Unravelling. Elizabeth Norris

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      omeone called the paramedics, probably Steve. Even though I insisted I was fine, they loaded me up in the ambulance and sent me to Scripps Green, where they ushered me straight into an ER exam room.

      Nick is with me, sitting next to me, holding my hand and talking about some time when he was a little kid and he fell off his bike. His dad was trying to teach him to ride, but since his dad isn’t patient or good at teaching anything, Nick fell.

      I listen to him, to his story, and I try to focus on all the details—like the fact that it was a black-and-red Transformers bike his mom had bought custom-made down in Pacific Beach, and that his dad was really angry at him for falling and wanted him to get right back onto the bike. I know he’s just trying to help, so I swallow down the temptation to snort and say, You fell off your bike? I just got hit by a truck!

      It’s weird, though. As he talks, I feel off—like I’m spacing out. I can’t help but think of Ben Michaels hovering over me, his hands on my skin, the way he said my name. The unflinching certainty that I was dead and now I’m not—and it’s because of Ben. Somehow, he brought me back to life.

      Someone squeezes my hand, so I open my eyes—when did I close them?—and Nick smiles at me. He really is beautiful, but I honestly can’t remember how Nick even got here. Did he come in the ambulance with me? Or did he follow in his car?

      “Janelle?” Nick asks. “Janelle, are you okay?”

      He stands up and grips my hand too hard, and a wave of nausea rolls through me. He says something else, but I don’t hear him.

      A nurse leans over me and shines a flashlight in my eyes. She turns and says something to someone close to her—not Nick. I’m not sure where he went. The nausea turns to cramps, and I just want to curl my knees into my chest and lie alone in the dark. But when I try to do that, someone grips my legs.

      People yell at each other, and the whole room sounds fuzzy until I hear Alex. I can’t concentrate on who he’s talking to or what he’s saying, but I can tell by the cadence of his voice that it’s him. I want to ask when he got here and if my brother is okay. But my mouth doesn’t work, and his voice sounds farther and farther away.

      My muscles uncoil and relax again, but I’m struggling to catch my breath, almost wheezing.

      Something pinches my arm, and a steady warmth begins to spread through my body. Heaviness sets in. Hands let go of me, and I can’t hold myself up anymore. I slump down but fight to keep my eyes open. I wonder where Alex went.

      Only I must say that out loud, because then he’s standing over me. “Just relax. You had a seizure, but you’re fine.”

      “Alex.” I try to grab his arm, but my hand just flops around.

      Because he speaks my language, he says, “Jared’s fine. I took him to polo and called your dad.”

      And then he leans down so I can whisper in his ear. “At Torrey, the Jeep . . .”

      “What happened to your car?” Nick asks, his face hovering above me.

      Thankfully Alex hushes him and pushes him away as I close my eyes. “I’ll take care of it, don’t worry.”

      There was something I wanted to tell him. Something important.

      “Wait,” I whisper before he goes away. “Alex . . . I died.”

      “Shh,” he whispers back, and I picture him shaking his head. “You’re going to be fine, Janelle. You’re going to be fine.”

      The worst thing about coming back to life isn’t, believe it or not, how physically painful it is. Don’t get me wrong—even though all my bones seem to be working just fine, they feel like they were broken into tiny pieces. My body is stiff, it aches with a steady, throbbing consistency, and I’m having a hard time making it obey me the way it should.

      But worse is the hollowness.

      It makes sense, really. I just looked into the great expanse of nothingness, had a moment—no matter how quickly it passed—to think about what my seventeen years add up to, and the dominant emotion staring back at me now is regret.

      It’s not that I haven’t accomplished things. It’s not that the people I leave behind won’t remember me. It’s not even that I’m young and there was so much more I wanted to experience—so much more I wanted to do.

      It’s the realization that I was practically dead already.

      It’s that for the past I don’t know how many years, I’ve moved through life stuffed with straw, hollow and unfeeling. Day after day СКАЧАТЬ