The Last Best Kiss (23 page)

“Don’t try to move her.”

“We just put her on her side—so she couldn’t choke if she vomited water. That’s okay, right?” I’m suddenly terrified I did the wrong thing, but he just stares at me blankly.

“Is she going to be all right?” Oscar asks him.

“God, I hope so,” he says. “I’m not a doctor—I just work for the hotel. What happened?” He stoops over, peering at her. “Is that blood? Holy shit. Sorry. Why is she bleeding?”

“She dove into the pool.”

“Headfirst?” the guy says with horror. “Are you all crazy? That pool is only four feet deep—there are No Diving signs everywhere.”

“We told her to stop,” Finn says. His voice is so uncertain and high that he sounds like a little kid. We probably all do right now. I know I
feel
like one—like a scared, stupid little kid. I want some adult to take over and take care of Lily and make everything okay again—but I need an adult who knows more than I do, and I don’t think this guy does. “She didn’t listen. She just kept going.”

“Was she drunk?” he asks. His eyes are hard as he glares around at each of us. Hard and weary. I know what he’s thinking. He doesn’t like teenagers in his hotel: they make his job harder, and they do stupid things like this.

I shake my head but don’t elaborate.

Hilary says, “I have to tell my dad. But I don’t have my phone.” I look up at her. She’s visibly shivering and clutching herself, still in that wet bikini, her eyes wild and unfocused. “What should I do, Anna? I can’t leave her. But I have to call my dad.”

“Is your father here?” asks the hotel guy.

“He’s probably still at the music festival. I don’t know. We have to tell him. But he’ll kill me. Is she going to be all right? What if she’s not? Why isn’t she moving?” Her words are turning into a wail.

I’m still squatting down, so I grab hold of her ankle and squeeze it firmly. I tilt my head back so I can look up at her. “Hil. We just have to deal right now, okay? You can fall apart later. Go upstairs and put on some dry clothes and get your phone and wallet so you can go to the hospital. You can tell your dad to meet us there once we know which one it is. Okay?”

“I don’t want to leave her.”

“That’s why you have to get changed. You can’t go to the hospital like that, and you need to stay with her.” I turn to Oscar, who’s still kneeling next to me. “Will you take Hilary upstairs and help her get ready and bring her back down? You should get changed too. Finn and I will stay with Lily for now, and then we’ll get changed once you’re back. Right?” I look at Finn, who seems stunned but manages to nod.

Oscar stands up and takes Hilary by the elbow and steers her toward the lobby. “Pack up some stuff for Lily,” I call after them. “Some clothes and whatever else she might need.” Oscar raises his hand in an
I got you
gesture. But Hilary’s head just sags forward. No response. They disappear into the lobby.

Then we wait for a while. The hotel guy, Finn, and me. All of us crouching over Lily’s body, not doing anything to or with it, because what can we do? She’s on her side, breathing but unconscious, her pants sodden, her mouth still leaking dark-looking water, her hair sticky with blood. I don’t have the guts or knowledge to start poking around to see how bad the wound is.

It occurs to me that I’m very cold, my bathrobe soaked through from my wet bathing suit, the night air freezing. But it’s like my body is far away from me, and I note how I’m shivering with an almost clinical detachment. It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that Lily needs to open her eyes and make us all angry at her for scaring us so much.

“I shouldn’t have let go of her,” Finn mutters, almost to himself, after we’ve waited there in silence for a minute.

“I should have kept the pool gate locked while the music festival was in town,” the hotel guy says morosely. “I should have known something like this would happen.”

Hil and Oscar reappear just as we hear the sirens of the arriving ambulance. Lucy and Phoebe and Eric are with them, dressed in sweatpants and hoodies. I don’t waste time talking to them, just jump to my feet and haul Finn up next to me.

“Come on,” I say. “We need to get changed so we can go to the hospital with everyone else.” I tug him toward the lobby, and at first he seems reluctant to walk away—keeps twisting around like he needs to keep an eye on Lily—but then he suddenly seems to get that there’s time pressure and speeds up and runs into the lobby and then I say, “Let’s take the stairs—it’ll be faster,” so we find the door to the stairs and run up and then I open the girls’ room with my key—it’s lucky I already put on my bathrobe, since it’s in the pocket—and that’s when he realizes he doesn’t have his, that it’s still with his T-shirt down by the pool. He hits himself angrily in the head, but I remind him that our rooms connect and he can get in that way, so he follows me inside. Once the door closes behind us, he stops for a moment and just stands there.

“Anna,” he says, and I look at him and I see how his face is screwing up like a little kid’s who’s been hurt, so even though we don’t have time for it, I put my arms around his neck and he buries his face in my shoulder and just shakes for a while. I don’t know if he’s crying or just shuddering, but I give him about ten seconds and then I gently push him away and say, “We have to get ready, or the ambulance will leave without us.”

“Right,” he says, without meeting my eyes, and races into the other room, where I’m guessing he’s doing what I’m doing, which is tearing off my bathing suit without any concern about whether or not he might see, because right now I care a lot more about speed than modesty. My suit’s off within seconds, and it takes about one minute longer for me to throw my clothes back on. I stick my feet in my flip-flops, grab my purse and key, and call over to Finn, who calls back that he’s just about ready. He reappears in the doorway in jeans and a sweatshirt, and I say, “Let’s go.”

We race out the door and back down the stairs. It’s a good thing we rushed: they’re already lifting a stretcher with Lily on it into the back of the ambulance. She’s encased in one of those neck-immobilizing braces. The others are all grouped a few feet away, clutching one another and watching. Hilary sees me and grabs my arm. “They’ll only take two of us in the ambulance—one in back and one in front. What should we do, Anna?”

“You should ride in the back with Lily—oh, did you reach your father?”

She nods. “He’s meeting us there.”

“Finn should ride in front.” I figure he’ll want to get there as soon as possible. “The rest of us will get a cab. Eric, go ask the front desk to call for a cab to get here as soon as possible.” He races off obediently. “Do you guys know which hospital?”

They all shake their heads, but fortunately the EMT guy overhears me and gives me the hospital name, and then he helps Hilary up into the back, settling her into a seat at Lily’s side. She stares at me imploringly as he closes the door. I have no idea what it is she wants me to do. Make it all go away, I guess.

Finn goes to the front of the ambulance and gets in as the driver takes his own place, and they’re off in a second, sirens blaring.

“What did they say?” I ask the others. “Is she going to be okay?”

Lucy says, “They didn’t tell us anything. Just put that thing around her neck and an oxygen mask on her and an IV. But they didn’t say
anything
.” She digs her fingers into my forearm. “What if she’s not okay, Anna?” There’s no answer to that question. I just shake my head. Lucy shakes my wrist hard. “What happened? Why did you guys let her dive?”

“We didn’t. Finn tried to stop her. She wouldn’t listen to him.”

“What if she broke her neck?” Phoebe asks in a tiny voice. “What if she’s crippled for life? I read an article once—”

I cut her off quickly. I don’t want to hear about some girl who was paralyzed for life. “Her head was bleeding, so it’s probably not her neck.”

“It could be both,” says Eric, who has returned in time to contribute that helpful possibility. “Our cab will be here in five minutes.”

I tell the others that if they need wallets or phones or to change their clothing they should take care of that before the cab comes, and everyone races back inside except for me and Oscar.

We look at each other.

“This is so unbelievably awful,” he says. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Oscar sound so serious and so sad. “I keep seeing that moment over and over again—Finn shouting at her to stop and her diving . . . And then . . . her arm rising up in the water . . .” He stops.

“She’ll be okay,” I say. “She has to be okay.” And for the first time—now that it’s all quiet and I don’t have to figure out what to do next anymore—I burst into tears.

Oscar holds out his arms, and I move into them. He hugs me close. “If she is okay, it’s thanks to you,” he says. “You were the only one of us who was thinking clearly. I didn’t know you were so good in a crisis.”

“Me neither,” I whimper into his neck. “I wish I still didn’t.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

eighteen

B
y the time our cab leaves us at the ER entrance, Lily’s already been taken into a treatment room, and Finn is sitting alone in the small, deserted waiting room. He jumps up from a metal chair as soon as he sees us.

“Her dad got here a few minutes ago,” he says. In the fluorescent light, his face is pale and slightly green. “They only let family members go back.”

“You okay?” I ask.

“Not really. You?”

“Not really.”

We all find seats. I sit down next to Oscar and then Finn takes the chair on my other side. He keeps glancing at me. Like he’s waiting for something. Forgiveness? Consolation? Punishment?

It doesn’t matter. I can’t give him anything right now. I’m exhausted.

No one feels like talking. We pull out our cell phones and stare at them.

“Everyone’s asleep back home,” Phoebe says, after a little while. “No one’s answering my texts.”

“It’s almost two,” Lucy says with a huge yawn. “Of course they’re asleep.”

“Why do things like this always happen late at night?” Eric asks.

“Probably because people are drunk or stoned late at night,” Phoebe says.

Eventually Hilary and her father emerge from the back area. We jump up and rush at them, all of us asking if she’s okay.

Mr. Diamond puts up his hands, holding us off, shushing us. “They don’t know yet. She’s definitely had a concussion. The good news is her spine’s okay. But they’re doing a CT scan now to make sure there isn’t any bleeding around her brain.”

“That’s what that actress died of,” Hilary adds in a wavering voice. “The
Parent Trap
mom. She hit her head, and they thought she was okay, and then she died.” She starts crying. I expect her dad to take her in his arms, but he doesn’t. He crosses them instead.

“I’m really disappointed in all of you,” he says. “No—horrified by you. What you did tonight verged on criminal.” His angry glare turns toward the sobbing daughter at his side. “Especially you. That you could just stand there and let her do something so dangerous—”

“It’s not Hilary’s fault. It’s mine.” Finn steps forward. He pauses, and I can see the muscles in his throat working, but when he speaks, his voice is clear. “I was closest to her. I saw where she was heading. I should have tackled her or something. But I didn’t. Hilary was too far to do anything about it. I wasn’t.”

“Remind me who you are again,” says the twins’ father, giving him one of those up-and-down looks that make you want to run and hide.

Finn holds his ground and says his full name.

Mr. Diamond nods slowly. “Well, Finn, if that’s true—if you stood there without doing a thing while my daughter dove into a shallow pool—then you may be criminally liable for failure to act. And even if I decide not to press charges, just know that for the rest of your life, you’ll have to live with the fact that my daughter’s life was put at risk by your negligence.”

Finn doesn’t argue. He just hangs his head and takes it. Maybe he thinks he deserves the abuse.

But I don’t. I step toward Mr. Diamond, my chest pounding with anger. “Stop blaming everyone! I’m sorry Lily’s hurt—we all are—we love her—but it’s her own fault.” I realize I’ve balled my hands into fists at my sides. “If you’re upset that she’s hurt, be upset that she’s hurt—don’t start attacking the people who care about her.”

He looks at me like I’ve just crawled out from under a rock and he doesn’t want me to get on his shoe. “I’m simply being honest. You all let her down.”

“No,” I say. “She let
us
down. She should have listened to Finn when he told her to stop.”

There’s so much anger in his face, I’m afraid of him, and it’s hard for me to keep my chin up.

Lucy’s all about defusing tense situations, so she speaks up now. “What about the blood on her head?” she asks him. “How bad is the wound?”

He slowly swivels away from me and toward her, passing his hand wearily over his forehead. “It’s not too bad,” he says. “It’s a long but shallow cut. She’ll need a few stitches. They’re not sure what she hit down there—maybe just the pool floor, but there’s a chance there was something metal like a rung, so she needs a tetanus shot to be safe—but the actual cut isn’t the problem. It’s the possibility of internal bleeding from the trauma. It’s not good that she’s still unconscious.”

“What can we do?” Lucy asks.

“Nothing. Go back to the hotel and get some sleep.” He turns to Hilary. “You too.”

She shakes her head vehemently. “I’m staying. I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. And if she wakes up, I want to be here.” Then she gasps a little and says, “
When
.
When
she wakes up.”

“Couldn’t we all wait here?” Lucy asks. “We’d rather.”

“The last thing Lily needs right now is people crowding in on her. Hilary will let you all know how she’s doing. Do you need money for a cab back?” He’s already reaching for his wallet when a small figure comes flying in from the street entrance, calling out to us.

“Where is she? Is she okay? Where’s my baby?” It’s the twins’ mother.