What Happened After

Chapter 7

"Oh my God. You're pregnant." 

Chapter 7.

          I couldn’t stop looking at him. I knew I was probably making him uncomfortable, but I hadn’t seen the boy since June. Since the night of the accident. The last time I saw him awake and walking was a couple days before that, at school with Lauren. The last time I had seen him at all was at the scene of the crash. From my position in the back of the ambulance, I could see him in the driver’s seat of the Bronco, unconscious, slumped against the busted dashboard, which had collapsed onto his lap, crushing his thighs.

           They said he wouldn’t walk again. But here he was, in front of me. I had to shut my eyes for a moment, to make sure I wasn’t just seeing things. When I opened them, he was still there, staring at me with that same look he had on before.

          “Rayn…” he whispered. No. No, he wasn’t going to talk to me, not after all that’s happened. We weren’t friends before, and we certainly weren’t going to be friends now. Before that accident, I had spoken all but two words to the guy, and now he was trying to start a casual conversation with me in a CD store on Black Friday.

          “I have to go,” I whispered back, brushing past him and out into the mall. “My parents are waiting for me…somewhere…” I offered that last part as if he even needed an explanation. When I looked back, he was still standing in that same spot, watching me walk away, and not doing anything to come after me. I was relieved at first, and then sort of hoped he would call my name again. He must have needed something.

          He didn’t.

          I caught up with my parents in the food court, drinking smoothies from a place called Extreme Fresh! Naturally, they were the only ones seated, because we were the only family known to mankind that came to the mall simply to browse on Black Friday. Of course there was time to stop for smoothies. “Oh, honey, there you are! Look we got you your favorite, Banana Peach Hula!” Sure enough, my mom was passing me my own smoothie, with a big smile on her face. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, sweetie.”

          I wasn’t entirely sure what had actually just happened, so I responded with, “I think I just did.”

~~~~~~~~~~

          I had disconnected my Facebook shortly after I came home from the hospital. I just knew that a bunch of kids from school would be messaging me nonstop, asking what happened, if I was okay, or if I wanted to talk. I didn’t, so I decided it would be easier to just cut myself out of everyone’s lives before they could even think to worry about me.

          Now I was sitting on my bed, staring at my laptop, wondering if I should reactivate my account. All day at the mall, I couldn’t help but look for Ruesso every time I turned a corner, and wonder if he had ever tried to contact me before that day. A part of me thought, no, that’s stupid. You weren’t his friend, why the hell would he want to reach out to you? But an even bigger part had a weird feeling that he might have done just that. I hit the “reactivate” button and scrolled to my inbox.

          Seven new messages, my inbox read. Seven?! That’s it? I thought that I would for sure have at least a hundred, a collection of messages from my friends and classmates who were extremely worried about me. Before I read any of the messages, I started looking through a few of my old friends’ profile pages, and clicked through to Graduation Night. After several minutes, I ultimately found that no, my classmates weren’t actually all that worried about me. All of their graduation photos showed how great of a time they had, and the memories posted to each of their Facebook walls were sure to last a lifetime. I don’t know what I expected, in all honesty. Maybe a small part of me thought that in these photos, they would all look miserable, wondering where their valedictorian was. That maybe they were thinking, “Who’s going to deliver the speeches now?” In reality, they were probably relieved to get out of there earlier. They most likely thought Kale and I had skipped out on Graduation, and were thrilled by that fact.