We run together, or we don’t run at all.
My knees hit the ground with her.
Jade’s deep blue eyes are wide, frozen in terror and shock and her mouth, too, and there’s just one beat, a violent, stilted breath before the guttural scream I was hoping wouldn’t follow, tears from her throat.
“My back, Laik, my back!” Jade screams and the sound coming from her is like nothing I’ve heard before.
It’s horrific.
The cadence of death.
Terror claws through my chest, spreads outward. Over my shoulders and into my stomach it grows. I watch it descend my arms, flutter into my fingers.
Everything is shaking.
My bones are rattling inside of my body because that gut feeling I’d had, turns into a wailing siren.
It tells me now that we aren't going to make it out of this alive. We aren’t going to live to see our next sunrise. We aren’t going to have the chance to make another stupid mistake, or to grow old and gray together, to move to New York and leave Devil’s Peak behind.
I tremble harder when I hear it again.
A second gunshot.
This one scrapes past my ear.
I lay myself over Jade’s body. I try not to breathe. My lips brush over her cheek.
“I’ve got you, okay? Just hold on for me, J. I need you to hold?—”
A third bullet tears through the air, skimming the top of Jade’s head and clipping the edge of my tricep.
I recoil, moving away from my best friend, forced to let go of her when I feel the weight of the bullet claim my right arm.
A bloodcurdling sound I don’t recognize comes from somewhere deep inside of me.
I bite down on my tongue, look up, and through terrified eyes, watch darkness close in.
Bullets tear through the dirt around me.
I scramble on my hands and knees until I’m behind a tree, until all I can hear is my own breath and the sound of the gunfire fading. The guilt that roars through me for leaving Jade behind and for fighting for my own life, is paralyzing.
Everything falls silent, only for a moment, before my best friend's screams follow behind her pleading,her crying.
My head slams against the trunk of the tree. I do it again and again, squeezing my eyes closed and crying with my whole body.
“Please, god, please, help us,” I beg, and when I hear Jade scream again, realizing my pleas are futile, I stifle my next breath, doing what I can with all that I have left.
I disconnect from the blinding pain that shoots through my arm, frantically working to push my useless limbs into the back pocket of my blood-splattered denim shorts. Sliding my phone out with trembling, unworkable hands, my pink glitter phone case catching in the moonlight, spearing my eyes, I hold my breath when I flip it over, seeing that I’ve been afforded one single, hopeful, bar of cell service.
My heart slams against my ribs harder.
I slip my torn-up feet beneath my bottom and push myself up with the support of the tree at my back, then I stumble toward a wider, thicker trunk a few feet away, vision blurring and swaying.
I stay in the shadows, making sure not to catch myself in any pockets of light as I move, clasping the only hope I have left in the palms of my hands.
And with numb fingers and rattling teeth, I open my phone and press onhisnumber.
Chase answers almost instantly, his frantic words coming down the line.
