Pulse

Chapter 20

Lucie

My lungs were an exhausted sack of cells and tissue in my chest, working harder and harder to push carbon dioxide out and take oxygen in. I mopped my brow with the back of my hand and climbed the stairs from the basement, my run on the treadmill done for today. The kitchen was empty; Mom was at the grocery store and Dad was at work, so I made myself a smoothie and went down the hall to my bedroom.

I used my desk chair to balance myself as I untied my tennis shoes and set them beside my bed, finishing up the smoothie and switching on my laptop. The rain outside had stopped by now, and the sky outside my bedroom window was hazy with sunlight.

I sighed and opened up the search engine. Next to the miniature magnifying glass, I typed in Tis starving that makes it fat and waited anxiously for the results. There had to be a reason someone would scrawl that in blood at a murder scene. There had to be something we were missing, the single puzzle piece waiting to complete the picture.

A few of the links were to health websites advising how to lose weight, but that wasn't I was looking for. More than one, however, pointed towards a poem written by Emily Dickinson. I clicked on one and read the entirety of the poem, entitled "Mine enemy is growing old."

Mine enemy is growing old,—

I have at last revenge.

The palate of the hate departs;

If any would avenge,—

Let him be quick, the viand flits

It is a faded meat.

Anger as soon as fed is dead;

'Tis starving that makes it fat.

I shut the computer down and put my head in my hands. There was something hauntingly familiar about the words, as if I'd heard them before, read them somewhere else before this. It annoyed me, but I couldn't pull the source of the feeling from the back of my brain.

A line in a poem.

Why?

I glanced at my phone, sitting there on my desk beside an old basketball trophy and a picture of six-year-old Jiya and me at a Chuck E. Cheese's. I thought about calling Cian, until I remembered he hadn't given me any number at all. Vinny is my cell phone. Where was Vinny, however, when I needed him?

Vinny drowned.

I bit my lip and collapsed down on my bed. I had not slept in an uncountable number of hours, so maybe the best thing for me at the moment was to doze away some of the stress.

I curled atop my bed and pulled my throw blanket around my shoulders, letting the replay of the poem on the screen toss me into slumber.

In the dream, I was in Dempsey's truck. It was as perfect as it had been before the accident happened, the pine air freshener scenting the air with the familiarity of outside as it swung from the rearview mirror. The air conditioning hissed from the vents, the radio tuned to my older brother's favorite RNB station. San Francisco was merely a blur of lights and a buzz of car horns and a whoosh of the bay's waves in the distance.

I scowled at the song currently playing and looked at my brother. "Turn that crap down," I ordered him. "My ears are bleeding."

"This," Dempsey said with an admiring glint in his dark eyes, "is a classic. You can't tell me Jill Scott is not the very embodiment of heaven on earth."

I folded my arms and rested my feet on the dash. Dempsey shot me a withering look but otherwise said nothing. "I'm sure she is. She's just not my embodiment."

"Your music taste scares me."

"Right back at you."

A few moments of silence passed between us. The car dove down the steep hills of San Francisco, engine whirling somewhere beneath the two of us. I watched the people strolling the sidewalks laugh and talk, laugh and talk. The night air was a live thing.

"Lulu."

There was something familiar about how he said the nickname. Almost as if I'd been here before. "Yeah?" I said. I rolled the window down and let the wind play with my curls.

"Do I have to go over party safety with you again?" he stopped at a red light and gave me a sideways glance. The look I shot back at him was apathetic. "You know not to take a drink from anyone else, to call if anyone does anything to you, to run like crazy if police shows up, and oh—"

It took me a moment to reply. Yes. Too familiar. What was this? "Don't do drugs," I finished for him. I added, "I know. Unlike someone here, I'm popular and I have friends. This is not my first party."

He said: "I have friends."

I replied, "You mean the friends that are spending their last few days of spring break traveling places without you? Come on, Dempsey." My tongue felt foreign. I knew something was wrong. Why couldn't I say something?

And Dempsey told me, "Maybe I just wanted to spend my spring break with my family—"

He barely finished the sentence.

There was an ear splitting crash as a van hit us driver's side first, sending the truck flipping over itself. Dempsey was silent immediately as the windshield shattered, raining glass down on us. Metal ground on metal and something in my arm felt like it snapped and my chest felt crushed. My seatbelt was a blade in my shoulder. Jill Scott on the radio turned to static and the pine air freshener landed in my lap, split in two ragged pieces. I was flipping and spinning and thumping and constantly in motion.

The car stopped. It had landed upside down, so I was suspended. My arm felt twisted and wrong, and when I tried to move it, I screamed in pain. The car's gasoline dripped onto the asphalt as I felt tears on my face; I tried to free myself but couldn't. There was a siren somewhere. Someone was running towards me.

I looked frantically towards my brother. "Dempsey! Dempsey!" But he wasn't there. The driver's seat was empty. It's like he'd never been there at all.

Then the car's engine exploded.

I woke up, taking in a heaving breath as I shot up to a sitting position. Sweat beaded on my forehead and tears were dried on my cheeks; voices sounded downstairs, muffled. A glance toward the window told me it was likely afternoon by now and a glance down at myself told me that was a dream and only a dream. I could feel my heart like a jackhammer in my chest.

My eyes narrowed.

There was something on my arm I'd never seen before.

It was a scar running down my forearm, pink and fleshy, as if it hadn't completely healed yet, and it hadn't been there yesterday.