I can’t watch him drown. I want to die first.Please, God, let me die first.
And then a miracle. The rear end of the car starts to pivot in the sludge, edging us around until, at last, we’re facing shoreward with the crumpled bonnet tipping up. Still unconscious, El gasps as the water slides from his face and flows backwards, over his shoulder, into the rear seats. I laugh through chattering teeth.
“We’ll be okay,” I promise him. “We’ll be okay.”
But the lake won’t give us up. Maybe it’s toying with us, I don’t know.
The rear of the Nissan groans like some prehistoric animal caught in a tar pit and we begin to sink again. My T-shirt billows out as the water reinvades the front of the car. It chuckles as it creeps forward, like some bratty little kid that won’t stay strapped into its booster seat. Still harnessed by the belt, I manage to free my leg from the footwell and, straining, lurch sideways, kicking across the gear column. My trainer hits El in the ribs.
“Wake up! El, please, if you love me, WAKE UP!”
But he won’t. I kick until a spasm of cramp shoots down my frozen calf and makes me roar. Reluctantly, I draw my leg back. I’ve probably broken one of his ribs. I look at him through a haze of tears.
“Please, El. Please. Please, I love you. I love you so much…” I whisper the words. Then scream: “Fuck you, Ellis! Don’t you dare die! Don’t you even dare do that to me! PLEASE! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE! You’re killing me. You’rekillingme!”
I bellow against this new feeling. I hate him. Why won’t he wake up? He would if he really loved me.
The car lunges backwards. The water laps at my throat. At his lips. My head swims. I shake myself. I’m so cold. Inside the car it’s getting darker. My anger starts to ebb. It doesn’t matter. Not really. I withdraw my torn-to-pieces hand from its futile battle with the belt and push it through the lake. It’s very hard and takes all my concentration. It’s just a slab of useless meat now; hardly any sensation at all. But I pray there’s a little feeling left. Just so I can touch him, one last time.
My hand surfaces and I move it as gently as I can towards him. The lake is trying to make him drink again. I ignore it.I can’t save you from it, El. All I can do is this.I brush my icy fingers against his face; his wonderful light brown skin, his strong jaw, his perfect cheeks. There isn’t a millimetre of this face I haven’t kissed.Thank you, Ellis. Thank you for being my first. Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for showing me who I am.
Who I was.
Movement behind the shattered windscreen. A lurching, splashing darkness. My eyes flicker. I don’t want to stop touching El but I have nothing left. My fingers drift on the current as I feel my thoughts float with the lake. If there’s an afterlife, let me be with El. If there’s nothingness, that’s okay too. But don’t part us…
Then an arm, warm, incredibly warm, reaches across my face and body. It presses against me and I breathe in its heat, like oxygen. There’s a moment of fumbling, and I’m released. The belt flashes past my eyes and I can’t believe this incredible sense of freedom. It feels like that moment after I told my family who I was. I’m giddy with possibility again.
I turn, ready to make a grab for El, but my freedom vanishes. The same arm that saved me now destroys me. It takes hold of me somehow and, within a few seconds, I’m being dragged backwards through the broken window. I kick and fight but I’ve already used every morsel of strength. I scream, gag, try to reason with my rescuer. I don’t know what I say, maybe it’s just noise; I’m ignored anyhow. It’s lucky I’m skinny, I guess, because getting me out through the window seems easy enough. I drift back, back, back, and all I see before the darkness takes me is…
El.
I love you,I tell him. His face floats just above the waterline and seems to turn to me, like a child listening.You hear me, Ellis? Iloveyou. My El. My heart. My reason. My future.
My past.
Darkness there and nothing more.
It’s a line from an Edgar Allan Poe poem we studied in English. “The Raven”. It’s about this guy driven mad by grief when he loses the girl he loves. Everything he sees and hears reminds him of this one amazing person, and he’s so obsessed with her memory that he’d rather go mad than say goodbye forever.
Poe knew his shit.
I sit up in my hospital bed and stare at the empty bed across the aisle. That’s Ellis’s. No bastard had better take it. A nurse is gluing my head together – at least I think that’s what she’s doing. She did tell me. I forget. Anyway, she’s really nice and very gentle and keeps asking if what she’s doing hurts. I tell her no, but honestly? I couldn’t say. I tell her thank you when she’s finished. Maybe I don’t say it right. All I know is she gives me this long look and when I look back she does this little sniffy thing, like she’s embarrassed that her eyes are damp. I don’t know, are damp eyes considered unprofessional?
Before she goes, she tells me I’m really lucky, I have the ward all to myself. It’s a sort of post-surgery ward, you see, and there was this really annoying cyberattack on the NHS today and the computers went down, so all non-emergency treatment was cancelled. She hopes there’s a special place reserved in hell for this particular hacker.
“There’s no such place,” I say, and she nods and kind of bows and leaves.
Jeeze, I think I totally freaked her out. And after she made my boo-boo all better too. Not much of a human being, am I? Practically a monster, really. Yeah. A snivelling little monster, up and breathing and dressed in his nice new jim-jams brought straight from home. Remember what El said he slept in when he was a kid? His underwear. Same filthy underwear, night after night after night, until he was so raw with rashes even his dad said maybe someone should wash those pants.
But Dylan McKee? Well, I’ve always had everything I ever wanted, and I still ended up a whiny little bitch. If El had been given even a fraction of what I took for granted, just imagine what he could have achieved. But the universe doesn’t work for people like Ellis Bell, does it? Just as his life was turning around, he gets this card dealt to him. And all because he was making me feel better after I’d hassled him with my stupid questions and suspicions. If only he’d been watching the road, he’d have seen that bastard thing – whatever it was – darting out of the trees. But no. Because needy little Dylan needed reassuring again, Ellis Bell is dead.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Dylan, but your friend was found dead at the scene. Now, the police want to question you—”
I look down at my empty left hand. The hand my mum held because my right is taped up and bandaged. I can see her hand there now as clearly as I can see the doctor who was standing at the end of the bed, even though Mum’s popped out for a coffee and the doc’s probably writing up his notes somewhere. He had these thick glasses, the doc, and this big bald head that made him look a bit like a nerdy Lex Luthor.
“Oh, darling,” my mum said, squeezing my hand. “Thank goodness you’re all right.”
“He’s going to be just fine,” said Dad from across the room.
