She turned back toward the sunny cliff.
I am within a reachable distance of the solid cliffs on the other side of the Gap when Hayley, who should be fairly far ahead of me by now, suddenly emerges from the woods. “Patsy!” she yells. “Hurry up. The train is coming!”
What the—? She wants to help me? I did not see that coming. Not after watching my arrow knock her on her face. So why the hell is she out in the open, warning me of some stupid train?
The big compound bow hangs limply from my left hand, my messed up right hand throbs like a bitch, and I blink at her. “What?” Is this some kind of trick?
“Patsy, please, move your ass!”
I stare at the arrow sticking out of my one-time friend’s arm and feel a savage sort of satisfaction. And yet…
"You know, Mrs. Dutton," I hear her voice saying to Mother in such polite but firm tones, "perhaps if you weren't always riding Patsy so hard you would see that, far from being stupid, she is actually one of the smartest kids in our graduating class."
I stare at the arm she hugs to her side. At the arrow through her flesh. And the blood. “Oh, God, I did that,” I say. I am simultaneously proud I hit my mark under less than ideal conditions—even if it was a body shot I was after—and horrified right down to my socks. “And—shit on a shingle!—I killed Ty!”
“Ty is not dead, Pats. He’s badly hurt, but last I saw of him he was alive.”
“He was?” I’m not really sure how I feel about that. Part of me supposes the fact I am not the stone cold killer Hayley called me earlier is a good thing. And yet— “I liked it when I thought I had killed him,” I murmur. Then I shake my head, because let’s be honest. “No, I loved it.”
I am momentarily swamped with self-loathing. “Who does that?” I stare again at the bloody arrow through Hayley’s arm. “Who shoots one of her oldest friends?”
“Someone who needs help. Come with me and I’ll see you get it.”
I stand there, curiously indecisive. But it is hard to hear over the roaring noise in my head.
Until, over it, Hayley yells, “Move it, dammit! The five o’clock is gonna be here any minute.”
Confused, I frown down at the face of my watch. “But...it is almost five forty-five.”
“For pity’s sake,” Hayley says, “Didn’t you learn anything hanging with Kurstie and me?”
And, snap! My remorse disappears. Christ. I never learn, do I? Because, for Hayley, Kurstin will always, but always, come first. And I will forever be nothing but a pathetic, poor-ass second. I fumble for my last arrow. It nocks surprisingly smoothly and I bring up the bow, ignoring the pain in my right hand while I draw back the bowstring with my left.
Hayley seems clueless, although she does take a step back into the woods, making it a lot tougher to see her in the deep, textured shade beneath the trees. It doesn’t matter. I know I have her. I savor the moment and ask if she has any last words.
To my surprise, she says, “You should have paid attention, Pats. Because if it’s five-forty-five at the Big Bear Gap trestle, the five o’clock is right—“
The train roars around the bend and heads straight for me. “On time,” I whisper even as I see Hayley’s lips mouth the same words.
Engulfed by nameless dread and with only seconds to decide, I choose what strikes me as the easier of two deaths and step off the bridge. I immediately regret my choice as I plummet toward the lake. And I scream and scream.
Knowing striking it will shatter me into oblivion.
Twenty-Three
Not even when he played varsity soccer had Jon-Michael run this fast. He’d left everyone who followed him to Big Bear trailhead in the dust. It felt like a lifetime but likely wasn’t more than four or five minutes between abandoning his Harley at a non-navigable protrusion of rocks in the path to bursting out onto the cliff.
He skidded to a halt.
It was empty, which sent his stomach plunging. Because, please, please! Do not let that scream have been Hayley dropping to the water or, worse, just before she was struck by the five o’clock.
“Jon.”
The faint voice had him whirling. At first he saw nothing and feared his mind manufactured the sound. But adjusting his sights downward, he located Hayley sitting, legs sprawled out in front of her and her back propped against a tree. At least the right half of her back was. The left side wasn’t because—bleeding Christ on a crutch—a fucking arrow stuck through her left arm.
Grateful to find her alive, he closed the distance between them in two huge strides and dropped to his knees by her right hip. He wanted to haul her into his arms but could only reach out and hover a hand above the arrow.
“It hurts like the fires of hell,” she said calmly, “but I think it missed the main arteries.” Then her face crumpled. “Oh, God, Jon-Michael, Patsy is d-dead. I tried to warn her the five o’clock was coming, but she wouldn’t listen. She was so damn messed up and she scared the shit out of me. I tried my best to knock her out when we were on the other side of the Gap, but I didn’t want to kill her. She truly, desperately needed help. More than anything, she needed that.” Tears flowed along paths that showed this was not her first cry. “Not to d-die!”
Joe tumbled out onto the cliff in time to hear her, and abruptly sat. “Dead? How do you know?”
Kurstin was next out of the woods. “Who’s dead?”
“Patsy,” Jon-Michael answered before Hayley had to repeat herself. He succinctly summarized what she had told him.
Hayley only corrected him once, when she said Patsy jumped off the bridge to avoid the train. “And I buried Ty on the other side of the Gap,” she added.
Aw, dammit. Hayley knew even before Kurstin’s face turned bone-white she should have prefaced her statement with why Ty was buried. “He’s not dead!” she hastened to say. “I am so sorry, Kurst, this mother-freakin’ pain is making me stupid. But he’s alive.” She explained the situation in as few words as possible.
“Tell me where!” Kurstin all but danced with impatience. “I need to find him.”
“You can’t get him across the trestle, Kurst. He will have to be taken out, preferably on a stretcher, through the Mavis Point trailhead, the way Pa—“ She had to swallow hard. “The way we came in.”
“But I can dig him out so he can breathe fresh air and know he’s okay. I can sit with him until someone comes to take him to a hospital. Right?” She waved a hand. “I know you have good reason not to like him, Hayles, but—“
“I’m warming up to him a bit,” Hayley interrupted. Then, starting from the point where the tracks disappeared into the woods on the other side of the trestle, she described the curves in the path as best as she remembered taking them. “I might be off by a bend or two, but look for a curved branch at the base of a fir tree. You can see it from either direction on the path. It’s the only deadfall right next to the trail.” She went on to describe how many trees beyond the fir on the other side of the path Kurstin should count before cutting into the woods. “Or, hell, just call out to him. He should hear you.” Unless he was in a lot worse shape than when she’d left him.