Page 82 of Our Secrets and Scars

“We probably just have a flat or something,” I tell her in a bid to ease her frustration. It doesn’t, of course. In fact, it makes it worse.

“And what the fuck do you know about cars?” she spits as the car rolls to a slow stop in the middle of Route 42.

“Don’t worry, girls, it’s probably nothing. Just stay where you are for now,” Papa says, jumping out of the car to look under the hood.

Mom follows, and the two of them stand there for a little while, both with their hands on their hips and perplexed expressions on their faces as they study something I can’t see.

“There’s something up with the engine,” Mom says, sticking her head back into the car. “We’re going to ring for a tow. So just try and be patient until they get here, okay?”

“No worries, Mama,” Bexley says, giving Mom a glowing smile so unlike the scornful expression she reserves just for me.

When she disappears back outside, walking with Papa onto the green beside the road with her phone to her ear, I turn to my sister. “You don’t always have to be such a bitch, you know?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re always so rude to me, Bex. It’s like you hate me sometimes. I keep trying to reach out to you, but it’s like you don’t even wanna be my sister anymore.”

She rolls her eyes. “You’re always so damn dramatic.”

It’s strange, this side of her. I’m the only person she allows to see it. The rest of the world gets her sunny side. Her flawless GPA side. Her head of the debate team, middle school valedictorian side. Her polite, respectful, butter wouldn’t fucking melt side.

And I get Bexley the bitch.

“I’m just being honest with you, Bex,” I tell her, my voice gentle and unconfrontational. “I miss you and I want my sister back.”

Her eyes soften a fraction, and I catch a small glimpse of the girl who used to match her clothing to mine long after our parents stopped dressing us. “I haven’t gone anywhere.”

I shrug in disagreement, making her heave an irritated sigh and look to the roof of the car as she gathers her thoughts. She unclicks her seat belt and shifts her body to face me.

“I don’t hate you,” she says, but her words are muffled slightly by the sound of screeching tires, “it’s just—”

Boom.

Her words are cut short by a tremendous explosion akin to the detonation of an atomic bomb. That’s what it feels like anyway, as my body is thrust upward, my head smashing into the window as the car is heaved into the air. The world turns upside down as we tumble over and over, directionless, and never-ending.

Shattering glass. Crunching metal. The sound of my mother screaming. Until, finally, darkness unlike any kind of darkness I’ve ever experienced before. Darker than the blackest sky, darker even than the dreams that often plague me in the middle of the night.

Is this what death is?An eternal, unrelenting blackness that burns your veins like fire?

It must be.

There’s nothing like this on the earth as I know it.

Something catches on the very edge of my periphery.

Golden embers. They cascade through the black, lighting it up for just the briefest of moments. And then the darkness comes for me once more, and suddenly, all I know is pain. Searing, unbearable pain.

Burning. Blazing. Blistering.

It’s everywhere, all over me. My face especially feels to have been set alight with roaring flame.

I was wrong before.

This isn’t death. It’s something worse.

It’s hell.

Where’s Bexley?

---