Holding My Breath [Wattys 2016]

7 9 ~ R u s t y

                 

Present Day ~ July 17, 2011

I think I'm the first one to wake up. I can't see anything but I feel it. It's in the air like it's written in the wind. That feeling of death.

It's been a long time since I've heard this silence... the complete emptiness in the air. Only this time, the people in the car weren't my family.

And maybe this is my second chance to save everyone this time.

My head is pounding and my whole body aches with exhaustion. I'm flashing back again and again to when my parents died. Again and again, I have to remind myself that I'm not in the lake. That this isn't another one of the nightmares I still get every night.

I sit up and my head bangs into the truck bed. I squint the through the dark, my heart pounding as I realize it. The truck is upside down. And we are underneath it.

I get to my hands and knees and start to feel the ground around me. The sharp, dead grass passes past my hands for several agonizing seconds before I find an arm.

I'm not alone. But it's too dark to see. Just like last time.

I shake the arm, crawling over to the body. I feel a pulse in his wrist, and I let out a sigh of relief. He's not dead.

To get to him I have to crawl army-style on my stomach. The truck is right above us and I can't help but think that it might collapse any second. All of that rust must mean something.

"Blue?" I ask, searching the dark with my hands. I find his face, my fingers running over the stubble on his jaw. Yep, definitely Blue.

I shake him a few more times, my voice piercing the darkness. "Blue, wake up. Please wake up."

Please, please, don't let him be dead. I need his help. I need him to help me.

"Blue," I whisper, choking on the stillness of the body in front of me and the bitter taste of dread in my throat. I don't even know why I say what I do next, and I know I would never say it to anyone in real life, but I do. I whisper my secret so low that I can barely hear myself. "Please, Blue. Get up. He'll find us. He'll kill you."

I immediately regret it. I don't think he heard anything, and I'm blaming it on my hysteria.

But even as I think it, I can't bring myself to ignore how relieving it is to say it out loud. It makes me so scared that I can't even cry, but at least I didn't keep it inside this time.

I'm shaking really bad now, glancing around the area under the flipped truck. We are trapped in a ditch, the top of the truck upside down in the bottom of it.

His fingers wrap around my wrist. "Rusty?" He asks hoarsely, trying to sit up.

"Yeah, it's me," I say, uncertain of what to do. He bangs his head on the truck like I did and I resist a smile. "C'mon. We have to get out."

He looks over at me then, his icy blue eyes freezing me in place. I still can't see much, but I am able to catch the confusion in his expression.

"The truck crashed. We have to get out and help the others."

I feel a sharp sting in my leg and look down with a whimper of pain, realizing for the first time that I've gotten hurt. My fingers find the cut and come back wet.

Oh god. Blood. I don't like blood.

I'm shaking even more now.

We both crawl out of a gap on the edge of the ditch. I fall back as I crawl out and tumble into the bottom of the ditch.

I look up to see the sky a dark shade of blue. The clouds overhead join in with the mountains and look like hills as tall as skyscrapers caging us in. "Are you okay?" He asks me.

"Yeah, I'm okay. Are you hurt?" I shift to where I can look in the front seat window. Bailey is in there, held up by her seat belt, but I can barely see Colton in the driver's seat.

"Nah. I'm good. You?" He asks again. I look down at my leg, where it has stained my jeans a dark shade of crimson. I glance back at the window.

"Go get help," I call up to him.

"We need to get them out of there. I can't leave." He says, taking out a phone and trying to get it to work. He throws it to the ground in frustration after a minute.

"Blue... Just go get help. I'll get them out, but if someone is hurt really bad, we are going to need an ambulance."

He nods after a few seconds and disappears.