Mayday Read Free

grate on my right.
    â€œHey, C.”
    Mel, one of my two best friends, sat down beside me, rubbing her arms. “I’m shivering out here.” She peeked at me. “How you doing?” Her plasticized beauty and paranoid tilt made each conversation an adventure, which made her interesting, and worth my time.
    I didn’t turn. Did she sound a little cheerier than normal? Mel belonged in the dream—she remembered her lines—but her tone was different this time. More superficial, more . . . Mel, as though she were here for her own benefit and not mine.
    Steam rose from a manhole and filled the street. Five construction guys walked lazily toward my death, stopped, and blocked my view. “Hey!” I called. “Move over!”
    They didn’t budge, and I turned to Mel. “Have you ever watched yourself die?”
    Mel exhaled. “No . . . But when you want something so badly and can’t get it . . . well, that feels a little like death, I suppose.”
    That was new . . . that little dark moment? Even the slightest change unsettled my mind.
    I craned my neck to watch a policeman rolling out yellow tape. “You know, I didn’t feel anything. It happened so fast.”
    â€œLiving fast. That’s the story of your life. But you never deserved to end up in a vegetative state,” Mel said. “Basil told me you’d toe the line and then one day, you’d slip over. Maybe that’s what he saw in you. The whole living-on-the-edge thing.” She paused, and her voice dropped. “Really hard to compete with that.”
    â€œI never tried to mess things up for the two of you. I didn’t do anything to—”
    â€œNo, you just were. That was enough.”
    We sat in silence.
    Mel shouldered me and pointed across the street. “Will’s sure a mess. You got him good.”
    I peeked at my crunched car. Will lay groaning, propped against the wheel well. “Yeah.” I glanced around. “Is Basil here? It’d be nice to see him again, you know?”
    â€œYou’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Mel snapped, then calmed. “No, he heard you were with Will in the car and didn’t want to come.” Mel paused and whispered, “Why’d you do it?”
    Why’d I do it? I suppose it’s the only question that really matters.
    I turned to face her. “The train wasn’t in the plan. Getting Will one hundred miles away from Addy was.” I paused for a moment. “You knew the danger my sister was in. You knew what Will was going to do to her. Everybody at school did, except for trusting Addy.” I clenched my jaw. “Nobody touches my sister.”
    That’s my last line. Here, Mel rises and walks away.
    But not this time. She didn’t move, and my words kept coming.
    â€œHave you ever sacrificed a life for something you had to prevent? Have you ever loved anyone that much?”
    Mel’s face blanched, and her eyes grew large. “I think I have.”
    I need to get out of this. Come on, Mel, you’re supposed to be gone.
    She offered a nervous chuckle. “You didn’t prevent anything, Crow.”
    Did you catch that? You don’t say that to a friend in her most unfortunate of moments. I didn’t put it together until later on. Even Lifeless knew it, dreamed it, deep down inside. But back to the dream.
    â€œGotta go, the dream ends here.” I rose, stepped into the street, and waited for the tug, the tug that yanked me toward the middle ambulance. I’d hop in and ride toward consciousness and wake up beside Lifeless.
    Time passed. The tug never came.
    From inside the last ambulance, Dream Intruder gestured toward me with her knitting needle. I slowly approached and opened the passenger’s-side door.
    â€œWho—”
    Adele sobbed, and I glanced over my shoulder at the scene I knew so well. She hit the policeman who held