“Hey! I was going to leave you a voicemail! I had an important message for you!”
She laughed. “Oh yeah? What was it?”
“Well, maybe I don’t remember anymore… should’ve just let it go to voicemail.”
“I messed up the settings on this thing. It never goes to voicemail; it just rings forever!”
“Yeah, your phone really sucks,” I said, as I shook mine like a maraca.
We both laughed. I watched as she saved my number. We walked on.
She told me that she was graduating, but she hadn’t done well in school for the past couple years, so she wasn’t sure if she’d even get into college. She said that she should have gone to the magnet program that I was in, since she might be in a better spot now if she had. I told her to attach a picture of herself to the college application, and they’d pay her to go there just so they could look at her. She didn’t laugh at that one, and I thought she might be offended — she might have thought I was implying that she couldn’t get in based on her intelligence. I nervously glanced at her, and she was just smiling, and even in that poor light I could see that she was blushing. I wanted to hold her hand, but I didn’t.
As we walked down the final side of the mall, back toward the theatre, I asked her about Josh. I had asked about him when I saw her in the theatre with her friends weeks before, but she had simply brushed it aside, and I let her because I would have talked to her about anything. This time when I asked, she told me that she didn’t want to talk about it. I asked her if he was at least doing okay, and she just said, “I don’t know.” I figured Josh must have taken a wrong turn somewhere and started getting into trouble. I felt bad. I felt guilty.
As we approached the parking lot, I noticed that the car with the cracked back window was gone and that her car was now the only one in the parking lot. I had no idea how long it took to clean up that theatre before it closed, but as consistently dirty as that place was, I wasn’t surprised that the employees had already left. Veronica asked me if I needed her to drive me back to Chris’ house, and even though I really didn’t need her to, I wanted her to, so I lied and said that it was a long walk and that I’d appreciate it.
I had finished my soda during the movie, and all the walking was putting pressure on my bladder. I knew that I could wait until I was back at Chris’, but I had decided that I was going to try to kiss her when she dropped me off, and I didn’t want this biological nagging to rush me out of the car. This would be my first kiss.
I struggled, but I could think of no ruse to conceal what I needed to do. The theatre had closed, so I only had one option. I told her that I was going to go behind the theatre to piss but that I’d be back in “two shakes.” It was obvious that I thought it was hilarious, but she seemed to laugh more at how funny I found it than at how funny it clearly was.
On the way toward the theatre, I stopped and turned toward her. I told her that I had a weird question, and her interest piqued. I asked her if Josh had ever told her that some kid named Alex had done something nice for me. She paused to think for a moment and said that he had; she enquired as to why I had asked, but I said it was nothing. Josh really was a good friend.
When I went to go behind the theatre, I realized that there was a chain-link fence extending off of and running parallel to the walls of the building. She could still see me where I was standing, and the fence seemed to stretch on endlessly, so I thought I’d just hop it, duck out of sight, and return as quickly as I could. It may have been too much of an effort, but I thought it polite. I climbed the fence and walked just a little ways until I was out of sight. I heard Veronica yell for me to not stand on any grates or the mall-monster might get me.
For a moment, the only sounds were the crickets in the grass behind me and the collision of liquid and cement. Before too long, however, these sounds were overpowered by a noise that I can still hear when it is quiet and there are no other noises to distract my ears.
In the distance, I heard a faint but distinct screeching, which quickly subsided, only to be replaced with a cascade of thundering vibrations. I realized quickly enough what it was.
It was a car.
The growling of the engine got louder. And then I thought.
No. Not louder. Closer.
The rumblings intensified. It was growing louder still. I started back toward the fence with haste, but before I could get very far at all, I heard a brief, truncated scream, and the roar of the engine terminated in a deafening thud. I started running, but after only two or three steps, I was tripped by a loose piece of stone, and I fell hard and fast onto the concrete — my head striking the corner of a bench as I fell.
I was dazed for maybe thirty seconds, but the renewed rumbling of the engine drew my senses back, and my equilibrium was restored by my adrenaline. I redoubled my efforts. I was worried that whoever had crashed the car might harass Veronica. Briefly, but forcefully, it occurred to me that we would have to call the police. My mom would be contacted because I was a minor — that wasn’t how I wanted this night to end.
As I was climbing over the fence, I saw that there was still only her car in the parking lot. I didn’t see any evidence of a crash. I thought that I might have misjudged its direction or proximity, but I swore I could smell the faint and fleeting aroma of burned rubber or possibly machine smoke, and this was corroborated by a metallic taste that clung to my tongue. Each of my senses was telling me that something had happened, but my eyes defiantly returned ordinary images.
As I ran toward Veronica’s yellow car, I had to change my orientation to move around it. Finally, and terribly, my eyes joined my other alerted senses. I saw what the car had hit, and my legs stopped working almost completely.
It was Veronica.
Her car was sitting between us, and as I closed the distance and walked around it, she came fully into view.
Veronica’s body lay twisted and crumpled on the black asphalt of the parking lot, her limbs so unnaturally contorted that she looked like a child’s discarded wooden art doll that now showcased a catalog of things the human body cannot do. As I looked at her, I actually found it hard to discern whether she was lying on her back or her stomach, and my vision warped the space around her in an attempt to see a human figure again. This optical illusion made me feel sick with dizziness to the point that I had to close my eyes for a moment for fear of vomiting.
“Veronica?” I pleaded with limp, vibration-less vocal cords — the sound nothing more than the broken whisper of a ghost.
The bone of her right shin had cut savagely through her jeans and stood erect atop a foundation of bloodstained denim. Her other leg bent out to the side twice — as if she had a second joint in her femur. I traced her figure and saw that her left arm had been dislocated at the shoulder and was wrapped so hard and forcefully around the back of her neck that her hand fell over her right breast with her fingertips nearly touching her navel.
I stepped a little closer and knelt down, gravity doing the lion’s share of the work as my legs trembled.
Her head was craned back and her mouth hung widely open toward the sky, and as I looked into her half-lidded eyes, they stared absently back into mine, as lifeless and cold as a shark’s. Blood was pooling around my shoe now. There was so much of it.
When you are confronted with something in the world that simply doesn’t belong, your mind tries to convince itself that it is dreaming, and to that end it provides you with that distinct sense of all things moving slowly, as if through sap. In that moment, I honestly felt that I would wake up any minute.
But I didn’t wake up.
I fumbled with my phone to call for help, but I had no signal. I was depressing the power button in the hopes that the signal would return when the phone was turned back on, when I saw Veronica’s phone sticking out of what I thought was her front right pocket. I had no choice. Trembling, I reached for her phone and took hold of it. As I slid it out, she moved and gasped so violently for air that it seemed as if she was trying to breathe in the whole world.