August 18, 1:44 A.M.
3 Hours and 18 Minutes After the Accident
LEO FOLLOWS HER parents into the house. She doesnāt know where Stephanie is.
Itās just her and her mom and dad, all of them silent as the garage door squeaks shut behind them. The large hanging mirror reflects all of their faces, numb and shocked and salt-streaked. Leo sees her eyeliner running down her cheeks, pooling at her jawline, and feels like sheās been punched.
Denver comes running in to see them, doing his regular ankle sniff to make sure that everyone is there and accounted for, and when he doesnāt find the person heās looking for, he sniffs again, and then a third time. āOh, buddy,ā their dad says, his voice breaking. āOh, pally.ā
They sit at the kitchen table, Ninaās backpack on the floor, and itās so normal that it takes Leo a minute to realize that itās Ninaās backpack on the floor. Her sisterās stuff that she touched with her own hands, her handwriting, her hair scrunchies and school ID and lip gloss. Leo has a sudden, almost triumphant thought that Ninaās DNA is all over that bag, as if they could put it in a lab and reanimate her, re-create her.
Her brain is slipping back and forth, from past to present, and Leo feels like sheās being tossed in the sea.
Her mom sits, then stands up and goes to the refrigerator. She opens the door, stands there, and when she doesnāt move after a full minute, Leo watches as her dad goes to her and enfolds his ex-wife in his arms, both of them beginning to sob.
Their parents have barely spoken in seven years other than cursory texts and polite nods at holiday pickups and drop-offs. āOh, they haaaate each other,ā Nina always said blithely whenever someone asked about their parentsā divorce, but watching them hold each other, Leo now realizes that that isnāt true. They may not love each other anymore, but they desperately love their girls, and maybe that was the strongest bond they had ever had, the one that could never be decreed by a church or severed by a court.
Wait until I tell Nina about this, she thinks.
But then the thought hits her that Nina is not here, that she will never know about this, and Leo feels herself physically recoil at the thought, grabbing on to the kitchen table so that she doesnāt double over and hit the floor with the full weight of her realization. Denver is at her feet now, curled up and calm, and Leo reaches down and touches him with the backs of her fingers, suddenly desperate to feel something alive that isnāt also falling apart.
It doesnāt upset her at all that her parents donāt bring her into their arms with them, even as their tears grow desperate and wretched, bouncing off the cold marble countertops, the warm wooden floors. Leo knows that sheās not the one they want to hold in that moment, sheās not the daughter they need between them, and she starts to stand up, to leave them alone, when her mom pulls away with a horrific shudder and says, āBaby, baby,ā as she reaches out for her only living child.
Leo goes to them, lets them gather her up, but she doesnāt cry. She needs her parents, yes, but not half as much as they need her. Instead, she focuses her eyes on Ninaās backpack, on Denverās soft paws and the dirty dishes stacked near the sink, everything now a symbol of Before, and feels herself disappear.
Their mom falls asleep in Ninaās bed that night. Their dad takes her up to Ninaās room after she begs, dirty clothes and used glasses littering the floor and nightstand. Leo and her dad stand in the doorway and watch as their mom pulls back the covers and climbs right into Ninaās sheets and blankets, still fully dressed. Sheās taken something that has made her sleepy, but Leo doesnāt know what. Nina will know, though. Leo will askā
Ninaās not here.
āWhat?ā their dad says, glancing down at Leo, but she just shakes her head. She feels like if she says anything, if she even opens her mouth, the house will fall down around them.
āIām going to sleep in the guest room tonight, I think,ā he says. Leoās mom already has her back to them, her breathing finally even, and Leo just nods.
āDo you need anything?ā he asks, and Leo can almost hear the gaping space between what he wants to say and what he knows how to say. It was like that with Nina, too, their dad struggling to figure out how to speak to daughters who are no longer little girls, who canāt be appeased by an extra episode of My Little Pony or a clandestine ice cream run.
Ninaās voice comes back to Leo, as sharp and bright as the lights had been. These are real problems, Dad! she had yelled one night after he had made a flippant comment about something environmental, Stephanie covering their dadās hand with hers as if to say, please please shut up. Your generation didnāt do anything so now itās up to us!
āSweetheart?ā their dad says again, and Leo shakes her head no. Thereās nothing in the world he can give her right now. āI want you to wake me if you need anything,ā he says, and Leo believes him and also knows she wonāt do that.
Her room is dark as the door clicks shut behind her, still the same mess it was before the accident, before the party, before, and Leo sits down on her bed as she snaps on her bedside light. Itās all her stuff, her space, but it all feels different now, like a photo image thatās been flipped, recognizable but now completely unfamiliar. Her bed is still unmadeā
We had to run through the grass.
Suddenly Leo is standing up and flinging the duvet off her bed. Her breath is hard and sharp in her chest, like she canāt get enough of it, and when she sees the fitted sheet, she thinks sheās the one whoās stopped breathing.
Leo falls into the bed with a gasp, then a sob, and she spreads her fingers through the soft cotton and into the grass and mud that are still there. āNina?ā she cries, just in case her sister can hear her, but the silence is her answer and Leo feels her chest rack as she bends her head and inhales the earth.
It smells alive.
August 17, 11:24 P.M.
58 Minutes After the Accident
THE EMERGENCY ROOM is so bright, the fluorescent lights almost blue in their whiteness, and Leo finds herself thinking that there have been too many lights that night. She squints against them but she feels her head throb, the rhythmic pulse of the pain the only thing that makes sense in that moment.
āWhereās my sister?ā she asks again. āWhereās East?ā But the paramedic pushing her gurney through the swinging doors ignores her, just like they did in the ambulance. The siren had been loud and shrieking, its noise reaching down into Leoās chest and rattling it like a cough she couldnāt shake, an itch she couldnāt scratch.
Nina had left in an ambulance, its siren wailing as it sped away, and Leo had listened so hard after it disappeared, trying to hear her sister in any way that she could. āYouāll be okay,ā the paramedic had said to her as he checked her pulse and oxygen levels, explaining everything that he was doing as he did it, but Leo kept asking for Nina, saying āWhere is she? Where is she?ā until it became a chant, a prayer.
Leoās only ever seen an emergency room on TV shows before. Itās a lot scarier and louder than she thought it would be.
She really, really wants her mom.
People are shouting and running around as a doctor looks at Leo, only theyāre not shouting for her. Theyāre running past the small room where theyāve wheeled her in, the squeak of their sneakers on the linoleum floor reminding Leo of Ninaās freshman year basketball games, Nina running and grimacing and never looking like herself until the game was over.
Hustle hustle hustle . . .
Female, seventeen . . .
Fuuuuck fuck fuck . . .
Another round of epi . . .
Foxtrot 40 . . .
āOkay, Leo, yes? How are you feeling? You okay, Leo?ā
āNina,ā she whispers.
Trauma team one, trauma team one . . .
āYou got hit pretty hard so weāre going to take you down, do a CT scan, just make sure everything isāā
Thereās a honking sound, a duck or goose bellowing over and over againā
āLeo, Leo, look at me. Can we call your parents? Do you know where your phone is?ā
āIāI donāt know,ā she says because she doesnāt. She canāt even remember her momās number, the one sheās had drilled into her head since she was five years old in case of situations just like this one.
āItās okay,ā the doctor says again. āWeāll get them in here, weāll find them.ā
āWhereās my sister?ā she asks again, but then sheās gone, being wheeled away just as she hears Eastās voice screaming out, āNina!ā and it makes her start to cry.
She trembles through the entire CT scan even though sheās supposed to stay still, her body shivering after itās over and theyāre wheeling her back up. āItās just shock, sweetheart,ā a nurse says to her. āItās all right, itās just adrenaline.ā
āWhereās Nina?ā she asks.
āYouāre going to be fine. The scan looks fine.ā
But itās not fine.
Back in the ER, everything is quiet now, almost holy in its silence.
They release Leo from her neck brace and let her sit up, put a cup of water in her hand, but she just holds it, not sure how to move her hand to her mouth and back down again. Her palms are scraped up, she realizes, and she spots blood on the sleeve of her shirt, the one Nina had let her borrow to wear to the party.
Ninaās going to kill her for this.
Across the hallway, thereās a room with curtains pulled across glass windows and people in blue scrubs are coming out, soaked in blood, sweating, heads down and limbs heavy. āWeāve got a DB,ā someone says, but Leo doesnāt know what that means.
What she does know, though, with a cold prickle of fear that begins in her spine and trickles down to her toes, is that absolutely no one is looking at her.
āNina!!!!ā someone screams, and Leo whirls to see whoās calling for her sister, but itās their mom, so undone by fear and terror and confusion that Leo doesnāt even recognize the sound of her voice. Sheās looking at Leo, her face changing as she realizes that sheās Leo, not Nina, and Leo glances down at Ninaās shirt again.
She wonders if she looks like a ghost.
āMom!ā Leo cries, and then her mom is there, grabbing her up and smelling like hom...
