The pack’s crushed.
Opening it, I find that only two of the cigarettes are ruined. The rest are flatter than they should be but with a little roll, the one I draw from the pack is good as new.
The smoke hits my lungs and bleak satisfaction curls arounds my bones. The irony isn’t lost on me—that the only thing that can make me feel alive most of the time is the thing that will kill me if I don’t quit at some point.
I started smoking because the old man hated it. He was an advocate of the Wim Hoff method. He believed that the body was a temple and expounded at great length on all of the wonderful things he did to honor his on a daily basis: the workouts; the meditation; the fasting; the endless salads and fucking smoothies. And then the fucker went and had an embolism and died for no good reason, right there at the table in the middle of dinner.
Just goes to show. No good deed goes unpunished. The things the man missed out on are too numerous to tally. He never knew just how fucking satisfying smoking a cigarette could be. Never got high and felt himself float out of his body. Never experienced the climbing rush of MDMA as it carried him off on a euphoric rollercoaster. Christ, the man didn’t even eat red meat, for fuck’s sake. Pretty sure the last time he enjoyed a steak was sometime around nineteen-eighty-five. He did everything right and look where it got him.
I drink. Heavily. I smoke. Heavily. I’ll throw whatever nondescript pill I find in my sock drawer down my throat and wash it down with some Jack without batting an eyelid. I enjoy a good ol’ morning game of Russian roulette. Upper. Downer. Who the fuck knows what I’m gonna get; every day’s an adventure when you have no fucking clue what kind of chemicals are about to hit your blood stream.
Somewhere close by, the plaintive wail of a siren cuts through the night. I wait—draw on the cigarette. Hold the smoke in my lungs—to see if an ambulance rips around the corner and screeches up the St. August’s emergency entrance, but it doesn’t. Must have been a firetruck. Definitely not a cop car.
My t-shirt sticks to my back, my skin itchy with half-dried sweat. I finish the smoke and light another one off its dying ember, not quite ready to head back toward the Charger. It’s… I check my cell phone. Nearly five in the morning. If I were in New York right now, I’d be able to find myself some trouble to get into, but I’m shit out of luck in Mountain Lakes. Even the diner, Screamin’ Beans, doesn’t open until six, and all I could hope to get there is some shitty coffee anyway. If I really wanted to find trouble, I could. I could find trouble in a backwater Podunk one horse town in the middle of fucking Tibet if I really wanted to, but my anger over the black box Meredith left for me has whittled my bones down to points and is using them as toothpicks.
I’m pissed. I want to be level-headed when I confront my mother about the shit she’s currently in the middle of pulling, and I, contrary to popular belief, am capable of showing a little restraint when required.
Remy and his asshole buddy Pete are bound to tell whoever comes on shift all about me before they hand off, and I won’t be allowed into the building if I don’t seem sober and calm. So fine. I’ll sit here all fucking night and all morning until official visiting hours roll around, mostly out of spite, and I’ll be nice as pie as I make my way to Meredith’s room. And once I’m standing in front of the witch, I will implode. Wait and see if I don’t. They can call the cops all they want, then. If I’ve said my piece and told the woman how utterly wretched I think she is, then it won’t matter. I’ll have won.
I’m content sitting on the wall, chain-smoking and planning all of the things I’ll say to eviscerate Meredith. Things are going really well, too—I have a list of vile things I want to say to my mother committed to memory after about forty minutes—but the sound of tires screeching down the block ruins my flow.
This has got to be an ambulance; a high-pitched mechanical shriek approaches, drawing near at a frightening velocity, and then there it is, the vehicle, swerving into the parking lot, heading straight for the emergency entrance…and the low brick wall I’m sitting on. It isn’t an ambulance. It’s a murdered-out Mitsubishi Evo. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop.
I’m against panicked leaps on principle—so undignified—but the situation demands one as the car careens right for me. I drop my smoke, tripping over my own feet as I hurl myself out of the way.
The Evo’s driver applies the brakes way, way, way too late. The street racer collides with the brickwork, right where I was sitting a split second ago, the nose of the hood crumpling horribly as it meets resistance. A part of me weeps to see such a beautiful car destroyed. The rest of me is planning how I’ll demolish what remains of it, as I rush for the driver’s side door.
I grab the door handle and yank on it. “Fucking asshole!” The door doesn’t budge. The windows are heavily tinted, so I can’t make eye contact with the person who just nearly fucking killed me, but I can feel them staring at me on the other side of the glass. Whoever they are, they’ve got some fucking stones to—
The rear driver’s side door flies open. Before I get a chance to swing around it and start yelling into the car, a huge heap of clothing tumbles out onto the ground. It lands at my feet, blocking my path. I go to step over it, but the door wrenches shut again and the Evo peels back, kicking up smoke from the baked blacktop. It slides through an impressive three-point turn, and then burns out of the parking lot.
“Motherfucking—” I grit my teeth, nostrils flared, fury rolling through. When I find out who the fuck that was, I’ll fucking flay them alive. There can’t be that many midnight-blue Evos in Mountain Lakes. Those upgrades must have cost a small fortune. Super specialized. I’m betting there are only a few local body shops that would carry out custom work like that. I will find out who that was, and when I do—
A wet cough halts me mid-mental rant. I look down at my feet, and there…oh for fuck’s sake. Are you fucking kidding me? The bundle of clothing that was shoved out of the car isn’t clothing. A dirty blanket covers the mass, but the shape of it is unmistakable—it’s a fucking body.
A pained moan seeps out from underneath the rough, woven fabric, followed by a pitiable whimper, and something unpleasant coils around my insides. I’ve seen some fucked up things in my time, but the dread shaking me by the shoulders tells me I don’t want to see what’s underneath that blanket.
Who rolls up to a hospital and just dumps a body on the sidewalk? In New Hampshire. What the fuck?
I need to get up the steps to the emergency room doors, need to get someone’s attention, but…a near-black puddle of blood seeps out from underneath the blanket, creeping across the concrete, pooling around the soles of my shoes.
Fuck.
Don’t do it.
Do not lift up that blanket.
Ahh, shit. When have I ever listened to the voice of warning in my head? I drop down into a crouch and yank the blanket back. Even with the sinking sense of trepidation clawing at me, I’m not ready for what lies beneath.
A girl.
A girl I know well.
I see her every day at school. The strangeness of her being here causes reality to skip, though. This doesn’t make sense. How—how the fuck can Presley Chase be here?