Girl Against the Universe (24 page)

I end up in a hospital in Santa Barbara where a doctor tells me it looks like I have a broken arm but he can't treat me without permission from my mother. It takes me a couple of minutes to calm down enough to remember her phone number.

My arm is throbbing by the time a nurse pops in my room to tell me my mom is on the way. She has a soft Spanish accent, and her hair is dark and curly like mine—just not quite as long, or as “big,” as Jordy would say. My eyes water when I think of him. I lean over. The nurse's name tag blurs as I blink back tears. “Pilar?” I say.

“Yes.” She corrects my pronunciation with a grin, rolling the R-sound at the end. “But you can call me Pili if you like.”

“Do you know if my friend is okay? The guy I came in with?”

“I'm not sure. But I'll see what I can find out.” She inserts
an IV, injects me with pain medicine, and takes me to radiology for an X-ray.

After the X-ray, Nurse Pili brings me back to my room in the ER, where I'm left alone for about an hour. At some point during that time, the shock of everything starts to wear off, and the horrible reality comes crashing down on me. I might have saved Jordy and myself by finding the phone and calling 911, but I failed my therapy challenge massively.

I was so close to feeling normal again. I think about how far I came—the driving, the team bus, the party, even the roller coaster. And now what? How can I do anything but go back to my old life after this? I don't want to hurt Jordy again. I don't want to hurt Jade, or anyone from the team. I don't want to risk the lives of a bunch of strangers on an international flight.

All Jordy wanted to do was turn pro, and who knows if his injuries will keep him from doing that? Who knows if he's even okay?
Well, that's not all he wanted to do . . .
Fine, whatever. He wanted to be my boyfriend, too. And now I've screwed up both of those things.

Nurse Pili pops her head in the room. “Hey, sweetie, it looks like you have an ulnar fracture—that's the smaller bone in your forearm. An ortho doc is looking at your films, and your mom said she's about twenty minutes away . . .” She trails off, approaching the bed with a concerned look. “What is it? What's wrong?” She touches the fabric of my pillow.

It's wet. I didn't even know I was crying. “I've ruined
everything,” I say. “This is all my fault.”

She bends down so we're at the same level. Her brown eyes are full of concern. “What is all your fault?”

“The accident,” I whisper. “Can you please, please find out if Jordy is okay? What if I killed him?”

“What?” She blinks rapidly and then leans in closer like she thinks maybe she heard me wrong. “Were you the one driving?”

I shake my head. I hold my breath to keep from sobbing.

“Then how could you have killed him?”

My only answer is a steady stream of quietly dripping tears. I imagine explaining it all to her, the person I've been for the past few years, what it feels like to hurt anyone you get close to. Exhaling deeply, I collapse back on my pillow. “Can I have more pain medicine?” My arm feels like it's on fire, but that's nothing compared to the crushing sadness in my chest.

She grabs a box of tissues from the counter and sets it on the bedside table. “How would you rate your pain on a scale of zero to ten?”

“Seven?” I choke out. “A million? I don't know.”

“Sorry. Everyone hates that question, but we need it for our charting. Let me check with the doctor.” Nurse Pili leaves the room and returns a few minutes later with a small syringe. “He said another half dose would be okay. He also said your friend got transferred to a hospital in San Diego. I can't give you details, but we don't transfer patients unless
they're stable, so try not to worry too much.”

I nod. “Thank you for checking.”

She smiles. “Clearly he means a great deal to you. I'm sure the doctors are taking excellent care of him.” She wipes the valve of my IV with an alcohol swab and flushes the medicine into my system. Warmth rushes up my arm, followed by a dullness that spreads throughout my body. Another half-dose is more than okay—it's perfect. A dark, dreamless sleep steals me away.

When I wake up, my mother is sitting in a chair next to my bed, my luck notebook balanced on her lap.
Uh-oh.
I roll over to face her and a dull ache spreads throughout my arm. A blue and gray fiberglass cast runs from my hand to just below my elbow. I peer down at the cast suspiciously.

“Maguire!” My mom pulls her chair close to the bed. “Oh thank goodness you're okay.” I'm still staring at the cast, so she adds, “They did some sort of external fix where they reset your bones without having to do surgery. Cool, huh? I asked for your school colors. You slept through the whole thing.”

I lick my lips. “I don't even remember a doctor coming in.”

“The nurse said you had extra morphine, and then you got a sedative for the procedure. I guess it kept you pretty knocked out.”

Without lifting my head from the pillow, I nod. “Jordy?” I ask. “Do you know if he's okay?”

“His sister called your phone about twenty minutes ago.” She holds up my purse. It's battered and the strap is bloody, but otherwise it's mostly whole. “They stabilized him here, and then his parents had him airlifted back to San Diego. Apparently he has a collapsed lung and a lot of minor cuts and scrapes, but Penn says he's going to be fine.”

I weep with relief. I curl onto my side and pull my legs up to my chest.

Mom bends low and strokes my hair. “Are you hurting? Do you need more morphine?”

I cry even harder. If only medicine could fix this. Mom doesn't say anything else. She just rubs my back repeatedly until I calm down. Then I roll over, wipe my eyes with my good hand, and take three deep breaths. “He asked me to be his girlfriend. We were going to make things official after we got home tonight.”

“Home from?”

“SLO. The accident site.”

“Ah,” my mom says. “Another one of your therapy challenges?”

“I should've told you,” I say. I don't know if it's the pain medicine or if the secrets have just grown too big for me to hold inside, but I tell her everything—my curse, my rituals, my five-second checks. I'm expecting her to be surprised,
but then I remember my luck notebook perched on her lap. She must have found it in my purse when she went to answer my phone.

“Did you read it?” I ask.

She looks down at the floor, lets out a big breath of air. “I skimmed it. So this whole notebook—it's full of things that have happened since Kieran, your father, and your brother died?”

“Mostly.”

My mom flips through the pages of my notebook. “And you . . . blame yourself for these things?”

“Kind of,” I whisper.

“You really spent years thinking you were
cursed
?” Tears fill her eyes, and then we're both crying. “I knew you worried about bad things happening. I didn't realize you felt responsible for them.” She pulls a tissue from the box on my bedside table and blots her eyes. “I recognized you needed help when you got so upset about the fire, but I had no idea it all went back to the accident. Or maybe I did and just didn't want to connect it all. What kind of a mother does that make me?”

“You didn't do anything wrong, Mom. It's not your fault if I'm—”

“Maguire,” my mom says firmly. “You are
not
cursed. You are not bad luck. You are not to blame for any of these things.”

I pick at a ball of lint on my thin hospital blanket. “Then how do you explain it all?”

“Sometimes terrible things happen and it's no one's fault. Sometimes we do the best we can and still have bad outcomes.”

“I still want to be with him,” I whisper. “How selfish does that make me?”

“It doesn't make you selfish. Luck isn't a zero-sum game where you being lucky means someone else has to be unlucky. If you want to be with him, then be with him,” my mom says.

It seemed so easy when we were broken and bleeding. Choose to live. Choose to fight. But I can do both of those things without becoming Jordy's girlfriend and potentially putting him at risk. Maybe we're both better off if I love him from a distance.

“How can I do that, Mom, knowing that bad things might happen?”

My mom scoots her chair closer to the bed and squeezes my good hand. “There is always the chance someone might get hurt. You can try to control the situation with rituals or staying home or locking yourself away from the world, but in the end it's not up to you.”

“But how can I live like that?” My voice rises in pitch.

“Because there's no other choice,” my mom says. “And because you're brave.”

My IV pump chimes sharply, and my mom and I both turn to look at it. A tiny red light flashes. The bag of saline the nurse gave me is almost empty. About ten chimes later Nurse Pili bustles back into the room. She shuts off the IV and takes a set of vitals.

“How's your pain?” she asks.

“It's fine,” I say. “Maybe two out of ten.”

“Are you feeling confused at all?”

“No, I feel okay.”

She rests a hand on my arm. “Your vitals are all within normal limits. I'm going to check with the doctor to see if we can get your discharge paperwork processed. I'll be back to update you.”

“Thank you,” my mom says. When the nurse is gone, she bends over and wraps her arms around me, her lips pressing against my forehead. “I feel so bad that you've been struggling for so long.” Her eyes water. “Maybe Tom and the kids seemed like they needed more from me, so I left you floundering.” A tear streaks down her cheek, and she swipes at it.

“I should've told you how I felt. I guess it just seemed like there was nothing you could do to help. And you had your hands full with Erin, and then Jake too. They do need you more.” I swallow hard. “I didn't want to take you away from them.”

“Well, I need all of my children exactly the same.” My mom sniffles. “Please don't ever feel like you can't ask me for
anything, Maguire. I will never be too busy for you. I will never not make time.”

“Really?” I ask.

“Really.” Mom blots at her eyes again.

“In that case, there is one thing I would like to do.”

My mom signs my discharge paperwork, and we head out to her car.

“If we're doing this, I'm driving,” she says. “You're all zonked out on pain meds.”

I slide into the passenger seat and buckle my seat belt. Mom buckles up and then looks both ways as she pulls out of the hospital parking lot. My phone rings. It's Penn again. I slip it back into my purse unanswered. I can't talk to her. Not yet, not until I'm finished. I can't let anything distract me.

Two hours later, Mom and I reach the site outside of San Luis Obispo where Dad, Uncle Kieran, and Connor died. The place where I inexplicably lived. I recognize the road before she even says anything, as if its particular collection of curves imprinted itself on my memory all those years ago. There's a tiny white cross peeping out of the steep hillside at the scene of the accident. A tiny white cross with fresh flowers.

“Who?” I ask.

Mom slows the car as we pass the site. “The firehouse, probably,” she says. “I think they come out every month. We can go there, if you'd like to speak to some of them.”

I shake my head. I already know what they'll say. My dad and uncle were heroes. They died too young. Everyone loved them. Everyone misses them.

I turn around in my seat and watch the cross disappear through the back window. “I need to get out of the car for a moment. Is that okay?”

“Sure, but I'm coming with you.” Mom finds a place to park about a half mile down the road at the turnoff for a trailhead. We get out of the car, cross the street, and start walking back toward the scene of the accident.

As we draw close, it all rushes back to me. The warm day, the sunshine, the car radio cranking, my brother teasing me. Part of me wants to turn around, go back to Mom's car, forget I ever had the idea to come here. But I can't, because Jordy was right. I do need to see this.

I need to face this place.

Just beyond the cross, a curved metal guardrail skirts the edge of the narrow shoulder. I study the road and then look down the hill, at the clusters of rocks peppering the side of the grassy incline. I remember seeing the truck veer into our lane and then the sickening feel of dropping off the pavement, the impact of each jolt as the car bounced end over end. But my memory doesn't give up anything else. No clue
as to why the driver lost control of his truck. No long-kept secret about how I survived.

“You all right?” my mom asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess I was just hoping I'd find answers. How it happened. Why it happened. How I . . .”

“How you lived?”

“Yeah.”

“The fire chief said it happens more than you'd think. One movement this way or that way, one second sooner or later, and someone lives or dies. He said maybe the car twisted in such a way that one of the guys broke your fall. Or perhaps that you ended up on the floorboards and fit just right so the front and back seats cushioned you from the impacts.” She puts an arm around me. “But I'm afraid we'll never know for sure, honey.” She stares out, past the guardrail and the steep embankment. A single tear streaks down her pale cheek. “I just know I'm awfully glad that you did.”

“Me too.” I lean into my mom's body, and she wraps me in a hug. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

She pulls back a little to look me in the eye. “Thank
you
for bringing
me
here.”

I turn in a slow half circle, taking in the road, the trees, the incline, the wooden cross. I know my dad, uncle, and brother aren't with us, that they're long gone to wherever people go when they die, but somehow I feel connected to them. “I just need another minute.”

“Take all the time you want,” Mom says. “I could use another minute myself.”

We stand there, together but separate, both of us thinking about the past in our own ways. “I miss you guys,” I say. “I'm sorry you're gone. Connor, I'm sorry I was mean to you.” I pause, take in a deep breath. “You were the best brother a girl could ask for.”

Mom rests a hand on my lower back but doesn't speak. I glance around for any kind of sign that my family has heard me. But there's no sudden rush of wind, no strange beams of light in the darkening sky. There are no signs, just like there are no answers. And I can either accept that or not accept it, but neither choice will change what is. I'll never know for sure what caused the crash or why I survived. I'll never know for sure whether I'm lucky, unlucky, being tested, or merely a victim of probability. I'll never know which of the bad things led to good things, or which were actually good things in disguise. Any control I thought I gained by doing my checks and rituals and shutting out the world was an illusion.

The time for illusions is over.

Reaching up, I remove the mystic knot necklace from around my neck and drape it over the top of the cross. “Now we'll always be together,” I say.

My mom smiles and then removes her own necklace, a tiny gold heart. “Now we'll always be together,” she echoes, looping her chain over mine.

The sun falls below the horizon as we turn away from the site.

By the time we get back to the car, there are three more messages from Penn. They all say basically the same thing. “Jordy is doing okay. He's awake and wants to see you. His phone was destroyed in the accident, so please call me on my phone.” The third one is slightly more frantic, as if she thinks I'm not going to call her back.

“Are you ready to head home?” my mom asks.

I nod. “Thanks for doing this. Did you have to trust Tom with Erin and Jake?”

“It was about time I gave him a shot.” She smiles. “How's Jordy?”

“Doing okay, according to his sister.”

“Do you need me to drop you at the hospital?”

“It's going to be past visiting hours by the time we get back to San Diego,” I say. “I'll go by after school tomorrow.”

My mom pats my hand. “You were in a serious car accident and broke your arm. You can take a day or two off school.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

I call Penn and let her know I'll be coming by in the morning.

“Thank God,” she says. “Jordy keeps rambling about how he thinks you're going to break up with him because of the accident. We all figured it was the pain medicine talking,
but he seems to think he might never see you again. Hang on. I'll wake him up so he can talk to you.”

“No,” I say quickly. “I mean, don't disturb him. I'm all achy and dirty. I'm just going to take a bath and go to bed. My mom is letting me skip school, so I'll see him early tomorrow morning. I promise.”

“Okay,” she says, but there's a note of fear in her voice. “You're not going to hurt him again, are you?”

“Believe me,” I say. “That's the last thing I want to do.”