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“Evie?” He grunts. “Evie?”
I’m clueless what to say, clueless what to do. I stagger past him – so cold, so mean – toward his brother, Wyatt, the floppy haired boy who I love. He lies half in and out of a ditch and I drop to my knees next to him. “Wyatt?”
Sprawled on his back, his headphones on the ground, a thin, twisted trail of blood trickles out of his nose. He doesn’t answer. One leg lies twisted at an impossible angle, his twinning boot stuck in a snow bank a few yards away. I can’t tell if he’s breathing. I screw up my courage and place a gloved hand on his chest. “Wyatt?”
He blinks his eyes open and stares up at me, his pupils round, his beautiful pale lips breathing thin, smoky puffs, barely visible in the frigid air.
“Wyatt? Can you talk?”
He does not answer.
“It’s Evie. Can you hear me?” Drum. Drum. Drum. My heart beats so loudly in my ears.
He blinks.
I lean and stare into his heartbreakingly beautiful face. Black hair, white skin, full lips. My Wyatt has the face of an angel. “It’s going to be okay,” I lie.
He blinks.
Hot tears slide down my cheeks. I need to feel him—no—I need to save him.
I know then and there that God, and Grandma Berlinger, and anything good in the world that just saved me from that train has put me in charge of saving Wyatt Wolfe. And I wonder, can I save Wyatt Wolfe if I touch him?
Sirens shriek. People spill out of parked cars and race toward us. The crows circle the field, cawing.
Hands shaking, I rip off my gloves. I unzip Wyatt’s jacket and place my bare, shaking hand on the soft v-shaped divet where his chest meets his neck. His breath ratchets up, his chest rising and falling unevenly under my palm. “Help’s on its way,” I say. “We can do this. Just like we twinned on the galoshes. Just like we aced history test.”
His eyes meet mine. Our gazes lock. “You and me? We’ll always be together, Wyatt. We’ve got this.”
A quirk of a sad smile tugs at the corner of his pale lips. But then his eyes glaze, his lips grow bluer.
My stomach lurches. “No.”
I cannot lose him now. We are laughter. We are hope. We are each other’s way out of mean dads and crazy moms. I will life back into him. My life.
“Stay,” I command, staring into his pretty blue eyes, eyes that are so hazy. My blood warms, my face flushes, tingles zip down my spine. I take his hand in mine and squeeze it. Hard. Just as hard as my need, my want, my intention to make him stay here on this earth. “Stay, Wyatt. Please. Please. Stay for me. For your friend, Evie.”
But he ignores me. He’s slipping away. He’s leaving me.
“Stay,” I command. Desperate. “You have to stay.”
Beautiful, kind, lovely Wyatt Wolfe shouldn’t lose his life on this cold, snowy, mean winter day just by crossing a path. My hand grows cold, then colder, my warmth traveling from me into him.
His breath billows. “Evie?” he rasps.
It feels like Christmas and I smile. Healing is working. “Yes! We are doing this. Hold onto me.”
He smiles. Just like he smiled after he kissed me. We’ve got this.
Grandma’s owl spoon stomps into my brain.
Wyatt shudders, and his eyes roll back in his head. His limbs twitch, muffled against the snow. Only now do I see the blood pouring out of the back of his skull, pouring into the snow, the red warmth staining the white cold in angry blotches.
“No!”
Paramedics pull me aside. Mom envelopes me. It’s too much. Too close. She pulls my face to her chest, suffocating me. “Don’t look, baby. Please Jesus, don’t look.”
I struggle to break free, throwing elbows, blindly striking out with fists. “I’m not a baby! Wyatt needs me.”
