“Thank you for your service,” Nate said sarcastically, but not until Billy was up the drive.
I wrenched the door open, slammed it behind me, and turned. “We’re broken up.”
“No shit,” Nate said, and gunned it down the street.
I lingered on the curb. My lip was throbbing, my body pounding with exhaustion, but it was laced with the feather-light euphoria of being free.
Billy cleared his throat. He was perched tensely on his porch, still watching me. Embarrassed, I lifted a hand.
“Sorry about that,” I told him.
“Sorry for what?”
He said it quietly enough that I wasn’t sure I was meant to hear. I almost let it pass. Maybe it was the pain in my mouth—needling, insistent—that made me turn.
“I’m sorry you thought you had to step in,” I said, more sharply than I intended.
Billy stared at me. Then he stood, shaking his head. “Won’t happen again,” he said, and disappeared into his house.
My eye went to the darkened second-story windows. One of them lit up a minute later and I looked away, regret and bottom-shelf vodka muddling queasily in my stomach. Time to get in bed, I figured. Before my night found one more way to go to shit.
Slow and steady I unlocked the front door, holding my breath as I opened it just wide enough to slide through. Then I let it all go in a strangled yelp, because my mom was sitting on the stairs waiting for me.
“Mom!” I dipped my head, bringing a hand to my lip. “Why are you awake?”
She leaned into the patch of moonlight falling through the window over the door. Her bright hair was tied up, her eyes safety-pin sharp. “Bad dream.” Then she snapped to her feet, because she’d seen my mouth.
“What happened? Were you in an accident?”
My lip beat like a second heart. “No! I’m fine. I mean—it wasn’t really an accident…”
The beam of her focus felt physical. “Tell me. Tell me exactly.”
“Nate—swerved,” I said. “His car went off the road.”
“Then what?”
I thought of the stranger in the woods, slapping at her chalk-colored skin. “Then nothing. Then we drove home.”
“That’s it? That’s all that happened?”
I gave a shallow nod.
“Okay.” Her unnerving intensity was draining. The corners of her mouth twitched up, conspiratorial. “But Nate was drinking tonight, wasn’t he?”
I swayed a little, trying to think. She’d seemed less dangerous a moment ago, when she was outright pissed. “Um.”
She gave a curt I knew it nod. “Go to your room. Now.”
I edged past her, up the stairs and into my room. Skipping the lights, I fell onto my pillows and closed my eyes. When I opened them she was above me, pressing an icepack to my mouth with her scarred left hand.
“Did you hit your head?” Her usual reserve was back; she could’ve been asking for the time. “Do we have to worry about a concussion? Tell me the truth.”
I leaned into the icepack’s chill. When was the last time she’d tended to me like this? When I tried to remember, blankness pressed in like an ocean.
“My head’s fine,” I mumbled. I’d entered that terrible purgatory place where you’re still drunk yet somehow already hungover. “I told you, it wasn’t a big deal. Nate’s not even hurt.”
“He’s not hurt.” Her voice was soft, and veined with rage. “While my kid looks like a prizefighter.”
“Dana.” Suddenly my dad was there, hand on her arm, his steady shape blocking the light from the hallway. I fought to keep my eyes open as he stepped forward and she retreated, out of sight.
“We taught you better than this,” he was saying. “What made you get into a car with a drunk driver?”
“I don’t know.”
A heavy Dad sigh. “I’m getting a little tired of hearing that. Do you have any idea how much worse this could’ve gone?”
My eye kept catching on the ceiling fan spinning over his shoulder, trying drowsily to count the blades. “I don’t know,” I repeated. “Lots?”
I wasn’t being a smart-ass, not that he believed me. His voice went on and on, patient and pissed. By the time he’d finished impressing my stupidity upon me, I was half asleep. I dropped into blackout land and stayed there till morning, kicking off the first day of summer break with a hangover and a busted lip.
And a mystery, waiting on ice in the back of my brain. But days would pass before I’d see the girl in the water again.