Lucky shoots me a questioning look, asking me with his eyes if I want him to bail.
I really don’t want him to leave. “We’re friends,” I say, hoping he’ll stay.
“Yes,” Lucky says. “We all know one another.”
Good. I’m relieved.
The nurse nods and tells me, “I’ll get the paperwork to release your cousin. In the meantime, keep it quiet in here, because her friend needs rest. Doped up pretty good, so you may hear some wild things. Fair warning.”
What friend? Vanessa? Her other friend from the party?
I look at Lucky. He looks at me. And as we step inside, I suddenly understand.
On the far side of the room, Evie sits under a bank of windows. Her eyes are closed as if she’s catnapping in a beam of sunlight, Cleopatra eyeliner smeared, and she’s curled up in a ball in a visitor’s chair—the kind that a spouse would sleep in while keeping vigil over their sick loved one. One of her forearms has been wrapped in a narrow, light gauze, and it looks as if a small cut on her face has been taped up.
Next to her is the person we were warned about.
Hooked up to a monitor and bolstered by pillows, Adrian Summers reclines with his eyes closed on a hospital bed surrounded by IV stands. Lacerations cover one side of his face. One arm is heavily bandaged. His left ankle is wrapped in stretchy green bandages; it’s propped up by a couple of pillows.
“What the actual fuuu—”Lucky whispers.
Evie’s eyes blink open. “Josie,” she says, leaping up.
I race to her, and we embrace. She clings to me as if the world is falling apart. From the looks of things in here, maybe it is. “Are you sure you’re okay?” I whisper. “Is anything broken?”
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” she mumbles into my neck near my ear. “Just cuts and scrapes. Thank God you came. I couldn’t call Vanessa. She’s going to kill me when she finds out.…”
I pull back to look at her and ask, “What happened?”
“Nature. That’s what,” Adrian says in a scratchy voice.
I release my cousin to look at him. His eyes are bloodshot and swollen, and it’s pretty clear that he’s been medicated to the moon and back. “Deer ran out in the road. Swerved. But the bastard ran into my side. Luckily Evelyn got out okay.”
“I tried to help him out, but … ,” Evie says, still gripping my hand tightly.
“Stop,” he tells her. “It was a big ass deer. I couldn’t have lifted it myself, and the paramedics got there fast, so it’s all good. Well. Except for the broken ankle, five stitches on my arm, and all this glass in my face. But I’m in Morphine City right now, so it’s hard to care about that too much.”
“He will,” Evie says. “When it really hits him that he can’t row at Harvard.”
“Just for summer practice.”
“Maybe not for fall, either. You heard the doctor,” she argues. “Six weeks on crutches.”
“There’s more to Harvard than rowing. I just need to convince my dad of that.…” He pauses, frowning, and I follow his gaze behind me. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Lucky stares at Adrian, arms crossed. “Visiting a dumbass.”
“He drove me here,” I say.
“Well, he can drive himself back home,” Adrian says. “He’s a felonious deadbeat who threw a rock at my family’s business. I don’t want him here.”
Lucky snorts. “That makes two of us, bucko. Though it’s a little entertaining to see you on your back.”
“Screw you.”
“Like you screwed yourself?” Lucky says. “Guess you’ll have to wait a little longer for that Olympic medal.”
“Bet I get one before you finish vocational school, grease monkey.”
