Instead, I head to the student lounge where I crash on the couch, waiting for the all-clear to be allowed back in my room. I don’t hold out hope, though.
* * *
Iwakeup with the worst kink in my neck and an even bigger pounding in my head. I can’t believe he left me to sleep on this couch all night. We need to set up some parameters for what’s cool and what’s not for having the room to ourselves. This was definitely not cool.
I grab my phone to check the time and see I have a voicemail from the eight-hundred number last night. Leaning my head back against the headrest of the couch, I let out a long sigh as I bring the phone up to my ear.
“Carter…Fuck, Carter, where are you?”
It’s Evangeline, and suddenly my heart is beating like a bass drum with the night’s pain forgotten as I sit up, listening more intently.
“There’s been an accident. My parents...” she trails off, and I can hear her sobbing through the phone. “I left home without my phone. I’m calling from a payphone in the hospital. I didn’t know who else to call. God…” She pauses. “Where are you?”
She hangs up, and when I look down at my phone, I see I have eleven missed calls starting from around the time we entered the party. Only one message, though, left the first time she called. Memories of the girl last night answering my phone makes the left-over alcohol creep up a little too high in my stomach, and I have to fight the urge to hurl.
How could I have let that happen? She needed me, and I ignored the call. I wasn’t there for her.
I click her name as quickly as I can and wait, but it goes straight to voicemail. After leaving a message, I call my parents.
“Mom, what happened? I got a call from Evan—”
Before I can finish my mom cries into the phone. “Oh, honey, there’s been an accident. I don’t know what happened.”
“Is everyone okay?”
She cries into the phone, “No, baby. Sandy and Dave, they, oh my God—”
She can’t even say it.
She doesn’t need to.
Evangeline’s parents were killed last night in an accident, and I ignored her call.
