The Space Between Heartbeats (11 page)

THURSDAY, 8:32 PM

I force my shaking limbs to rise, and leave my bedroom. I need to see Dale and apologize. I need to make this right.

I’m racing up his driveway when the front door swings open and he runs down the steps. His face is tight with worry, his swollen nose looking red and sore.

“Dale,” I call.

He stops beneath the porch light. I walk toward him, suddenly nervous.

“I was just coming to find you. I thought you might be at your house . . .” His voice trails off to a soft murmur as he gazes at me in that sweet, quiet way of his, a soft smile lighting his eyes as he drinks me in. A thought comes to me, unbidden: He thinks I’m beautiful.

The idea steals my breath.

“I’m sorry.” He reaches for me and whispers, “I’m sorry I said that stuff to you.”

“It was fair.” I shrug, willing to forgive him anything when he’s looking at me like this. “I can kind of be a bitch.”

“You’re not.” Dale cringes. “I wish I could turn back time and erase that whole conversation. It’s just . . . I was so humiliated that Trent decked me in front of you.”

I touch his swollen nose with gentle fingers.

“That actually feels good.” Dale closes his eyes. “Nice and cold.”

“You can feel that?” I breathe.

“Yeah.” His eyes open and he gives me a long, steady look that’s enough to unravel me completely. “Want to come inside?”

I can’t help a smile as I reach for his hand. He stares at it for a second, then spreads his fingers. Our palms almost touching, Dale leads me back inside his house.

We climb the stairs in silence and walk into his room. Dale closes the door behind him and I take a seat on his bed.

I hug my knees and glance around the room. “Where’s Jester?”

Dale laughs. “He’s been banished to the yard for peeing on the carpet.” He sits down at his desk. “So what’s our next step? Trent hasn’t exactly been specific about where he left you, and after today, I doubt he’ll tell me anything.”

“The sheriff came over tonight and said he’s going to start a search, but it’ll take a few days.” I close my eyes, trying to ward off a wave of despair. “I don’t have that long. I can’t die, Dale.”

Papers rustle on the desk. Dale has pulled the book of hiking maps down from his shelf.

He bends over the book, his brows knit in concentration. “If no one’s going to help us, then we’re just going to have to do this search on our own. I think we should expand the search areas from the places we selected last night. I’ll get up early tomorrow morning and we’ll start scanning the area. I don’t care how long it takes.”

My heart swells as I watch Dale, his curls falling into his eyes.

“Nicky?” Dale turns to look at me. “Does that sound okay?”

“Yeah.” I nod, coming closer to look at the map. “Sounds good.”

“Okay, let me just highlight the roads we’ll take so I can get a clear idea in my head of where we’ll be driving.”

Dale rummages around his messy desk for a highlighter. “I was just using it last night, where’s it gone?” he mutters, bending down to look under his desk.

I run my finger over the open book, tracing the winding road through the forest until I reach the edge of the page. I want to turn it over and see how far we should go, but of course my fingers can’t do that. With a bitter frown, I press my finger into the page and flick it.

To my surprise, it lifts into the air, rising an inch before floating back down. My mouth drops open. I remember the way my diary fell out of Mom’s hands when I slapped it and wonder if that hadn’t just been a freak accident.

Rubbing my fingers together, I reach for the page and try again. Determination courses through me as I push my finger onto the paper and flick. The page bounces up a little higher before flopping back down.

I let out a surprised laugh.

I narrow my eyes and use more force this time. It turns.

“Found it.” Dale stands up with a triumphant smile on his lips and a bright orange highlighter in his hand. “Now where were we?” He leans over the book.

“Dale—I just turned the page.” I can’t keep the shock out of my voice.

He frowns, then notices the turned page. “Holy crap, you
did
. Can you do it again?” He steps back to give me some space.

I try again. It takes three attempts, but I eventually turn another. And then another.

Dale watches me with awe. “I wonder what else you can do?” he says, running his fingers over the book before dropping the highlighter onto the pages. “Here, try picking it up.”

I try to pick up the marker, but it won’t budge.

“Try again,” he urges.

“I’m trying, but it’s not working.” I flick my finger and watch it roll slightly.

Dale looks excited. “There you go.”

“It’s hardly anything to be excited about. Why can I suddenly do it?” I ask. “What if it means I’m that much closer to death? Like I’m that much more of a real ghost,” I say.

“Don’t talk like that.” Dale gives me a look. “I think it shows that your mind is strong. It shows that you have some willpower.”

“Yeah, maybe.” I sigh, rubbing my forehead and suddenly feeling exhausted.

“You okay?” Dale reaches for my shoulder, his fingers hovering above it.

“I’m just tired. That was kind of exhausting.”

“Come on, let’s get some rest.” He lifts his chin toward his bed.

Dale flops down on his back, tucking a hand beneath his head. I lie down beside him. My head rests near his and I roll onto my side, gazing at his chiseled profile.

Dale’s other hand rests on the bed between us. I study his strong fingers, and wonder what they’d feel like gliding over my skin. I already know they’d be gentle.

As if he can hear my thoughts, he turns his head in my direction. “I wish I could touch you,” he murmurs, his eyes searching my face.

For some reason that makes me nervous. Plenty of other boys have said that to me before and I’ve always given in, but I don’t want it to be like that with Dale.

My voice shakes as I ask, “What would you do?”

“Well”—a slow grin edges across his lips—“you know how your bangs fall forward and cover up your left eye?”

I nod.

Dale turns onto his side, so we’re lying face-to-face. He runs a finger down the vague outline of my forehead. “I’d tuck them behind your ear and make sure you could see me clearly. Because I need you to know that I don’t think you’re horrible. I think you’re amazing.”

I dip my chin so he can’t disarm me with those eyes again. “No, you don’t.”

“That’s another reason why I was so annoyed this morning.” I glance up at his soft whisper. “All the people you hang out with have no idea who you really are. You’re brilliant, Nicky . . . and none of those guys can see it. Why don’t you let anyone see you?”

Tears prick my eyes. “When Jody died, my whole family shut down. We had nothing to say to each other.” I shoot a nervous glance at Dale. He gives me an encouraging smile.

“I didn’t know what to do. I was so lost and when I got to high school, Chris Cooper noticed me. He thought I was cute . . . or vulnerable, I don’t know.” Chris was the first person who didn’t give me a sympathetic look or awkward hug. He pulled me into his life and made me forget about everything. Once I slept with him, all the girls thought I was cool and all the guys thought I was easy. It was a done deal after that. I grimace at the memories. “Before this happened, I would have sworn I’d be lost without my friends.”

“You still have friends, Nicole. Just not the ones you thought.”

I turn back at Dale’s words, so full of understanding. My lips rise in a half smile and I reach over, lightly running my finger down his scar. “Pretty big wake-up call, I suppose. Was it anything like yours?”

Dale frowns.

“Come on,” I say. “What were you like . . . before?”

Dale’s laugh is cold. “Awful. I was a little shit.” His eyes lock on the ceiling. “My parents were teenagers when they had my older sister, Raelyn. Both their families judged them for it, and I think they felt like they had a lot to prove. It’s like they thought they had to be superstrict with Rae and me or we’d make the same mistakes.”

He runs his fingers over the green comforter. “Rae didn’t care, she loved following the rules. But I felt suffocated. When I turned fourteen, I started acting out. My parents didn’t know what to do with me.”

He makes a figure eight on the duvet and repeats the pattern, his voice growing thick. “I started sneaking out to parties, and it wasn’t long before I was drinking . . . and then came the joyriding. We’d break into really nice cars and drive as fast as we could around the back roads. It was a rush. We nearly got caught by the cops a couple of times.”

He goes quiet and the anguish in his gaze slices me in half.

“What?” I touch his frown lines, trying to smooth them away. He lets out a sigh.

“I wasn’t driving the night of the accident, Jack was. I was squished into the backseat with my friends Toby and Luis. I don’t know what happened. We hit something and careened down a hill. Luis went straight through the windshield.”

He takes a deep breath. “It took an hour for Jack to die and then another two before Travis stopped moaning . . . he was in the front passenger seat.” Dale bites his bottom lip, his gaze distant. His voice is barely a whisper. “I don’t know when Toby died. He was in the seat across from me and spent about an hour screaming that his leg hurt. I couldn’t do anything. I was pinned. My face was caught on a tree branch that had punctured the window. Every time I tried to move, I thought I might rip my head off, and my shoulder was radiating pain. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to use it again.”

I blink back tears as I listen to his story. His voice is detached as he runs through the rest of the details.

“Eventually it got quiet, really quiet. I knew it was only a matter of time before I joined them. I don’t know why, but I just started praying.” His eyes are bright and clear as he focuses back on me. “I begged God to let me live . . . and He did. As soon as I could think straight again, I decided to stop wasting the second chance He’d given me and start using it for good.” He takes in a breath. “I think about it every day . . . and every day it motivates me.”

I study him, my eyes taking in every inch of his face. His scar seems beautiful now, a line that divides who he was then from who he is now. “Your parents don’t seem so strict.”

“I wasn’t the only one who needed to change,” Dale says. “They wanted to take me away from my old life, start afresh, so we moved here. We set some new ground rules and one of them was honesty. Every time I feel suffocated, I tell them, and every time they think I’m slipping back, they reel me in. It’s been working okay so far.”

I think back to my parents, holding each other in my bedroom. “I wish I could talk to my parents like that.”

“Well, when you make it out of this, you should start.”

“
If
I make it out,” I murmur.

Dale rises up onto an elbow and looks down at me. “Nicky, you
will
survive this. It’ll be your second chance . . . just like mine. All you have to decide now is what you want to do with it.” He gives me a gentle smile. “What do you want?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

Dale’s expression is etched in an aching sadness. “You’ll figure it out.” He rolls onto his back and stretches out his arm, beckoning me to lie on his shoulder.

I hesitate, throwing him a skeptical frown.

“Come on, let’s give a try.” He grins.

I inch toward him, slowly lowering my head onto his firm chest. I run my hand over his shirt and he shivers. We lie in silence for a while until night sets in and Dale drops into a light slumber. I can feel an odd coldness creeping into my bones. I inch closer to him, wishing I was snuggled beneath the covers, wrapped in his arms. I wonder what it would be like to sleep next to him all night.

A soft whistling breaks through my daydream, a fuzzy sound that only grows louder and clearer before a searing pain spikes through my head. I let out a sharp gasp, gripping my temples and trying to squeeze it away.

Dale flinches, his eyes popping open. “Nicole? What’s wrong?”

“The room is spinning,” I cry.

“What?”

“My head,” I wail, crumpling into a ball as the green cover starts to warp and curl beneath me.

“Nicole?” Dale’s voice is laced with panic, but when I try to look at him, all I can see is a twisted, mangled image of his face. “You’re fading.”

The pain in my head becomes unbearable. “Dale,” I choke out his name, willing it to hold me in place.

“Nicky, just stay calm, it’s going to be okay.” But his voice quakes.

I open my eyes, trying to make out his blurry features. I can’t hide my fears any longer. “What if I don’t come back again?”

The room spins and rushes toward me. I scream, unable to hold it in. The last thing I hear is Dale calling out my name, but it’s lost as the world turns black.

THURSDAY, 11:19 PM

I spin into a mindless fog. The only thing that draws me back to earth is that soft whistle—lazy, ambling tune that feels out of place in my chaos. I open my eyes. My terror shifts to confusion as the whistling becomes clear once again.

I hold my breath and freeze. Someone’s up there again.

I shift my eyes in the direction of the sound. It is dark, but tonight two pinpricks of yellow cut through the forest: flashlights. The whistle resumes, louder this time, but it doesn’t sound human anymore. Wait a second . . . it’s a ringtone.

“Are you just going to ignore it?” The faint words float down to me through the quiet night air.

“Yes,” a harsh male voice barks back.

“But what if it’s . . .”

“I’m not answering!”

I try to recognize the voices, but they are muffled. It sounds like two men. I strain to make out the rest of the conversation.

“I’m sorry . . .”

“Stop apologizing.” The man’s yell cuts through the air and fear spikes through me at his harsh tone. “Let’s just clean up this mess and put it behind us. Now where do you think you hit her?”

My heart accelerates as the words register.

“Over there, see the railing.”

His words spark in my brain. I remember my body tumbling, yellow circles flashing in front of me—two of them, next to each other.

Bright circles swerving toward me.

I open my eyes.

Headlights
.

I watch them swerve in my mind’s eye, over the road, then straight toward me. I gasp.

And just like that, I remember everything.

My boots tap sharply on the hard road, the loose gravel along the edge jumps away from me as if sensing my wrath.

I can’t get over what an asshole Trent was. I cross my arms and shiver, trying to forget the feel of his hands on my thigh, the terse bite of his voice when he yelled at me . . . and the disappearing red lights as he drove away, leaving me lost in the darkness.

There are no streetlights hindering the brilliant glow of stars in the night sky. It’s probably around midnight, but I can’t see my watch face in the dim light; I can barely see two steps in front of me.

A cool wind whistles through my clothing and I wish, yet again, that I hadn’t chosen to wear a sleeveless shirt with a plunging V-neck. Maybe Trent was right. Maybe I should have just given in and done it with him. I have so many times before.

I could stop to put my jacket on, but I don’t want to—the frigid air feels punishing, a reminder that this is my fault, and a part of me likes it.

My lower lip wobbles as a meltdown sets in. I struggle to hold it together. I have no idea where I am or how long it will take me to walk home . . . I don’t even know which direction home is.

The beers I drank swirl in my stomach.

I reach into my bag and fish around for my phone, but come up empty-handed. And then I remember . . . I took it out in the car to text Amber. But then Trent started kissing me and in his usual sly way, slipped the phone from my hands so he’d have my full attention.

It looks like I won’t be calling anyone. I grit my teeth and keep walking, picking up my pace.

The distant sound of an engine distracts me. The faint glow of headlights appears behind me and I smile. Trent feels guilty and is back to apologize. I plan on giving him hell for it.

I spin and stick out my thumb like a hitchhiker, then change my mind and raise my middle finger instead. Sure, I run the risk of him shooting straight past me, but Trent deserves to grovel just a little. He can’t get away with treating me like his little plaything, then ditching me when I don’t capitulate.

My smirk drops away when the car crests the hill and I realize the approaching vehicle isn’t Trent’s car. The headlights are sitting too close to the road. Trent drives a Jeep Cherokee and this looks more like a sports car. I drop my hand, hiding my rude gesture, and paste on a sweet smile. Maybe the driver will take pity on me and offer me a ride.

As the car descends toward me, I become increasingly aware of the fact that it is swerving erratically across the road. A sudden fear ripples up my spine. Can he not see me?

“Hey!” I wave my arms to try and get him to slow down, but he keeps moving forward, oblivious to my helpless plight. The car drifts into the other lane before jerking back in my direction.

I gasp and move to the very edge of the road. Gravel tumbles down the steep embankment behind me as my legs hit the guardrail. The car swerves closer.

I turn to make an escape, but it is too late.

The headlights illuminate my body for a second before pain sears through me. I scream as my body is thrown over the guardrail.

It’s like being in a tumble dryer as I roll down the hill, pinecones and needles piercing my skin. I crash into a tree trunk and my descent comes to an abrupt stop. A loud crack rings like a gunshot inside my head, rattling my brain. I roll away from the tree with a groan. As I try to reach for my temple, scorching pain radiates up my arm, a hot knife of agony that steals the air from my lungs. I scream and squeeze my eyes shut. My stomach jerks and I feel its contents shifting north. I cover my mouth, but it’s no use. Every retch hurts my convulsing body. I breathe deep and lurch for the ground one last time. I lay my head back, an aching thump echoing inside my skull. Squinting up at the fuzzy blackness, I try to make out the haunting shadows above me. I whimper softly as everything tumbles forward, and I feel as though the world is falling on top of me.

“Do you see anything?” a voice says, and my brain finally rips free from the clutches of my memory. My breath comes hard and fast as I process the images—the swerving car, the slam of metal careening into my body, the tumble down the hill.

A drunk driver hit me, and left me here to die. But now he’s back. I suck in a lungful of air and try to steady my erratic pulse.

My eyes dart up the hill as the voices come into focus.

“Not yet. But she’s here. There’s no way she’s still alive.” The harsher voice makes my skin crawl.

“Please don’t say that.”

I lick my cracked lips, my tongue feeling swollen and sluggish.

“You better hope she isn’t. Do you have any idea the repercussions your little stunt could have on the entire family?”

The statement jolts me.

“Your life is over if this gets out. Do you understand?” The deep voice is gravelly, yet strained with desperation. “No graduation, no scholarships—nothing. Not to mention how bad it will make me look.”

“I . . .”

“You’ll be doing jail time. You wouldn’t last a day in prison.” He spits out the words and then I hear a dry twig snap. “I won’t let that happen to you.”

“What are you saying?” The other guy sounds just as scared as I feel.

There’s a long pause, filling the night air with ominous dread. My heart thunders as I wait for the reply.

“We have to find her and . . . and bury her . . . dead or alive.”

My heart stops for second, the words striking me like a battering ram.

Panicky breaths force their way through my lips in rapid succession. I have to fight to keep my body still. I reel my lucid mind in and beg myself to stay silent.

Terror swirls through my brain. They’re going to kill me. They may be hesitant about doing it, but that won’t stop them. There’s obviously too much at stake. Whoever those men are up the hill, they’ve come to finish the job.

A beam of light grazes the ground to my right, and my breath catches. I scan the forest floor for some kind of weapon, but there is nothing but dried sticks and rotting leaves. My fingers are clumsy and stiff, and the pain in my body is so excruciating that I don’t dare move. If they spot me, it’s all over.

The light bounces around for another a minute, then finally, it snaps off.

“This is impossible,” one voice huffs. “We’re not going to be able to search this whole area by flashlight!”

A frustrated sigh follows. “It’s safer this way. We can’t risk being seen in broad daylight. People will ask questions.”

“They’re already asking questions. Everyone’s talking about this!”

A loud curse echoes through the air. “We’ll come back in the morning, have a proper hunt, and finish this.” The voice drops low and menacing. “And God help me if you ever do something this stupid again. You’re going to wish you’d never been born.”

Two doors slam and a car engine fires up. I have to wait an eternity for them to drive away. My heart slowly returns to its normal thud, but a low-level panic still echoes through me. Come morning, I am a dead girl.

“Dale,” I whisper into the crisp night air. “What do I do?”

I can feel myself growing weak. The limbs that were throbbing yesterday are starting to go numb. I need water. My sluggish eyes struggle to stay open.

“Dale. I can’t let them do this to me. My parents won’t survive this,” I croak. “What do I do?”

A tear slides down my cheek, but I don’t have the energy to brush it away.

“I need you to find me.” My head lolls to the side. “Find me. Please find me.”

I lie there for what feels like hours, until my breath is no more than a shallow death rattle and I can barely feel my limbs. I nearly crumple with relief when the world begins to spin and the darkness takes me once more.