speeding ticket. The town and even some of the deceased’s families (Josh in particular), had been in an uproar about that. They all felt I was guilty, and had basically gotten away with murder .The general consensus from the town for me being let go, without even a wrist slap, was my mother. Most people felt that I wasn’t being charged because the town liked her, had a soft spot for her even. People sympathized with her situation and didn’t want her to be punished any farther, for her reckless son’s, reckless behavior.

I don’t know if that was true or not. I didn’t know the legal system well enough to know what the sheriff could have charged me with anyway. All I knew for sure, was that I wasn’t being "legally" punished, and I did feel horribly guilty about that.

Chapter 8

Isolation

The first week of my forced isolation was the longest in my life. Not that I missed school or the majority of the student body, I didn’t. No, I definitely didn’t miss the stares or the whispers or the unconcealed glares. And I definitely didn’t miss Josh and Will trying their best to make every second there a misery.

No, what made my week long, what made loneliness seep into every part of me, was the fact that I missed Sawyer. She was really the only thing that I longed for daily. After we’d parted ways that Saturday afternoon, she’d gone on with her life and I’d gone on with mine. The first part of my punishment went by without even a word from her. That was worse than anything else the school could have dreamed up for me.

I tried to believe that that was because of her overprotective parents and not the couple of awkward moments we’d had recently. I tried to believe that, but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. And I had no real way of keeping in contact with her. She didn’t own a cell phone and I wasn’t about to get her in trouble by calling her home phone, not if her parents did have an issue with me, which, if they’d heard even just half of the rumors floating around, they probably did. I had no way of asking her if everything was alright between us, so I ended up sitting and staring at the phone most evenings, waiting for her to call me – just like some lovesick school girl, waiting for a boy to call. I knew it was ridiculous, but I couldn’t stop doing it. I missed her voice.

And I suppose I wasn’t helping my loneliness any, by not doing anything constructive during my off time. Mainly, I sat around the house and dwelled. Dwelled on subjects I didn’t want to think about. Dwelled about my embarrassing moment – all thanks to Josh. Dwelled on just how wrong that relationship had gone. Dwelled on my missed friends. Dwelled on the night they’d been taken from me. I thought more about the wreck that first week, than I had since it had happened. With nothing to do and nothing to distract me, I’d gone over it fifty thousand ways in my head. Things my friends could have done differently. Things I could have handled differently. Things I could have done differently. Goodbyes I could have said…

Oddly, the only escape from my troubling thoughts was my dreams. More often than not, I’d been having pleasant dreams of my friends and, more often than not, I was cognizant in my dreams. The minute I saw one of my should-be-deceased pals, my mind seemed to instantly register that I wasn’t in reality anymore. I guess the fact of their deaths was just too great a truth to ignore, even in REM sleep.

But it didn’t bother me, them showing up and having conversations with me. Quite the opposite – I enjoyed it, even looked forward to it. I talked with all three of them, Darren, Sammy and Lil, even getting strong enough to bring them to me at will sometimes. I’d also begun to have more control over other aspects of my dreams. I could hold onto them longer and sometimes I could even change the setting, like when Darren came by and wanted to go dirt bike riding. We’d walked from my living room to what should have been the kitchen, but instead was an empty field with awaiting bikes, because that’s what I’d wanted to see. It was sort of empowering to have that level of control.

Now that’s not to say I had perfect control, sometimes there was a blue sky in my bedroom and sometimes it rained Mentos (which Lil actually quite enjoyed) and sometimes, just sometimes, I dreamed of driving. While I hated those nightmares, the good dreams I had were strong enough to make sleeping worth the risk.

Sometimes I met with my friends one on one, sometimes in groups of two and sometimes we’d all four hang out together. But the most intense dreams, the ones I could have lost myself in for days – those were all with Lil; just her and I together, alone in my bedroom, in the dark. Half nak*d and wanting each other desperately. We still never took it farther than we’d gone in real life, but I was close to being ready, close to wanting that memory…more than fearing it.