26. Macie

Chapter twenty-six

Macie

I n the media room in the basement, we sat on the longest, overstuffed U-shaped couch I had ever seen. Demarius and Lev scrolled through movie choices, trying to figure out what we should watch as I finished fishtail braiding Melanie's hair. When Relic walked in, I automatically smiled, and he winked at me as he sat beside me.

"How's Camila?" Demarius asked.

"Sound asleep next to your sister," he said. "Your mom said she's cool to stay the night. I don't want to overstay our welcome, though, so if you think I should pack it in, I will."

"You're not overstaying anything," Demarius answered. "I swear, Mom's eating this up. It's been a long time since I've had friends over, so she's in heaven."

I twisted Melanie's hair tie around the end of the braid and glanced at Demarius. He was a year younger than me, and while Demarius and I didn't run in the same circles, Demarius and Seth did. In fact, I was under the impression that Demarius was a popular guy.

"Why haven't you had anyone over?" Melanie asked what I couldn't seamlessly ease into the conversation. "At school, you have a ton of friends. At least during lunch, you sit at a table with a ton of people."

For someone I'd initially assumed only focused on herself, Melanie saw a lot.

Demarius flipped the remote in his hand as he struggled to find an answer. I contemplated breaking the silence with a change in subject when Lev beat me to it first, "Thanks for tonight. You all don't know how much this means to me."

"We've all had fun," I said, and then came a chorus of agreements.

Lev fidgeted with the friendship bracelet Melanie had given him when we first arrived, and he now wore it proudly on his left wrist. "I've never told anyone about my dad before."

Silence, as we all had something we'd never told anyone, and we all respected and envied Lev for being brave enough to talk.

"I don't care when people at school bully me. I don't care if people blow me off because they think I'm weird, but I do want Dad to like me." Lev paused then continued, "It's also weird because I want to get the hell out of my home more than I want anything else. How can I want someone I hate to love me?" More silence, then he said so quietly I almost didn't hear him, "It'd be easier if I did hate him. I wish I did."

He hung his head and then glanced up, "Anyway, thanks, Demarius. I promise, you saved me from all sorts of hell tonight." Lev forced a tilt up of his lips, but we all felt the impact of the implication of what his home life was like. Even Relic winced.

"I'm the one who should be thanking you," Demarius said, and we all looked at him. "I haven't talked to nearly any of my friends in months. I mean, when I'm at school, I fake it so that I'm still accepted. But you all are the first people I've been comfortable around in forever."

I nodded along because I felt the same way, but I couldn't form the words to express it. Demarius must have caught the motion and he looked at me. "How do you do it? How do you keep moving forward when it had to feel like everything stopped?"

I sucked in a shuddering breath, and Relic reached over and placed his hand on my wrist. His touch was warm, strong, a reassurance I desperately needed. "I don't."

"That's bull," Demarius said. "I see you at work. You're a rock star."

"But I didn't go back to school," I pushed back. "I couldn't. I have to go back in the fall, and that scares the crap out of me. I fake it at work. I'm okay during the day, but at night, I'm ready to burst out of my skin at any moment. And besides Ariel, I don't talk to my old friends. It's like I live on another planet now. Everything is changed."

"It is possible," added Lev. "Living on another planet that is. If aliens can come here, surely we can go there."

I snorted and Lev winked. I continued, "I can't drive. Relic drives my car because I'm lying to my parents that I am driving so they'll stop worrying about me all the time. I'm in therapy because I can't talk about what happened. Never once. When I do, I break out into hives, and I can't breathe and…"

Relic took my fingers in his as I scratched at the forming welts. More silence, more hives formed on my arms, and I wanted to peel my skin off.

"A few months ago," Demarius said, "I was invited to attend a football scouting camp. It's a big deal to be invited, especially as I'm only going into my junior year. The camps are where college recruiters have a chance to see us high school players in action." He recalls a video saved to his phone and tosses it in our direction. "I'm number thirty-seven."

It landed on my lap, and everyone gathered round to watch as a play began on the football field. The guy with ball broke three tackles only to be met by thirty-seven. When Demarius hit him, the person with the ball fell backwards over a player on his team who had slipped behind him. His body contorted in impossible ways, and everything inside me shrank and withered as I swear to God, even with no volume, I heard bones snapping.

"Oh my God," Melanie uttered as Relic breathed out, "Fuck."

The player landed on the ground, blood seeping onto his uniform. Demarius swiped his phone and threw it hard at the wall. Shocked at what I had seen, my heart breaking for Demarius, I looked up at him, but I didn't know what to say. Thankfully, Relic did. "It was a clean hit. That was not on you. You didn't target. Your helmet was up. You hit him clean. Textbook. There was no way for you to know someone was behind him and how he'd land."

"He's paralyzed, Relic!" Demarius pounded both of his hands against his chest. "He's paralyzed because of me."

Relic let go of me as he stood. "Not because of you."

"Because of me," Demarius pushed. "And everyone expects me to play again. At first, I told Coach I couldn't make it to practice because of my job at the mall, and truth is, I did think that. So, when Macie got me the job, I was like…okay, I'll go to practice. But I haven't. I've never told Coach that I switched jobs. I can't play again, and all I've ever done is play football. All my friends are on the team. My entire life has always been this. I can't face them. I can't tell them I'm not coming back when everyone keeps telling me that I should. That it's not my fault and that I should shake this off. How do I shake that off?"

He pointed to where his cell landed. "Some kid will never walk again because of me. And you know what the worst part is? He wants to talk to me. Why? So he can tell me how I've ruined his life? What do I say to him? What do I say to him to make what happened better?"

"Is there anything you want to say to him?" Melanie asked.

"That I'm sorry, but there aren't enough apologies to make up for what I've done."

"Maybe it'll make you feel better if you do talk to him," I suggested. "Maybe that can help you move forward. Maybe with football, maybe without. But move forward."

Demarius' head dropped, then he lifted it to look me in the eye. My stomach twisted with the desperation and pain in his soul—it was the same desperation and pain that twisted me.

"But you get it, right?" Demarius said. "You understand not wanting to face something? It's okay to walk from all of this and never look back? It's okay to pretend everything's okay?"

***

I left my phone at Demarius' so my parents couldn't track me.

With all of us piled into Demarius' mom's SUV that had two back rows, I unsuccessfully breathed through my panic attack as Demarius drove. While I continually said the words in my brain that I was fine—I'm fine, everything's fine, the world is fine, the universe is fine, existence is fine—the ultimate reality was that I was not fine. I was not okay. I was unraveling from the inside out.

Relic sat beside me in the second row, his hand holding mine, his thumb stroking my skin. That caress was the only reason I had not bolted out of the car screaming. I could feel him watching me, worried about me, touching me in a way that made me feel like he was trying to pour all his strength into me.

Demarius glanced at me from the rearview. "We don't have to do this."

I tossed my hand in the air and pointed at him to keep going as I let out this mashed up version of a "Humph," because that was all I was capable of saying. From the front passenger side, Lev glanced back at me as if I were now the one wearing the shark suit. To be honest, maybe I would feel better if I had it on. Then there would be a bigger barrier between me and the real world, and I really, really needed a barrier.

"It's the agreement," Melanie said from the back row. She played with my hair from behind as if also trying to comfort me. "Macie visits where the carjacking happened, and you schedule a meeting with the guy from the football game."

Demarius made a left turn that made my head pound, and I rolled my neck with the pain. He slowed at the quiet intersection where everyone knew I had been carjacked because all the news media had converged onto this place for days. We came to a stop, and everyone sat in absolute silence except me. I panted as though I had run a marathon.

I couldn't do this.

I couldn't.

I didn't have to.

I could turn away.

I could run away.

I could…I glanced up, met Demarius' pain-filled eyes, and forced myself out the car. There was no way in hell I was ever going to be fixed, but maybe Demarius could find some peace if he visited the boy he had tackled. Dizziness attacked me as I left the car, and the doors clapped shut as everyone else exited the SUV.

Knowing I had to face this, I stumbled forward. Everyone stayed behind me but mirrored my steps as if allowing me room. In reality, this was no place special. An unassuming four-way stop in what was now land being developed for neighborhoods. A half mile from school, a short cut off the main roads for my house. A path I had taken hundreds of times over my life, a path I never believed I would take again.

Like that night, it was dark, but this time stars dotted the sky. It had been cloudy that February, and flurries had fallen as I lay on the ground gasping for air. Now the night boarded on sweltering, yet I shivered. At the stop sign, I halted and swiftly turned. Everyone stared at me, but I didn't see them.

I saw the car that had come up behind me, saw the two beams of light set on high that had blinded me in the rearview mirror. I had thought how strange it was for another car to be here. Had felt a surge of annoyance when their front bumper had jolted into my car. Their passenger side door opened. I opened my door to ask how they wanted to handle the situation, and then—

Nausea rolled through me, and my knees gave. Relic raced forward, caught me, then helped lower me to the street. But as soon as my hands felt the rough blacktop, my stomach turned and I dry-heaved.

"Get her off the street, Relic!" Lev called out. "Onto the grass. Get her on the grass. They said she was left on the street."

Relic swooped me up, but it was too late. As soon as he placed me on the grass, I vomited. Over and over again. Relic held me up. Melanie kept my hair out of my face.

When it was clear I had nothing left in me to expel, I sat back on my butt and sighed. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" Lev asked. "Dad said it's not a real party until someone pukes. I guess that means I've been to my first party."

I don't know why, but that made me smile. "Did he really say that?"

"He says lots of weird things, but he doesn't believe yetis are real. It baffles me."

My mind cleared. Because even in the midst of chaos, Lev was still Lev. A supernova still burning when all the other planets had been sucked into the black hole.

"You okay?" Melanie asked. Relic's cautious stare asked the same question.

"Nope," I answered honestly. "Help me up."

Relic guided me to my feet. When it was clear I wasn't going to fall over again, he released me but stayed near. For the first time since having this atrocious idea, I took a deep breath that fully filled my lungs. Weird. I never believed that the air here could smell sweet. It felt wrong. Off. To me, it should smell like death.

"I died here," I said into the still night. I could feel everyone vibrating with shock and fear.

"What did you say?" There was a tremor of rage in Relic's tone.

"When the paramedics arrived, my heart stopped. I don't remember the paramedics. I don't remember the moment I went unconscious. I just remember not wanting to die."

Why was I here other than to torture myself? I looked at the faces of my group therapy—no, my friends—and when I saw Demarius, I remembered. He and I had made a deal. How could I tell him to move forward if I wasn't even trying?

Move forward. What did that mean? I guess it meant finding a way to tell the world what happened, but I couldn't do that. I couldn't talk about what happened after their car hit mine. That wound was still too deep, still bleeding too profusely—no matter how many tourniquets I applied.

But maybe, instead of focusing on what I couldn't talk about, I could focus on something that I could verbalize. In the grass, I walked in a circle and then pointed toward an overgrown bush. "That's where they threw my phone. I never understood why they didn't steal that, too." Words I had never said aloud before, and my body vibrated as if I had been shocked by electricity, yet I still found a way to talk. Go me.

"Because the police can track you through it. Especially an iPhone," Relic said. "They should have broken it before they tossed it, and they should have never shot at you. That creates heat and complications nobody wants, but it sounds like the entire job got botched."

A tightening in my chest. "How do you know that?"

"I already told you, my dad's an ex-con. He used to lift cars when he was a teenager before he moved on to more lucrative ways to go to prison."

There was a swift intake of air from Melanie, a slight, "Damn," from Demarius, and of course Lev would come in with, "That sounds much more interesting than my dad."

It was like watching the sunrise as it all clicked. "You think if I give you enough clues, you can figure out who did this because your dad will know them."

"It's a long shot," Relic answered. "There are a lot of gangs in the city who do dirty shit, and my dad only has an alliance with one. There's odds this was done by teenagers with no loyalty, looking for a joyride and some social media fame. But I might have a better inside track than most."

Probably even the police. Another wave of dizziness spun through me. "What if you talk to your dad and he talks and then the people find out that I'm talking?" What if they did come after me again? What if they came after my family?

"Look at me, Macie," Relic said in a low voice, and when I did, his serious gaze held my panicked one. "I'm smarter than that. None of this will clap back on you. I swear it. We're doing this to make sure you're safe, not to put you in danger. Keeping them out of jail only gives them power and keeps you in fear." When I said nothing, he continued, "You with me?"

No, but I needed to be, so I nodded.

"You want to go, or do you want to look around some more?" Relic asked.

I longed to run far, far away, but I didn't want to live in fear anymore. I surveyed the area again, wondering if I had any more words left for the evening.

"I don't understand," Melanie said. "If the rumors about you are true, it was your phone that called 911. If they left you to die on the pavement and your phone was all the way over here under the bush in the grass, how did you reach your phone?"

My body literally jolted because Melanie hit too close. But the throwing of my cell was separate from the shooting. Two different sections of the events. Right? I kept telling myself that. Two different chapters of the same story. I couldn't read chapter one, but maybe I could skim through chapter two.

I could do it.

I could.

I breathed out slowly as heat creeped along my skin, making me clammy. "Because the guy who came back after they left me found it. He used my phone to call the police as he tried to stop the bleeding. He was the one who told me never to tell anyone. He…" Black dots appeared in my vision. "He…um…he…um…I think I'm going to pass out."

And the world went black.