I peered farther down the road, or at least as far as I could see with my limited vantage point.
A woman lay sprawled on the pavement—her bright, blue hair fanned around her head.
Bridget. Her name is Bridget.
I seized this memory—desperate to focus on anything that might distract me from the torture eating the inside of my body.
We'd been laughing and talking about Barkley University when she'd suddenly slammed on the brakes and yanked the steering wheel to the shoulder of the road, narrowly avoiding a rear-end collision with the car in front of us.
But she'd pulled too hard, and instead of going to the side of road, she'd tipped the car in a 180-degree turn, causing the vehicle behind to slam into us, pushing the car onto its roof.
Bridget never buckled her seatbelt. She must've been thrown from the car.
"Bridget," I whispered as I tried to free my body from the car.
She didn't respond, but her chest rose and fell, telling me she still lived. But her leg…
My stomach roiled.
Her leg lay at an odd angle. Instead of her feet pointing at the sky or resting to the side, it twisted inward and upward in a mangled heap.
My gaze followed her shin, and through her jeans, a jagged white shard poked through the material.
The pain she must've felt when her bone snapped. No wonder she's unconscious.
That burning scent of charred meat grew stronger.
I gripped the belt buckle and mashed the seat release, but it wouldn't budge.
Sweat poured from my forehead and dripped onto the roof of the car. My head swam with the pounding of my blood.
"Someone, please help!" I couldn't tell if I was screaming or not. My throat, parched and raw, ached. The silver hairpin with its ruby dug into my scalp.
No one answered.
Another smell, faint yet growing stronger, mixed with the burning scent.
Gasoline.
The fear deep inside my core raised a notch.
Something orange flickered and shone against the glass shards scattered below me.
Fire. The car's burning.
Which meant if I didn't get free—and soon—I'd become one more source of fuel for the blaze.
The thought of burning alive ratcheted my heart rate.
I jerked at the belt, but it still held fast.
Why is no one helping us?We'd been on the road, and there had been a car behind us.
My view, limited by the banged-up car window and flipped perspective, revealed no one else besides Bridget.
Heat built in the air, the sensation against my bare arms uncomfortable, like being in the full sun in summer and the skin beginning to burn.
A lone flame licked around the edge of the car, its tongue flicking out as if to test the air.
