Wrecked Read Online Free PDF Page B

takes my hands and rubs them.
    “She’s going to be fine,” she says again, loud.
    “I’m really sorry” My teeth are chattering again. My eye radiates ache through my head. “I’m really, really sorry.”
    “It’s not your fault,” Mr. Gerson says. “They say there was a tree branch. Cameron must have swerved to avoid it.”
    A tree branch. I hadn’t heard that yet. But if Cameron swerved to avoid a tree branch, couldn’t I have swerved to avoid Cameron? I start to think about the alcohol and how drunk I was at first, and then how drunk Ellen was.
    “Ellen doesn’t have a drinking problem or anything,” I tell them. “I mean, sometimes this year she would get pretty drunk at a party, but only twice.” Oh my God. She’s going to kill me for telling them this.
    “Okay,” her father says to me. His red eyes start welling up.
    “We were always careful, though,” I go on. I can’t seem tohelp myself. “We always were with each other, and we never drank with anybody we didn’t know.” Well. Almost never.
    “Okay,” Mr. Gerson says again. His eyes are all wet, but he doesn’t cry.
    He works for the same bank as my dad, only in some other area. Something higher up, I think. I don’t know. They don’t ever see each other at work. They have totally different responsibilities. And even though Mr. Gerson’s got some big job and isn’t a teller, I suddenly imagine how calm he’d be during a robbery. Some guy with a stocking over his head would be pointing the gun right at Mr. Gerson, and Mr. Gerson would just face him squarely, all steady.
    “And she doesn’t do drugs or anything, and it’s not like she needs to drink when we go out. She doesn’t do it at every party.” Which, now that I hear myself saying it, might be sort of a lie.
    “Okay,” Mr. Gerson says a third time.
    “Don’t be mad at her,” I tell them. When I say that, Mrs. Gerson starts to nod, but then her face collapses like Ellen’s lung, and she’s crying, and seeing Mrs. Gerson afraid is almost as shocking as Cameron Polk being dead.
    “It’s okay,” Mr. Gerson tells her. He turns from me to face her. “It’s okay”
    He sounds like that policeman from the accident: “Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.” But it’s not okay. Nothing is okay.
    The Gersons let me see her for ten minutes. They leave the room for five.
    “I called you,” I tell Ellen. That whooshing sound would put me to sleep if it weren’t paired with all those tubes and things,snaking right into her body or disappearing under the blanket. Today her left leg is over the covers. There’s a bright white cast from just above her knee all the way to her toes.
    “I left a message. Actually, I left eight. Did you get them?” I know she didn’t because cell phones aren’t allowed in hospitals. There’s no phone in here. She can’t talk anyway, with that tube in her mouth.
    Her hair is dirty. It looks like somebody brushed it, but it really needs a shampoo.
    “Pretty soon it’s not going to be cell phones anymore,” I say. She makes a sound, and I lean forward to listen better, but then she stops. I notice this other machine. A squarish clear plastic box with water in it. The water is making all these bubbles. I can’t figure out what it’s for.
    “It’s going to be these little chips that get implanted behind our ears. I read about it just now, while I was waiting to have my eye checked out. They didn’t have any People magazines, so I had to read Scientific American instead. Actually, I didn’t really read it. Mostly just the headline. Things are blurry up close with my right eye. But I’m allowed to use my left one. And TV is okay.”
    Ellen opens her eyes, and I move to where it seems like they’re focusing, but by the time I adjust my position, they’re closed again.
    “No school for a week,” I say. “I’m supposed to stay really still, and I have to wear this shield thing when I’m asleep and in a car.” Now she moans. Definitely a moan.