Blink Once Read Free

bike and hits the wooden ramp going fast, almost too fast. He slides smoothly up the incline, yanking his bike to the right and his body to the left, jumping back on his wheel jacks hard and bouncing the tire up to the ramp ledge. “Whooooooooooo!” he yells, pulling his bike up on its rear wheel beside him, like a trophy fish. “Come on, hit it!”
    With the sun behind him, he looks like a photo negative, a black cutout against the red and orange sky. I flip up my visor and turn to look at Allie. She’s sitting on that bigrock, watching us, but I know she must get bored with all this. She tilts her head and looks back at me, that little smile on her face. I snap the visor back down and wheel around, get far enough from the ramp to get some distance, some speed, some air.
    I’m moving fast, standing on the pedals and pushing hard. I love it when the bike just feels like another part of me, an extra limb, connected. I hit the ramp but something’s wrong. The wheel pulls to the right so I pull left—too hard. I’m gonna spill, maybe even backward. I feel it coming, that loss of control, that idiot feeling. Damn, I hate giving Mike something to talk smack about. I yank my arms up to break my fall, but they won’t move. They’re stuck, strapped down. I keep pulling them up, but I can’t … I can’t …

    And then I woke up, straining against the strap across my bed. I was still here, it was real. I was in a hospital, paralyzed, or at least that’s what the girl next door said.
    “Hey there, mister, calm down, you’re okay,” the nurse said. “Where do you think you’re going?” She pulled my arm out from under the strap and held my wrist. “Heart’s racing; what kind of dream you having?” She was looking me right in the eye, as if I could answer her. I didn’t even know how long I’d been here, but for the past two days I’d seen this same nurse. She talked to me like she knew me, but maybe all the nurses did that.
    She wiped my forehead with a small towel. “Getting your exercise in your sleep, huh? Wish I could do that,” she said. “Instead, they got me counting my points and walking on that treadmill every day. Huh!” She smiled at me. “Now how many points do you think there are in a chicken salad sandwich? Well, you’d be surprised. A whole lot, that’s how many.” She clicked the mattress at the top, then at the bottom, and rotated the bed ninety degrees. “There, now you can look outside.” Beyond her was a big window, winter sun streaming in.
    “You have a good day now,” the nurse said, and left the room. At least I think she left; they all wore such quiet shoes, it was hard to tell.
    I must have drifted off again, because the next thing I heard was someone talking. “You awake?” a voice said. Olivia. The room was getting dark now, dusk settling in.
    She sniffled and rolled her IV pole around the bed so I could see her. There was no chair on that side, so she just sat on the other bed that was there, pulling her knees up to her chest. She looked like she’d been crying.
    “Oh, thank God you’re awake,” she said, looking at my eyes. She was quiet for a moment, just looking down. “Do you know how long I’ve been here?” After waiting a beat or two for my answer, she laughed. “I’m so desperate, I’m having a conversation with a human vegetable!” I blinked twice. I’m not a vegetable.
    “Okay, you’re not a vegetable,” she said, as if she could hear my thoughts. She lay on her side, tucking her robe carefully around her skinny legs. Her modesty made me sad—like I would really try to sneak a look up her hospital gown.
    “I’m just so tired of being treated like a child, you know?”
    I blinked yes.
    “This is not what we’re supposed to be doing at sixteen. We’re supposed to be having fun.”
    I blinked twice, no—also because I wasn’t sixteen; I had just turned seventeen.
    “Let’s do something,” she said slowly. “No TV until free period tonight.