Page 27 of As the Rain Falls
“It really d.. It does.”
The rescue team wouldn’t give us any details, not until she got taken out of the car with no heartbeat. Someone stupidly tried CPR and nearly broke her rib cage in the process.
Beckett had to beg them to stop.
Like,actuallybeg.
He didn’t speak a single word as he carried Lucia away from the river, and we all blamed the shock at the time. He just… sat. Beckett sat on the muddy ground and hugged her dead body for a very long time. He ignored everyone who came close and tried to talk to him.
I don’t like to think about it—about how he had to be physically dragged away from her.It felt heartless and almost exploitative to watch while doing nothing to stop it. Nobody moved a finger, not even as he cried, asking to keep her for longer.
The police just covered her face, and Beckett kept gritting each word like it took everything in him to be able to do so. His mind had completely shut down, and he wouldn’t stop stuttering.Beckett does that a lot, especially when he feels nervous.
“I know I’m, like, younger.” I place a strand of hair behind my ear, gesturing around as I speak. “By a few years, and all that.”
Two years precisely.It really isn’t all that much.Beckett still gives me a side-glance, his dimple popping again as the corner of his lips twitches.
“And all that, huh?”
I roll my eyes and bite my lips before I speak again, “I’m just saying. I’m here for you if you ever want to talk.”
He doesn’t look at me, and I start to feel like I might be pushing it. I bite my nail, wanting to bite my tongue.
“I mean, only if you want to say something. It’s not like you owe me any—”
“Angelina got released from the hospital,” Beckett cuts me off, his voice sounding more strained than before. “Her mother gave me a call the other day.”
I make a surprised sound.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“How is she?” I ask, genuinely feeling curious about it.
“We haven’t talked much since she got admitted,” he tells me, sounding almost ashamed of it. “I wanted to call her, but then I didn’t.”
“Oh.” I nod in understanding. “I’m guessing she’s not coming back to school anytime soon.”
Beckett shakes his head and says, “I don’t know, Cass. I guess not.”
Angelina Cardoso is, well, she was Lucia’s best friend.The two girls were often seen together and shared the same bad reputation.Even now that Lucia is gone, it’s still hard for me to picture one without the other.
In my eyes, Lucia and Angelina are still a pair. I always saw them as the average cool girls in the movies. Cool girls who looked older, dressed older, and behaved older sometimes too.
Unfortunately, that kind of attitude never works in a small place like Le Port, where people are quick to make assumptions that somehow last forever and everybody knows everyone. Now that Lucia is gone, I mean. Her name is kind of being dragged through the mud.
It’s the spectacle effect of it all, I think.They’re vultures, and Lucia…
She is definitely a carcass.
Angelina becomes one too by association. That’s what happens when things get out of hand, which is why it’s so important to keep some things about ourselves private. The less people know about you, the less they can ruin, and all that.
Lucia was never one to care about what others had to say about her, but she would have cared a little more, I guess, if she had known how much it would turn out to hurt others. She just wasn’t given enough time.
“She was really sick for a while…” Beckett trails off, sounding lost.
After a moment of silence, he clears his throat and speeds up to pass another truck headed to the city. I stare at the window, watching as the scenery around us turns into a green blurry sight.
