“Vada,” Ellis said.

I dropped to my knees at the man’s side, feeling for breath, pulse. My right arm was completely numb now. When I lifted his head, a warm red gush flooded my palm.

“Call 911.” My voice was calm.

Elle fumbled in her coat pocket and then at the screen and almost dropped her phone. As I watched I thought, She’s drunk. God, she is so drunk.

I took her phone and painted by numbers with the stranger’s blood.

“I need an ambulance.” I described the river nearby, the bridge.

Elle sank to the ground beside me, those lucid green eyes locked on the body. Her glasses were gone. She couldn’t see how bad it really was.

On the asphalt, pieces of skull lay scattered like pottery fragments.

Can you tell me what happened?

“Car accident. This guy wasn’t wearing a seat belt and he’s . . . on the road.”

How many people are hurt?

“Three. We’re okay but this guy is—we need an ambulance.”

It’s on the way, miss. Is the man breathing?

“I don’t think it really matters anymore because I can see his brain.”

My voice remained calm but Ellis clapped a hand over her mouth.

The dispatcher asked another question. Elle stared at me, horrified, over splayed fingers.

In a few hours, she wouldn’t remember any of this. The concussion and the alcohol would blot it out.

But not me. I’d never forget.

“Vada,” I said. “My name is Vada. I’m the driver.”

—2—

Dots. Pretty dots of color, chrome blue and oxide red, strewn with firefly blurs of peach and gold, all smudging together. I stared at them for a while before my vision focused like a camera lens, the circles shrinking, becoming shapes. Room with white walls. Plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up. Black-rimmed glasses. A face I knew better than any other, her mouth moving slowly.

“Vada? Can you hear me?”

I opened mine to respond, then immediately closed it. My right shoulder twinged. I tried to cover my mouth to hold in the vomit, but my arm was stuck at my side, weirdly wooden. I looked at her helplessly.

Ellis hit the call button for the nurse.

A man came in and added something to my IV. Elle stood beside the bed, smoothing my hair back from my forehead. I closed my eyes and made sure only breath left my mouth.

Last night was fuzzy and soft, silvery, a half-erased sketch. But as the drugs kicked in it came back in sharp dark strokes. An oxygen mask over my face, cutting off my questions with frozen air. Losing track of Elle in the other ambulance. Hospital lights streaking overhead like glowing road stripes. A doctor explaining to me, in my shock-addled daze, that they had to operate and I had two choices: save the arm, or—

My eyes shot open. I clawed at the sheet with my left hand.

Ellis laid hers over mine. “Don’t touch.”

“Did they take it? Oh my fucking god, did they take my—”

“No.” She squeezed. “Look at me, Vada. You’re okay. It’s still there.”

I breathed hard, staring at the sheet wild-eyed. Still wanted to rip it back to confirm visually that I was whole, that they hadn’t amputated. How would I know? I couldn’t feel a thing. I remembered a desperate incantation as the anesthetic washed over me in a black wave: Please don’t take it. Dear God, please.

Elle touched my face and turned it up toward her.

“Baby,” she said in that lilting voice, “I promise, you’re okay.”

My claw grip transferred to her hand, twisting it in mine. She winced but didn’t let go.

I glanced around the room. Pale sun poured through a window, kindling the few spots of color: lilies spilling from a vase in a froth of pink starbursts, cards arrayed on the sill—Dalí and Kahlo prints from my classmates. My gaze refocused on Ellis. Her face was drawn, eyes dashed with violet shadow.

“Were you hurt?” I said.

“Mild concussion.”

“Anything else?”

“No.” She smiled briefly, faltered. “They said you pulled me from the wreckage like some superhero. You were bleeding so badly.”

My mind skittered over fragmented images. Her closed eyelids, spattered with freckles and blood. A screaming wildness rising in me as I thought, for an awful moment, She’s gone.

“ ‘They said’? You mean you don’t remember?”

Elle shook her head, the movement slight.

“Do you remember anything?”

“They said not to focus too hard. Concentration is bad for a concussion. No books, games, or memories.”

“Shit. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” She stroked my hand. “Just wanted you to see a friendly face when you woke up.”

“There’s nobody I’d rather see.”

I meant it with my whole heart. Ellis lowered her eyes, a lock of ginger hair sweeping over them.

We both looked at my arm beneath the sheet.

“What did they do to me?”

“They saved it.”

“But I can’t feel—” I made a fist around Elle’s hand and she bared her teeth, but I couldn’t release. I had to hold on to something. “Elle, I can’t move my arm.” I pulled at my right shoulder with every surrounding muscle. It wasn’t heaviness. It was . . . nothing. There was nothing there. Shreds of pain, fraying off into oblivion. “I can’t move my arm.”

Carefully, she extricated her hand. “That’s normal. It’ll take a while for the nerves to heal.”

“Am I paralyzed?”

No answer.

“Ellis, am I fucking paralyzed?”

Her eyes filled up, sea green shivering with sun. She brushed my face with her fingertips. “They don’t know yet.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

They don’t know.

I slammed the emergency call button over and over till the nurse reappeared.

“I don’t want to be conscious right now,” I said.

“Are you in pain?”

Was he for real? I couldn’t move my drawing hand. My everything hand.

“Eleven out of ten.”

He slid a needle into the bag and the colors blurred again, dissolving into darkness. The last thing I saw was Elle’s face, two glass threads running down it.

The car hit the river in a burst of black petals, water flowering all around us in inky dark bouquets. Cold jets shot through the crumpled door and webbed windows and I yelped when they touched my skin, and realized I was still conscious. I turned with horror.

Ellis hung from her seat belt, unmoving.

Automatically I clicked my belt button. At least I thought I did. But my hips were stuck and when I looked down, my hand was all red, the fingers splayed at strange angles, as if gripping mush. In my mind I sensed myself moving that hand to the button and clicking again, but my eyes showed only a mangled ball of meat stubbing itself dumbly on the buckle, failing.

I’d done this. This was my fault.

Water rose over my ankles.

“Ellis,” I said.

Not a sound. Not even breath.

We sank slowly at first, then faster as the river surged into the car. I twisted and fumbled. Couldn’t get free.

Water at my calves.

“Ellis.”

Something sharp. I needed something sharp. I tried to reach the glove box but the seat belt cut into my chest, made it hard to breathe.

“Elle, wake up. Please.”

Water at our waists.

A ghastly chill climbed my legs, crept up my bones, deadening me with cold. In one last muster of strength I mashed my belt buckle and miraculously, it released.

My whole lower body was numb. Deadweight.

The waterline reached my breasts. An infinite heaviness pushed the air out of me.

Ellis sat motionless as we sank.

I love you, I didn’t say. Instead I took a deep, deep breath, struggling to hold it as the chill tried to spook it free. When we went under, I’d give it to her. A last kiss of life.

Uncontrollable shivering. No feeling in my fingers or toes. I closed my eyes, reopened them underwater. Elle’s hair floated around her face in lurid red ribbons, like skeins of blood.