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Fuck. Oh, God, fuck.
I don’t feel it.
Then I do.
The world turns off. Somebody hit the switch, and I’m dead. Lights out for Gabriel Hill. No more men in dark alleyways, no more women at parties, no more smiles, no more whispers—
Fuck.
I can’t breathe, and then I can.
It’s shrill, screeching pressure, this landing. It’s being slapped on the back times a thousand, and it’s not just my back. It’s my head. My thighs. My calves. My feet. Christ, that hurts. I don’t know how I landed on my back.
Dark again.
Fallingagain.
My lungs yank in a breath to scream but they’re full of smoke and ash. It’s not a scream that comes out. It’s a cough, but it’s pinned, somehow. Caught between me and concrete.
Another impact rattles through me. I can’t get my eyes to focus. I can’t tell if—
“Jesus, Gabriel. Oh my God. Oh myGod.” Jameson’s face is all broken up. Is he doing that, or am I? He hovers in the air above me. I have no idea how he got there. I need something to hold on to. Hurts to reach for him. His hands curl around my shoulders. “What are you—no, stay down, don’t—”
“Jay. Catch. Me—” Fire, all through my lungs. Can’t cough it out, but I keep trying. The heat hooks long fingers down through my gut and pulls all my organs out of place. I can’t stop coughing.
“God, I—Gabriel, you’re already on the ground.” He’s crying, yelling over a rush of noise I don’t understand, will never understand. “I’ve got—”
Something happens to my head and I feel that rush of air, the sick terror of the ground coming up to hit me, to hurt me, and my whole body locks up. All except my lungs. I’m still coughing when the impact comes, and this time I can’t take it. I get my fingernails into cloth, any cloth, andpull,because my stomach rejects the fall and the hit and turns inside out.
“Okay. Okay. It’s okay. You’re okay. I promise, Gabriel, it’s fine.”
Not really fine, is it? Throwing up all over Jameson’s sweatshirt and some innocent sidewalk that’s never done anything wrong.
“Sorry. I’m sorry.” I’m not sure my teeth are in my head.
“I don’t care. I’m not the one—” Jameson makes a noise I recognize from a long time ago. “I’m not the one who gives a shit about my clothes. Just—here. I’m not letting go, okay? You’re not falling.”
Jameson must rest me on his lap, because the angle of him doesn’t make sense. He gets his ruined sweatshirt over his head like he’s done this a million times. Who knows? He probably has. I’m going to cough myself to death. His face flashes red, then a bright, sickly pale. Red. White. More red.
That pressure starts to happen to my head again. “Happening. Jameson, it’s happening, I can’t—”
He picks me back up. “You’re not falling. You’re on the ground. I watched you land.”
So much pressure on my skull that my stomach lurches and everything I can see shimmers like the earth sped up and hurled us into morning. Or maybe we went back. Maybe I’m in bed.
“Have to call Mom.” Maybe. Maybe.
Jameson makes that noise again. “I wish I could. Just…you don’t have to do anything right now. Don’t worry about talking to me. Just don’t fucking die.”
“Am I—” How is Jameson’s shirt my single anchor to the world? “Bleeding? Did I crack—”
“Did you crack your fucking head open? No. But I’m pretty worried it’ll fall apart anyway. I don’t know how you’re alive. Fuck. I don’t know how Mason’s alive either, if this is—”
Someone screams, and they keep screaming, on and on and on. The sound splits my head in two, three, a thousand. A red light flashes behind my closed eyes. That sound is murder.
“Can you move him without hurting him?” Jameson shouts. “The goddamn building might come down.”
The building that’s still on fire. The Bettencourt building. The one I jumped out of to save myself, because Elise’s father trapped me inside. He wanted me dead, and I didn’t die.
