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He forced my backpack off my shoulders and carried it for me as he took my hand and held it tightly. We walked down the road, me quaking in my boots all the way back to the trailer park.
“She’s paralyzed, right?” Fay asks, even though she must already know.
I nod. “From the neck down.”
Hunter was satisfied at the news of it. He said to her, the Queen of whatever the fuck, it was probably worse than death.
And anyway, she may as well have been dead given she literally disappeared from sight. I’ve had glimpses of her over the years—
“How was Leo?” Britney asks next.
I reflect on seeing him weeks later at my window.
*
It must have been past midnight, but I couldn’t sleep. I was listening to the incessant rain as it drummed along the roof, feeling…a strange knot in my chest. This…pain I couldn’t describe. I kept reliving the fear of jumping out of that car—that cold sort of fear that made my stomach twist and turn, and despite the trauma, I…couldn’t cry. The tears wouldn’t come.
I wondered if I would ever be the same.
Then the tapping sounded, light at first, and then persistent. I followed it to my window, thinking it must have been Hunter, but that it would be odd if it was because he’d been so busy lately.
I slid the window open, and in the darkness there Leo stood. His chest was moving fast like he’d run to my window. For a strange reason he was feet away, like he was keeping a distance from me now that I opened up for him.
“Leo?” I spoke.
He seemed all wrong standing there, looking away from me and over his shoulder like—like something might be there.
“Get in,” I whispered.
But he didn’t budge.
My spine tingled with awareness. “What’s wrong?”
He just shook his head. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Why?”
He looked ominous standing there, like he was part of the bushes behind my house. He practically blended in. “I wish she was dead.”
My face fell. My hold on the window tightened as I poked my head out to him, urging him to, “Come here, Leo.”
Why wouldn’t he come?
Why did he have to look like a ghost standing there in the dead of night? I was so paranoid, I wondered for a moment if I was in the middle of a dream and he wasn’t really here.
But then he finally took a step to me, and then another. Soon he was in front of my window, peering at me with a lost look in his eye. “I still have you, right?”
I gave him a long look, surprised by his question. “Of course.”
His tone turned desperate. “You promise?”
I swallowed, my emotions high because it was still so raw—all of it. “I promise.”
We stared at each other for several moments as the rain continued to pelt him. My heart picked up, hating the forlorn look of him. I stretched my arm out and ran my hand down the side of his face. He was so cold—
“I’m sorry what happened to her,” I whispered to him, choked up.
His eyes widened. “How could you feel sorry after…?”
