Walking through my bedroom door Monday morning was harder than I could have ever anticipated.
Mom was already inside, fluffing several extra firm pillows she’d bought, building a pillow fort at the head of the bed. Per the doctor’s orders, I was supposed to sleep in a recliner for the first three days, since my breathing hadn’t exactly returned to normal, but since we didn’t have a recliner, the pillow fort would have to do.
I knew she’d been able to use sick time for the days off, but we didn’t have a lot of extra money to be going out and buying pillows. I’d offered to pay for them out of the small fund I had saved up, but Mom had refused. Dr. Arnold said I could return to waitressing once I was cleared by my general doctor, but he’d said volleyball was going to be up in the air for a while, obviously, with the arm injury.
I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to go back to Joanna’s.
I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to go back to volleyball.
I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to go back to anything.
Mom straightened and looked over her shoulder. “You okay?”
No.
I was still standing in the doorway, stuck, as my gaze flickered across the room. Everything was like it was before, except on my desk was a stack of textbooks and binders. Sebastian must’ve brought them over. I’d have the rest of this week to get caught up on what would be two weeks of missed classes.
I also wasn’t sure I had it in me to walk into this bedroom.
My room was still the same, while nothing else was, and it didn’t feel right walking into it when I could still see Megan the last time she was here, sitting cross-legged on my bed, twisting her long blond hair between her hands or tossing a volleyball against the wall as she talked about Phillip. I could go further back in time, seeing her when she was thirteen, going through the stacks of my books, searching through the adult books, looking for the dirtiest scenes to read out loud to Dary, whose face would turn the color of a radish. I could hear Megan and Abbi arguing about which dancer was the best on Dance Moms or whose mother they’d pick to win a street fight. My lips started to turn up at the corners.
I didn’t even get to go to Megan’s funeral.
Closing my eyes, I planted my right hand on the doorjamb as I swayed slightly.
“Lena?”
“Yeah,” I bit out, swallowing. “I’m just...”
I didn’t know what I was anymore.
I was at home. I was alive and I was at home.
No one else in that car was.
They all were in the ground.
“You’re probably exhausted. You need to be resting, not standing.” Mom tugged down the comforter on my bed. “Come on. This is where you need to be.”
Mom fussed over me until I got in bed and she had the covers over my legs. Then she fussed some more, bringing up a glass of water and a can of soda, along with a bowl of chips. Only after I was surrounded by everything I could possibly need did she leave the bedroom and return with something else in her hand.
“I didn’t want to bring this into the hospital, especially since you weren’t up to seeing anyone.” She walked over to the bed and held out her hand. “The police brought it by on Wednesday when none of...none of the other families claimed it.”
It was my cell phone.
“I’ve kept it charged for you. I think you’ve got quite a few messages on there.” She glanced down at it. “I have no idea how it stayed in one piece.”
Slowly, I took my phone out of her hand and turned it over, screen up. How had my phone survived that crash? The vehicle had rolled, and I’d...I’d been holding that phone when Cody hit the tree.
I remembered that.
I’d been texting Abbi.
I stared at my phone, barely aware of Mom saying she was going downstairs to make some calls. The phone wasn’t at all damaged. Not a single crack in the screen or anything. How was that possible?
I saw the missed texts, phone calls and social media notifications. There were so many—too many. I bypassed them all and opened up my texts, then scrolled until I saw Abbi’s name. I didn’t read her messages. I zeroed in on the message box, on the half-complete message.
Caught a ride with Megan. Didn’t want to bother
“Oh my God,” I whispered, dropping my phone on the bed like it was a bomb waiting to go off.
My text was still there, waiting to be sent. A thought left unfinished. A message that never made it to the intended. That could’ve been the last thing I ever typed. Probably should’ve been, but a strap only two inches wide had saved my life.
I smoothed my hand over my hair, pushing the strands back from my face. I sat there for several minutes, not moving. I needed to do my breathing treatments soon. The inhaler was on the nightstand. Throwing the covers off my legs, I carefully scooted over the bed. Standing made my ribs feel like someone was taking a vise grip to them, but I ignored the pain as I walked the short distance to my desk and picked up my laptop.
Back on my bed, I cracked open my laptop and went straight to Google to type in the local newspaper’s name. The website popped up and it took no amount of time to find what I was looking for.
Articles on the accident.
The first one, the day after the accident, had a picture of the SUV. I clapped my hand over my mouth as I stared at the image. It had been taken that night. There was a red-and-blue glare to the picture.
How could they be allowed to post a picture like that?
The vehicle had been smashed to the point it was almost unrecognizable. The roof caved in, doors peeled off. Windows broken out. One side looked like it had been peeled open. A yellow tarp covered part of the windshield.
Chris had been sitting up front.
Jerking my hand back from my laptop, I sat there for a second, wondering how I’d even survived the crash. How had a seat belt saved me from that?
Names had not been released when this article was printed. Families had still been waiting for their lives to be shattered. Two patients had been transported by air to INOVA. Alcohol was suspected as a preliminary cause.
Clicking back, I scanned the headlines and stopped on the one that read Four Local Students Die in Alcohol-Related Accident. It was from Tuesday.
I read the article numbly, as if I were reading about strangers instead of my friends. They listed them out by name. Eighteen-year-old Cody Reece. Eighteen-year-old Chris Byrd. Seventeen-year-old Megan Byrd. Eighteen-year-old Phillip Johnson. My name wasn’t listed. I was referred to as a seventeen-year-old minor listed in critical but stable condition.
All except for one had been ejected from the vehicle, and another had been partially ejected. I thought about the tarp over the front passenger side...and I didn’t want to think about it anymore.
I kept scrolling and I kept reading. Preliminary toxicology reports indicated that the driver—Cody—had a blood-alcohol level two times the legal limit. On Tuesday, nearly a week ago, they’d been awaiting a full toxicology report, and I...I saw Cody in my head, reaching for the door handle and missing. I heard him saying as clear as day, as if he were sitting next to me, Jesus. Are you serious? I had one drink. And I didn’t want to read anymore, but I couldn’t stop.
I skimmed the article announcing that Clearbrook High had forfeited the game against Hadley this past Friday night out of respect for the massive loss to the football team. They talked about the boys, about their records on the field. How Cody had been hoping to attend Penn State and Phillip had been planning to go to WVU, the same for Chris.
Another article was posted yesterday, announcing a vigil to be held at Clearbrook High this Friday night, after the football game, when Clearbrook would kick off their “bittersweet” season. But that article mentioned something else—charges.
Charges against—Oh my God. I read the lines twice, stunned and sick to my stomach.
An investigation of the accident is currently pending. Local authorities have revealed that all the occupants in the car were minors and had left the residence of Albert and Rhonda Scott. At this time, it is believed that both adults were home while the party was being held at their residence. If charged, they could be found guilty of endangering minors, furnishing alcohol to minors, reckless endangerment and criminal negligence.
Holy crap.
That was Keith’s parents, and I knew they’d been home. I’d seen them inside the house, in the kitchen. And that hadn’t been the first party they’d been well aware of.
Dazed, I got to the end of the article and I...I did something I knew I shouldn’t do, but I did it anyway. I started reading the comments on the article that had announced their names. The first comment simply said “Prayers.” Second comment read “What a waste of potential. RIP.” Third comment was “Seen that Reece boy play. What a damn waste. Surely heading for the NFL.”
“This is why you don’t drink and drive. What a damn shame.”
“Driving that road sober is scary, let alone drunk? Idiots.”
The comments just...just went downhill from there. People, complete strangers, commenting as if they knew them—knew us. Strangers saying horrible, horrible things as if they didn’t care that Cody and Phillip’s friends, or Megan and Chris’s family, could be reading these.
“They made stupid decisions. They died. End of story.”
“Why are we having a vigil for four dumbasses who got behind a wheel of a car drunk?”
“Well, that’s four people we don’t have to worry about repopulating the earth.”
“The parents of the party host should be charged with murder!!!”
“Does it make me a bad person to be grateful that they didn’t kill anyone else?”
“Thank God they didn’t kill anyone else. Dumbasses.”
On and on the comments went, hundreds of them. Hundreds of strangers weighing in, their comments stuck in between the “prayers” and the “poor parents.”
“Lena?” Mom filled the doorway. “What are you doing?” Her gaze moved from my face to my laptop. She quickly stepped around the bed, looking down at the screen. She snapped forward, grabbed the computer out of my lap and closed it as she backed away.
I stared up at her, shaking. My entire body was trembling. My face was wet. I hadn’t realized I’d started crying. “Have you read those comments?”
“No.” She placed my laptop on the desk. “I caught a glimpse of some of them and I didn’t need to read any more.”
“Do you know...what they’ve been saying?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She sat on the edge of the bed, beside me. “It doesn’t—”
“That’s what they think about them!” Pointing at my computer, I struggled to get in deep, even breaths. I knew I needed to calm down. “This is how they’re going to be remembered, isn’t it?”
“No. That’s not how they’re going to be remembered.” Mom eased her arm around my shoulders. “Because that’s not how you’re going to remember them or how their families will remember them.”
But that wasn’t true, because the whole world would forever see them differently. That was all Megan, Cody, Phillip and Chris were now. Four lives reduced to blood-alcohol levels and bad choices. That was who they were now.
Not football stars.
Not undecided college majors.
Not a badass on the volleyball court.
Not a friend who’d drop everything and listen to you whine about a boy.
Not a guy who worried enough about his friend’s future to ask questions.
Not a guy who had the worst taste in shirts.
Not the kind of people who could always make you laugh no matter what.
Instead they were two times the legal limit of alcohol.
They were reckless and irresponsible.
They were people removing themselves from the gene pool.
They brought this onto themselves.
They were dumb kids who made dumb decisions who died.
They were a lesson to others.
That was all they were now.
Their entire lives were now a fucking after-school special on the dangers of drinking and driving. That was it.
And I hated it.
Because it was right.