The Accident Season (11 page)

I give his arm a playful thump, but I can feel the beginnings of excitement fluttering in my chest. “Okay,” I say, taking out my phone to tell Bea and Alice to meet us in town. “Let’s go.”

***

Our small town is more crowded than usual today: The buses from Dublin and Galway seem to be full of college
students who have taken Friday off and are home early on the Thursday afternoon bus for the midterm break, and parents and local schoolchildren are hurrying around before the shops close, buying Halloween decorations and trick-or-treat sweets for tomorrow. Some of them are dressed up already, and in a couple of the pubs, loud work parties of costumed people spill onto the street.

Bea and Alice are waiting for us across the road from the library as we walk up. I weave around the costumed people outside the pub, ducking under elbows to dodge their drinks. That’s how I bump into the man. His chest makes a hollow clang where my hands hit him.

I say, “Oh, I’m sorry!” as another man steadies me, but the man I bumped into has slipped into the pub. When I peer through the window beside the open door I see that it’s the metal man statue I walked into on the day Sam and I found the magic shop in Galway. Sam stops behind me. I stare through the window into the man’s eyes. They are as gray as the rest of him. Something about the shine of his skin is unnatural, which is to say more unnatural than silver body paint. Or perhaps a lot more natural; it looks like metal-made skin. The man smiles mechanically and I shudder. He moves across the window as I walk and his strange eyes find Sam, and then Alice ahead of us. His smile gets wider. Even the corners of his mouth are little hinges.

“Come on, let’s go,” I say slowly, and I take Sam’s hand
and hurry onward to Alice and Bea. I take Bea’s hand as well and lead them quickly across the road toward the library. The metal man stares through the window. Alice crosses after us more slowly. When she’s just stepped off the curb, she turns around and looks at the statue man one last time. She frowns and starts to say something as if she wants to call across to him. Sam’s face falls.

A car speeds around the corner ahead of us. The driver only sees Alice at the last minute. I can see what’s about to happen, but I don’t even have time to move before the screech of brakes rips across the road. The driver tries to stop the car, but it’s too close to Alice. The front of it crashes into her and she is flung over the hood and onto the road. The car skids to a stop.

I think Bea screams, or it could be me. We all run to Alice. The only thing I can register is that she is moving, and just as we reach her I have a moment of swooping relief because it looks like she is trying to get up. But then her face turns ghostly white, her eyes roll back into her head, and she collapses. With incredible speed (and a presence of mind that I don’t have) Bea catches Alice before her head can hit the ground.

I vaguely feel my knees sting as I drop onto the road beside Alice. Her eyelids are flickering and Bea’s arms around her are shaking. Sam and a woman who must be the driver of the car are there beside me, and a small group of people
has gathered at the side of the road, calling out questions and suggestions.

I reach over and tap Alice’s cheek. “Alice.” My voice is hoarse. “Alice!” I give her a little smack and she opens her eyes. The driver breathes a sigh of relief. Alice looks confused for a second, but then she gasps and lets out the tiniest whimper that quickly turns into a sob. When I look down at her, I can see why. She is covered in blood. Her tights are ripped and the skin of her knees has split open. Her hands and elbows are bleeding badly too, and there is a long, jagged gash in her right arm that shows through the tear in her sweater. Bits of dirt and gravel are embedded in her skin.

But it’s Alice’s left arm that makes me stop trying to pull her up. Her shoulder is out of its socket. It’s a small difference, but it looks so wrong—a bump where there should be sharp lines. I swallow down a wave of nausea.

Alice’s breathing is shallow and quick.

“It’s okay,” Sam says from beside me. “It’s okay—here, give me your arm.”

A woman emerges from the crowd at the side of the road. “I’m a certified EMT,” she says. “Can I help?”

“So are we,” Sam says without looking at the woman. My mother has had us all take first-aid courses every year from the age of eight. We can dress wounds, improvise slings, and set bones in minutes. Alice blanches, but she hands Sam her arm.

He grips her hand and I brace her arm just under
the shoulder. Gently, with Alice wincing beneath us, Sam straightens her elbow and pulls her arm slowly toward him until the joint slips back into place with a pop.

Alice bites back a scream, then shudders.

“Better?” I whisper. She nods, but her eyes look haunted. I glance across the road at the people still milling about outside the pub and wonder if the metal man is still watching from the window. Suddenly my face stings as if it’s been slapped. I frown and shake my head, put my cold hand against it to cool it down.

Sam, Bea, and the EMT lady carefully help Alice to the side of the road, while the driver of the car wrings her hands and apologizes over and over. Alice keeps saying, “It’s fine, it’s fine,” but when she stands up, she swoons again, and leans heavily against Bea.

“We need to get you to the hospital,” says Bea, and Alice nods again. The owner of the corner store across the road, Mary Daly, ushers us inside and we sit Alice down on the chair behind the counter. Then she hands Alice some chocolate and a soda. “For the shock,” she says.

“Will I call an ambulance?” the EMT woman asks.

Alice answers, her voice suddenly strong. “No, it’s fine, my boyfriend lives just down the road. He can—” She stops then, breathless with pain. “He can drive me there.”

I unwind my scarf from around my neck and make a sling for Alice’s arm.

“Don’t you think we should ask Gracie?” Sam says.

“No,” Alice replies quickly. “I don’t want to worry Mom. I’ll get Nick to pick me up.”

“Alice, I think we should call an ambulance,” says Bea. Mary Daly and the EMT lady nod their heads.

“
No,
” Alice says again. She sits up straighter and tosses her long hair behind her back, as if to prove she can. “I’m fine.”

“Alice—”

“I’ve had worse.” Alice gives a dry little laugh. “We all have.”

Maybe it’s because she has mentioned the accident season, however indirectly, but Bea doesn’t push the point. Instead, she takes out Alice’s phone, dials Nick’s number, and holds the phone up to Alice’s ear.

While she talks to him, Sam and I do our best to clean and disinfect her cuts. The crowd disperses, until we are alone behind the counter. Because we are so close to Alice, we can all hear both sides of her phone conversation.

“Where were you last night?” is the first thing Nick says when he answers the call.

“Hey, Nick,” Alice says in a falsely casual voice. “I’ve just had a bit of an accident and I don’t want to bother my mom. Are you free now? Could you drive me to the hospital?”

It’s as if Nick hasn’t heard her. “Where were you last night, Alice?”

Alice makes a curtain of her hair and hunches over, as if
that’ll stop us from hearing. “I was with Cara and Bea. We just hung out at home.”

Nick’s voice gets lower, but I think I can make out the words. “You were supposed to be hanging out with me.”

“Nick, I’m sorry. My mom broke her wrist, so I had to stay home.” Alice lowers her voice to match his, but hers is soft where his is all knives. Beside me, Bea crosses her arms and makes an angry, impatient noise.

Alice seems to go through this a lot, with Nick. My mother says he’s awfully insecure for someone so popular, but Alice says it isn’t insecurity, just jealousy. Just love. I don’t know anything about that kind of love, but I imagine that if you feel that strongly for someone, you do end up getting a little possessive. My mother calls theirs a firecracker romance.

Alice winces as Sam sticks some butterfly bandages over the cut on her arm that won’t stop bleeding. “There must have been broken glass on the road,” he says in an undertone.

Nick must have heard what Sam just said, because when he speaks again, his voice is completely different. “Are you okay, love?” he says through the phone to Alice.

“A car crashed into her,” Bea says, very loudly, next to the phone.

Alice winces again. “I’m fine,” she says over Nick’s sounds of concern. “I just need a lift to the hospital. I’m in the corner store across from the library.”

“I’m on my way.”

When Alice hangs up, she looks even paler, but she turns to Bea with her head high. “Don’t make a fuss,” she says.

Nick drives up five minutes later. Alice stands once he comes inside.

Every time I see him, I’m surprised by how beautiful Nick is. His hair is dark and falls in waves to his jaw and his eyes are kind of intense. He is tall and broad and he crackles energy.

“Okay,” Bea says in a tight voice. “Let’s go.”

Nick glances at Bea, who seems to be looking anywhere but at him. “I’ll take her,” he says. “You don’t have to wait with us.” He turns back to Alice and strokes her cheek softly. “Come on, then, love,” he says to her. “Let’s get you patched up.”

Sam says, “I’ll come with you too. I’m supposed to be meeting up with Martin in the city later anyway.”

Nick doesn’t look too happy about having a third wheel, but he says, “Okay, man, I’ll drop you off outside the hospital. But I’m going in with Alice.”

Bea scowls, but Alice gives a tight little smile. She thanks Nick with a kiss and turns to me and Bea. “Don’t make a fuss,” she says again. “And don’t tell Mom. I’ll spend the night at Nick’s so she won’t worry. You guys go home,” she says. “Nick will take care of me.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he will,” Bea mutters darkly. I look over at her sharply. She frowns as she watches them drive away.

When Nick’s car is out of sight, I run across the road (looking both ways carefully before crossing) and up to the library just as the librarian locks the door.

“No no no,” I say, standing in front of her to block her path. “I really need to find a newspaper article,” I say, very quickly. “It isn’t online and it’s really important and I know the library’s closed tomorrow and I can’t go in to Ballina or Castlebar because I’ve got school and then it’s Halloween and anyway I don’t know exactly what newspaper the article’s in, so I’d have to go to both and I really can’t wait until Monday, please can you give me just five minutes?”

The librarian raises her eyebrows. “Library’s closed, love,” she says. “You should have done your homework earlier if it was that important.”

Bea appears behind me. “It’s not for homework,” she says. “But it really
is
important. It’s for a friend. It was an article from a couple of years ago about the bridge that collapsed and the council was supposed to rebuild. Do you think we could just take a few minutes to see if we can find it?”

“I’m afraid not,” the librarian says. “I have to pick up my son from training at a quarter past.” She pockets the keys and starts to cross the parking lot. “But if it’s information about the bridge you want, you might catch someone at the council offices if you hurry. They’d have copies of certain articles on file.”

Bea and I practically run to the council offices. We get
to the front door, breathless, just in time for the man in the gray suit inside to flip the sign from
OPEN
to
CLOSED
. Bea knocks on the glass and I try to plead with the man to talk to us, but he just shakes his head, points at the
CLOSED
sign, and disappears back into the building.

“Dammit!” I stamp my foot in frustration. I turn to Bea, but she is engrossed in her phone.

She looks up and says, “They’re still on the road.”

I sigh and walk away from the offices. “Alice’ll be fine,” I try to reassure Bea. “Like she said, we’ve all had worse. And she has Nick to take care of her.”

Bea just scowls. All the way home, her face is a storm. We stop at the river, where the wooden bridge is being rebuilt. I lean against the picnic table and look out at the water. I wish we’d been able to talk to someone about Elsie. I feel like I need someone to remind me that she’s real.

Bea is muttering things about asshole musicians under her breath. When I ask her why she suddenly hates Nick so much, she reminds me about his and Alice’s fights and his three-a.m. calls, about Alice stamping up the stairs after she’s been with him and all the times she says he’s not talking to her for some reason or another, and as Bea speaks, it feels kind of like a blurry picture’s suddenly becoming clear.

“A big part of Nick’s appeal is sex,” Bea says. She lights up a cigarette and passes me another one. Her mouth is hard
and thin when she smokes. “He’s good at it, and he’s good at making Alice feel good.”

I kind of squirm back when she says this, not really comfortable with knowing the details of my sister’s sex life. “Well, that’s . . .” I don’t really know what that is.

“But something he’s
really
good at is emotional manipulation.” Bea’s mouth puckers around the sounds. I nod slowly and say I can see that. The huffs he goes into, the way he wears his popularity like a bright tie that’d choke any other person. Bea lowers her voice and talks to the strangled grass underneath the bench.

“Alice told me something earlier,” she says. “About Nick.” She kicks at the tufts of grass. “Just before the summer, Alice went to one of the senior parties and they got drunk and played truth or dare, right, and she and Kim were dared to run out onto the road in their underwear.” Bea’s foot taps restlessly against the bench. “So, the next morning,” she goes on, “Alice went to Nick’s place and told him all about the party and how he should come along next time, but he didn’t like that she was drinking without him and that people’d seen her in her underwear.”

My cigarette’s hanging in my hand by my side. I flick away the column of ash and take a drag. Bea keeps going. “So they had a fight about it, and then they made up and had sex.” She says the next part a little bit faster. “So, he likes to tie her up.” Another squirm from me. “And she’s fine with
that, except for that morning he tied her to a chair in his bedroom and left her there.”