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Dad’s lips moved again. His eyes begged me to listen. I wanted to, I really did, but all I could hear was the horn.
A tear fell from dad’s cheek to mine.
A hiss slipped out of mythroat, like the drop burned me where it landed.
Dadnevercried.
His lips moved slower, his body still covering mine. Protecting me from whatever was happening or had already happened.
A cage of bent steel boxed us in. I couldn’t move out from under him if I tried.
I managed to form a fist, clutching on to his shirt before he collapsed on me. My hands tremored with his weight, the other still wrapped around the knife handle.
Dad’s eyes remained open, but I knew he wasn’t alive anymore. His soul had already drifted away. And I finally understood what he meant when he’d said souls were priceless.
My senses returned one by one, trickling like rain.
First, my hearing.
“Is there anyone else in there?”
“A child.”
“Alive?”
“Damn… I doubt it. That truck went straight into them at full speed. They stood no chance.”
Then, my skin receptors.
Dad was cold.
So cold.
Toocold.
I knew what it meant.
A piece of his flesh melted from his face, dropping onto my chest. If it was hot, I couldn’t feel it.
I trembled all over, screwing my eyes shut, fighting down the bile rising up my throat, my stomach still clenched tight.
Get off me.
I don’t want to feel your death.
I don’t want to feel, period.
Finally, my ability to talk.
“Alive,” I croaked out, hearing people groaning, grunting, shouting, trying to flip the car upright. “I’m alive.”
But I didn’t feel like I was.
“You hang in there, buddy,” a voice called out. “We’re coming to get you. It’s just gonna take some time, okay?”
“Okay.”
Not okay.
