BETH
I pump my hands harder into his chest and ignore the world around me. My wrists hurt, but I must keep the heart going. I must. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.
“Breathe!” I yell.
Lacy tilts the head back and blows into the mouth. The chest moves up, then back down. Lacy begins to pull away.
“No, Lacy, check the vitals.” She puts her ear near the mouth and nose. I wait. She places her fingers against the artery in the neck. I wait again. Lacy shakes her head. Nothing.
“Your turn,” I tell her. I’m frightened that I won’t be able to give the heart enough pressure if I go another round. Lacy scrambles toward his chest and I slide my body near the head. She counts out loud with each compression.
A long beeping noise comes from the team next to us. “Flat line,” says Mr. Knox.
“Yes!” says Chris. “This is ours!”
Of our entire health class, it’s down to me and Lacy against the combo of Ryan and Chris. With his hands clasped together, Ryan pumps his dummy’s chest.
“Breathe!” says Lacy.
I blow air into the mouth, check vitals, and freeze. With my fingers against the neck, I feel something. It’s faint, but there. Lacy gestures for me to pump, but I shake my head. Our dummy—he’s alive!
The boys start compressions again and a wretched noise blares from their machine. Mr. Knox unplugs it. “You boys forgot to check vitals.”
Chris swears and Ryan falls onto his ass. Suck it up, boys. Get used to losing.
Mr. Knox glances my way. “Congratulations, Lacy and Beth. You’re the only two who kept your patient alive. Good call on the vitals, Beth.”
Good call on the vitals. Mr. Knox walks away as if this isn’t the most amazing moment of my life. I did something. I saved a life. Well, not really, but I saved the dummy. But I did something right. This unspeakable, overwhelming sense of… I don’t know… I’ve not experienced it before…this feeling of…joy? Anyhow…it floods me. Every part of me.
I—Beth Risk—did something good.
Lacy points at Chris, then at Logan standing over his dead dummy. “We won.” In her sitting position she moves her shoulders in a crazy little dance. “We won. We won. We won.”
“Your girl is a sore winner.” Logan edges closer to us.
“It’s kinda hot though,” says Chris. “Now that you experienced the rush, are you going to take on more dares from us, baby?”
Lacy laughs. “I didn’t take the dare. Beth did.”
Logan and Chris nod at me in appreciation. I shrug in return. For the past week, we’ve been feeling each other out. Lacy talks to me. Ryan talks to me. Sometimes, I talk back. On Monday, I caved to their brow-beating and began sitting with them at lunch. When Ryan’s feeling bold, he takes my hand. When I’m feeling bolder, I hold his hand back.
At the mention of the dare, I fish a black marker out of my pack. Ryan’s last words before we started CPR were that Lacy and I couldn’t hold out; that we were too weak to outlast the combination of him and Chris. I write the four most beautiful letters on my palm and turn it for Ryan to see: can’t.
As he leans against the wall, that brilliant smile spreads across Ryan’s face and he shakes his head. Warm fuzzies race through my bloodstream. I love that smile. Maybe a little too much.
“I’m not wowed,” I say to him. It’s been four days since our agreement and Ryan’s done nothing to “wow” me.
His smile turns cocky and, I have to admit, I like that smile too. “I’ve got time.”
* * *
From the opposite side of the island, Scott watches as I scoop another spoonful of Lucky Charms into my mouth. I talk through the crunches. “And then I felt a pulse and Lacy thought we should pump again and I shook my head no.”
“Then what happened?” asks Scott.
I feel like I’m going to burst out of my skin. “We won. I mean, we saved the dummy and Mr. Knox said I did good.” I did something right. I still can’t get over it.
“That’s fantastic. Isn’t it, Allison?”
It’s eight o’clock at night. Allison sits at the opposite end of the bar and doesn’t bother glancing up from the latest toy Scott bought her last week: an e-reader. “Fantastic,” she echoes in a voice that tells me she doesn’t actually think so.
Shoving another spoonful of cereal into my mouth keeps me from muttering my exact thoughts. I should have waited to tell Scott the story over breakfast, when it’s just the two of us, but I was too excited.
“Is that what it’s like to be a nurse?” I ask Scott. “To feel all powerful and in control.” And to have someone tell me that I did good? My mind races with the possibilities. Maybe I could be a nurse. Blood doesn’t bother me. Neither does puke. Too worked up to sit still, I drum my hands on the counter—I could really do this.
“You need to excel at science to be a nurse,” says Allison in her bored voice. “And your grades on your last progress report suggest that might be a problem for you.”
My face reddens as if she slapped me. I wish I could think of something wittier, but at times, the plain truth is good enough. “You really are a bitch.”
“Stop it, Elisabeth,” says Scott. “And, Allison, her grades are improving.”
Well, screw me, Scott reprimanded the wench. Huh. Allison tears her eyes from the e-reader. I could bask in the glory of this moment, but I decided weeks ago that she’s not worth my time. I turn to Scott. Daydreaming is over. I have real problems. “I need black hair dye.”
“For what?” Scott asks.
Is he blind? I shake my hair and lower my head so he can see my roots. My roots. The blond pokes out from my jet-black hair like annoying rays of sun. I flip my hair back over my shoulder. “Will you buy me some?”
If I buy anything with the cash Isaiah gave me, Scott would be all over me like flies to crap. I’m not ready to tip my hand that I have cash. Besides, he’s always wanting to do something for me—now he can.
“No,” he says.
Um…did I misunderstand him? “No?”
“No.”
“I’m not going to be a blonde.”
“It’s who you are. Why do you have to change something so beautiful?”
“So only blondes are beautiful?”
Scott closes his eyes. “I never said that.”
“Then buy me the dye.”
He reopens them and studies me during one of his patented long silences. “I’ll buy you something that will match your original hair color.”
“I don’t want to be blond.”
“Give me a good reason why not.”
“I prefer black.”
“Not good enough.”
I purposefully gawk at Allison. “I hate blondes.”
“Still not good enough.”
I cross my arms over my chest and redirect my gaze to him. I can also do long silences.
“That’s it, Elisabeth? You want to have black hair. Just because. You have no reason. You want what you want.”
“Yeah.” I don’t like his tone or the way his blue eyes look right through me.
“When did you first dye it?” he asks.
“Eighth grade.” My instincts yell at me to run.
“Why?”
My throat becomes tight and I glance away. “Because.”
“Because why, Elisabeth?”
Because one of Mom’s boyfriends thought I was her in the middle of the night.
“Tell me.” Scott keeps staring right through me. “Tell me why you dyed your hair.”
Isaiah knows. I told him once when I was too high to keep secrets. Mom’s boyfriend stumbled out of our only bedroom in the middle of the night. He sat on the floor next to where I slept on the couch. He lifted my hand, kissed it, and called me my mother’s name. He smacked me when I screamed and he smacked me again when he realized I wasn’t my mother.
The memories rush forward and I can’t shove them away. They need to go away. I need someone to ground me. I need someone to erase the bad memories. I haven’t forgiven Isaiah yet for betraying me. I haven’t talked to him in weeks and I’m not sure I’m ready to.
Even if there wasn’t our recent past between us, I’m not sure that I’d want Isaiah. For some reason, I crave someone else…and that scares me, and being scared only gives power to the memories.
In my head, I can hear the bastard’s voice. I can feel the bastard’s touch. My fingers claw at my head. Get out, get out, get out! I stand so abruptly the stool wobbles, then crashes to the floor. “Fuck you, Scott. I’ll buy the dye myself.”