Immortal Light: Wide Awake Read Online Free PDF Page A

probably
not the kind of person a young girl should be meeting in the dark.
But, her mind was defying all logic by insisting for some
inexplicable cosmic reason that she had to go back and find
him.
    The last turn was just thirty or so yards
ahead and Lucy looked down for only a second to make sure the blue
high-beams symbol was illuminated. Looking back up, she saw him,
standing on the side of the road in nothing but shorts and a
t-shirt. She gasped when she saw his face in her headlights. It was
him. It was Benjamin.
    As she passed him, she couldn’t decide whether
to turn around to look into the darkness behind her, or hit the
brakes. She only turned for a second when without warning, in a
flash of wet, matted hair, a deer walked into the Cavalier’s
headlights. Lucy screamed. She pulled back on her steering wheel
and slammed both feet on the brake pedal, but it was too late. Her
little car fish-tailed in the rain before slamming into the deer
with so much force that Lucy’s locked elbows popped free and her
whole upper body violently whiplashed before coming to a
stop.
    Lucy could feel her heart pounding
nearly out of her chest. With her hands still gripping tightly to
the wheel, she assessed her condition. She didn’t know if she was
hurt; she couldn’t tell because adrenaline was coursing through her
body. Everything was too confusing in the dark. She needed light,
but the only light she could see was that of her left headlight,
and it was pointing too far to the side to have remained unscathed
in the accident.
    Directly in front of her, Lucy
could see that the hood of her car was crumpled like a wave curling
into the shore. Steam or smoke wafted up from underneath. She just
sat in panic-stricken shock for a moment, watching, as her
quickened breathing fogged up the windshield.
    Just as she started to arrest her pulse a
little bit, Lucy saw movement in front of her. It was Benjamin, and
she got irrefutable evidence of that as he looked through the
driver’s window at her to see if she was okay.
    Lucy just nodded her head, more embarrassed
than hurt.
    She watched through the fogged window as
Benjamin bent down just inside the headlight’s rays. She could make
out his dark, wet hair plastered against his face. She was glad
that he was there, but she had no idea what he was doing. The deer
had to be dead, yet it was as though he were checking its vital
signs. The way the impact felt and from the look of her hood, there
was no reason to even bother checking. It was dead, and Lucy’s
heart sank knowing that she had killed the poor, innocent creature.
But then, she didn’t know what was really going on at all. Her
thoughts were traveling at light speed, and she didn’t know if she
had exaggerated the effects of the deer hitting the car, or if her
car was a mangled lump of scrap metal wrapped around the driver
seat and she was lucky to be alive. For all she knew, everything
was okay and it just felt worse than it was.
    Lucy shook her head to focus when
she saw Benjamin stand up. It was then that she decided to reach
for the door handle. As she gripped the lever, she stopped. The
sight in front of her only confirmed that she had overestimated the
entire event, yet she was amazed by what she saw. As she sat
staring out the windshield, she witnessed the deer stand up and
look at Benjamin. It was perfectly fine. Lucy’s neck was killing
her, but the deer jumped up as though it was startled from a light
sleep. All Lucy could do was watch as it leapt for the side of the
road and disappeared into the woods.
    Convinced that she still wasn’t
thinking clearly, she met Benjamin’s eyes through the windshield.
His expression was of sincere concern as he gently raised his
eyebrows and nodded his head in her direction to inquire again if
she was alright. Lucy answered with a nervous nod of her own and
followed him with her eyes as he came around to the driver’s side
door. She stared at him through the glass. As he bent down,