Corinne
Zoe’s mascara is smeared, and her eyes pierce into mine. She has her phone to her ear, and she’s talking to my husband.
“He’s mine.” She turns to me, and her voice is so odd. It’s almost like she’s suspended from reality. “I’m carrying his child, you whore. I’m the one he wants. He doesn’t think so right now, but it’s true. When I touch him, he comes to life. I’m everything he’ll ever need. You’re old, Corinne. You’re old and used up, and he doesn’t want you.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Jude tells me urgently over the speaker. “We never had sex. She’s not pregnant, Corinne. I never wanted her. Not really.”
Pain jabs me in the heart, and our car weaves to and fro in the rain.
“You’re lying, Jude,” Zoe interrupts. “You did want me. Remember all of those texts you sent me? How you sent me your pictures and wanted me to see you naked? You did want me. You wanted to be inside of me. Admit it.”
“You pulled all the strings, Zoe,” Jude says, and his voice is so strange. Like he’s not the person I knew, and I guess he never was. “You pulled my strings, you played Corinne. You pulled off whatever you were trying to do. And you’re a crazy bitch.”
“Oh, I haven’t finished yet,” Zoe says, and her voice makes a chill run down my spine, and it freezes the blood in my veins.
“What do you still want to do?” I ask her, and my voice is too quiet. It’s hard to hear in the rain. “Slow down,” I speak louder, more firmly.
For a minute, I see her as the little girl she used to be, with the long pigtails, the one who always wanted to have tea parties with me and asked me to braid her doll’s hair. I almost almost almost soften. But then her eyes glint in the moonlight, and it’s clear how crazy she’s become.
She’s a monster now, and I have no idea how much I am to blame for that.
I’m living in a cage of lies, and that’s all I can see in front of me.
“She’s crazy,” Jude tells me. “She’s crazy, Corinne. She put the abortion pill in your soup.”
My head snaps back and I stare at her, and she laughs, a grotesque sound that ricochets through the car.
“What?” she demands. “You’re surprised? I’m going to take everything from you, Corinne. Just like you took from me.”
In the background, from somewhere, I can hear sirens. But all I can focus on is Zoe and what she’s done, and what she still has planned.
“Zoe, pull over,” I tell her, trying to be firm.
But she laughs again. She knows full well that I can’t make her do anything. I eye the door handle. I could maybe jump out. But we’re going too fast. I’d die. The baby could die.
We’re so close to town. If I can just hold on...
We curve around the next bend, and I feel the tires hydroplane a bit. But then they catch and I exhale in relief.
But my relief is short-lived.
It happens in a blur...fragments.
Our car is in control, and then it isn’t.
It spins and tumbles, and the water engulfs it in the ditch. The tires spin and spin in the air, the water flecking off them, as the roof of the car sinks into the mud.
Steam rises.
Zoe gasps.
I scream, I think.
We skid and skid.
I’m half in and half out of the car, and I’m conscious and I’m wet.
The rain is pelting me.
I pull myself out and I stand, and I’m wobbly. I slip and slide down the soaked grass and through the ditch and the smell. The smell of burned oil and wet rubber, and hot water is in my eyes and I can’t see.
I hear Jude calling for help, and then I hear her. A gurgle. A whimper.
I drop to my knees and she’s halfway out of the car, the glass is shattered and blood runs down her arms, streaming into the ground, and her eyes are open.
They cut me, into my heart.
“You.” Her voice is raspy. “You did this.”
Blood bubbles from her nose and her words are so short, so jagged, like broken bits of glass.
“I didn’t,” I tell her. “You did this. Breathe deep, Zoe. Hang on. Help is coming.”
“You don’t care,” she whispers, “if I live or die. It’s nothing to you.” Her bottom half is crumpled in the car seat, and she wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Her pelvis is smashed to bits, and I know, that if she’d actually been pregnant, that there’s no way her child could still be living. There’s no way it could’ve survived. Jude’s child.
Anger swells in me, and I see red, and the pain the pain the pain grows bigger than my logic, bigger than my compassion, and that’s all I see. White-hot pain and it’s mine and I own it.
“It’s nothing to him,” I tell her coldly, steeling my heart. “You’re nothing to him.”
She smiles, and her teeth are red and grotesque and broken.
“But I’m a nothing who took your husband. Just like you took everything that mattered to me.”
My heart pounds and twists, because she did take my husband.
She was young and lovely, and I thought she held so much power over me, and I thought she was my friend, but here she is on the ground, and she’s bleeding and broken and she’s nothing to me.
“You’re dying,” I tell her.
“You’re a bitch,” she manages to say, her last words with her last breaths. All of my instincts and experiences feel it. She gurgles now, and she can’t talk anymore, and her chest heaves up and down raggedly.
“It didn’t have to be this way,” I say quietly, and the wind steals my words and carries them away. Zoe watches me, her eyes already beginning to cloud.
I hear the sirens, I see the red lights flashing around us in circles, and when the EMTs shove their way through the rain, I step to the side, and her eyes still follow me, dark as night.
They pull her out, sliding her easily onto the wet ground. I can see her weaken, and her breathing slow. She’s going. She’s slipping away and I don’t feel anything.
And then Jude is here, wet in the rain.
And he’s all I’ve ever wanted, and he’s broken my heart.