“Here you go!” Jen told me, pressing the icy cold bottle into my palm. She sidled up next to me and smiled that sweet smile that made my heart race. Her dark eyes flashed with mischief and intoxication. She’d brought me another beer that I hadn’t asked for. “I think we should take off in about fifteen minutes,” she added, “I want to go check out Laurie’s party after this.”

I looked at the bottle in dismay and set it down on the nearest table. I was very drunk. Too drunk to drink any more, too drunk to even think clearly. I was almost too drunk to stand up.

My thoughts were coming slowly, but although they were taking their sweet time, they eventually arrived. Walking a mile in the icy weather to Laurie’s place was the last thing I wanted to do.

I didn’t just dislike Laurie; I hated her. She was unrelentingly mean to Jen. Jen didn’t like her either. They were basically frenemies without ever being friends. I swore they only hung out with one another out of some bizarre competitiveness borne of both being attractive, talented women. It was weird.

I hated watching Laurie attempt to take chunks out of my girlfriend’s self-esteem with all her catty bullshit. By this point in the evening, the idea of enduring Laurie—particularly drunk Laurie—sounded worse than a root canal. All I really wanted was to go home and sleep this night off. My head felt like it was made of lead.

“It’s two a.m., Jen.” She was always so good at being social. She was a natural extrovert. Jen was the life of any party. Me, not so much. I was basically the wet blanket of any party. “I’m really tired. Are you sure we can’t just call it a night?”

I was trying though, I had been trying all evening. I felt like I’d earned my rest. For the past six hours, I’d been to drunken house party after drunken house party. I’d smiled at the strangers Jen introduced, I’d chatted with them politely, and I’d tried to keep up with my beautiful, vibrant social butterfly of a girlfriend. After all, there was a good reason we were out tonight.

“He’s being lame again,” Jen stage-whispered to my brother behind her hands. She was pretty drunk, too, and quickly dissolved into giggles. “Help me.”

My older brother, Ian, took me by the shoulders. He hadn’t been properly sober for hours at this point, but he usually weathered it far better than me. Tonight though, he was staggering around worse than I was. None of us had any business hitting up another party. Hell, Jen and I didn’t even have any business drinking. We were both still underage.

My brother never cared about silly things like rules. “Ryan, you promised that you’d make an effort not to be so… you, tonight. Axial Tilt just got our first real breakthrough, remember? We’re celebrating.”

Of course, I remembered. I wasn’t that drunk. Jen and Ian were in a band together, and it was starting to take off in a big way. They had an actual, real record deal. They were, objectively, much cooler than me by definition. My biggest achievement to-date was a four-point GPA, which was pretty much the opposite of cool where Jen and Ian’s friends were concerned. I winced out of my brother’s grasp, feeling like the square third-wheel that I was.

“I know. I’m sorry.” I wanted to say that I felt sick, and tired, and that I wanted to find somewhere that wasn’t spinning and spend some quality time there. But that would disappoint Jen, and I hated disappointing her, so I said nothing.

A moment later she slipped back under my arm and leaned up to kiss me. God, she was so beautiful. I really didn’t deserve to have a girlfriend as hot as her. “I know you hate this, baby. I’ll make it up to you later.” She fluttered her eyelashes at me and bumped her hip against mine suggestively. “Just one more party.”

There was no arguing with Jen and Ian when they wanted to party (which was most of the time). I’d be going along for the ride whether I wanted to or not. I found some water and somewhere to sit down, squeezed my eyes shut, and tried to clear my head.

I woke up in the dark. At first, I thought I was in a dream. Unfamiliar machines beeped and flashed at me from every direction I looked. It was a long time before I was able to comprehend what I was seeing.

There, to my left, was a heart rate monitor connected to a clamp on my fingertip. The little green line on the monitor leapt in time with my pulse. Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Beep-beep. The noise and lights were hypnotic.

Above, an IV dripped something that might be contributing to my fuzzy mind and lethargic body into a long tube that ended in catheter attached to the back of my hand. My other arm was encased in a heavy plaster cast. So was one of my feet. The skin that I could see exposed around the edge of the cast was bruised purple-black and scratched. I couldn’t move my head around very well, and from the pressure against my collar bones, I suspected that I was in some sort of a neck brace.

I was also thirstier than I’d ever been in my entire life. I tried to speak and call for help, but my mouth was full of…something. Panic rose. There were tubes in my throat? I couldn’t tell exactly. I couldn’t seem to muster the anxiety I knew that I should be feeling about having a breathing tube down my trachea.

Drugs. I must be on sedatives.

I was basically helpless though: unable to move, unable to speak.

What the hell had happened? Where was Ian? Where was Jen?

Oh god.

Oh no.

All at once, the memory returned. Like it was waiting for me to regain consciousness and look for it, the memory played out like a movie in my mind’s eye. The fragmented moments flickered into a confusing, dull narrative.

I remembered Ian and Jen arguing over what to do with me. I’d been half-passed out, and unable to walk or speak. I definitely couldn’t walk to Laurie’s. I couldn’t even walk home. They ended up deciding to load me in the back of Ian’s car and drive all three of us to Laurie’s, hoping I’d sober up a bit on the way.

Next, I remembered a noise. A huge, horrible, screaming, inhuman noise of brakes and twisting metal. I felt cold. Then heat. Chaotic lights, men with tools, and sirens all followed.

Finally, I remembered being talked to by someone, but not being able to reply. I remembered a voice saying something about there being only two survivors. Another voice said something about seat belts, and how people who didn’t wear them might as well just travel with a shovel and a power washer in the trunk. The first voice laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. Then nothing; I must have passed out.

The heartrate monitor leapt along with my renewed panic. Against the best efforts of the morphine drip, the relatively sedate beep-beeps became urgent beep-beeps. I looked around and saw a big red button labelled ‘push for nurse’. It felt like a herculean effort, but I managed to swat it with my cast-covered right hand. A moment later, I heard the characteristic sound of my mom’s voice rising excitedly. It sounded like she was running down the hallway.

If I was one of the two survivors, and there were three of us in the car, did that mean that one of them… I couldn’t even think it. It was too horrible.