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“I’m almost out. Meet me outside!” I screamed over all the confusion.
“GO! GO!” he yelled.
The firefighters arrived as I got outside, and one of them escorted me to the neighbor’s yard.
“Elle!” Bryce rushed over. “Are you okay?”
“She needs to get checked out as soon as another ambulance gets here,” the firefighter said to Bryce.
“Cooper,” I said, and the firefighter looked down at me. “Our friend Cooper is in there. He was looking for me.”
“Cooper Rice?” he asked.
Of course he knew Cooper. “Yes!”
“Shit.” He walked away and talked into his radio, and I watched as two more firefighters entered the burning house.
Bryce sat next to me. Our hands tightened around each other’s as we watched them bring out student after student, but none of them were Cooper.
“B, what if?—”
“No. Don’t let your mind go there. Don’t. He’s the fittest of anyone in there. He’s going to make it out.”
My stomach bottomed out, and my entire body went numb when a firefighter came out carrying Cooper and running toward an ambulance.
An hour later, I’d been checked out to make sure I hadn’t taken in too much smoke, and Bryce and I were at the hospital in one of the ER rooms, waiting for Cooper to get back from a CT scan.
“I saw you two on the dance floor,” Bryce says to me.
“That doesn’t matter now.” I started pacing again. I hadn’t been able to stop it since we got here.
Bryce went to the vending machines, and a few minutes later, Cooper was wheeled in. He looked pretty good except for the soot covering him.
“Let him rest,” the nurse said to me after getting him comfortable.
When she left the room, I grabbed his hand, tears running down my cheeks. “I was so scared.”
“Me too,” he said and squeezed my hand. “But we’re good.”
I shook my head, unable to even imagine how I would have dealt with it if the worst had happened. Who would know exactly what I needed on a bad day, and who would I celebrate with on the great days? “Promise me something?”
He stared into my eyes, that cocky smirk in place, both his dimples showing. “Promise what?”
“That you’ll always be in my life. You’ll never leave me.”
“Come here,” he said, and I crawled into the bed with him. “I’m fine. Look at me.”
I did.
“I’m one hundred percent fine. It was just a scare.”
“Just promise,” I said, laying my head on his chest, desperate to hear him say the words.
“Okay, I promise.” He wrapped his arm around me.
“Then it’s settled.” I sat up. “We’re friends. Best friends until the end and nothing more. I can’t risk losing you.”
His eyebrows furrowed, and he studied me for a long while. Still not looking completely convinced, he nodded. “I promise.”
