Page 2 of Defect
“Then you’re getting Sierra’s number when we get there.” He held his hand out and I met it with a confirmation slap.
“That’s my twin.” He threw a punch at me and I blocked it before getting into the car beside Mom.
“Yall out there talking about girls? Which one is it this time?” She asked before pulling off.
“Girls? We wouldn’t dare talk about girls, Mother. We were talking about homework,” I smirked at her. She rolled her eyes and merged onto the busy main road. I slipped my headphones on over my ears and listened to the new HER album. I was counting down the minutes until I got to talk to Sierra.
My phone buzzed while I held it in my hands and I looked down to see a text from Everett.
Evil Twin: You better get her number. If you don’t I will.
Me: You won’t do shit. What are you going to say if she doesn’t give it to me? You know she’s the type that only notices me if I’m with you.
Evil Twin: Ez, you look just like me so you’re fly as fuck. Comes with the territory, twin. If she notices me then she definitely notices you.
Evil Twin: Plus she let you talk her ear off all fucking night.
Me: Point taken.
Evil Twin: Well then, get to work the minute this truck pulls up.
Evil Twin: Make me proud.
I sent him a middle finger emoji for good measure and I heard him snort through the music in my headphones.
I looked up just in time to see the traffic light turn red. I wanted to see how close we were to school. We had about five minutes. I glanced down at my phone again and then my body flew forward and everything went black.
Black.
Black.
Black.
…
EZRA
I woke up in pulses of consciousness.
One pulse of light. One pulse of sound. Then blackness again.
One pulse of thought. One pulse of pain. Then blackness again.
It went on and on. I had no sense of time passed. I was in a void. I was floating in and out of reality. One moment I was there and then the next I wasn’t. I had no idea where I was when I wasn’t aware. I only knew that I was determined to hold on to the pulses a little longer each time
That determination must have worked because I was conscious enough to open my eyes during one of my longer pulses. Low lights and rhythmic beeps greeted me like old friends I knew but didn’t remember.
Soft fuzzy shapes grew sharper lines the longer I forced my eyes to stay open. God, I wanted to close them. My eyelids felt like stone. The promise of sleep never felt better. I fought it though.
I made myself stare at one point. One lime green blob across from me that blurred in and out of focus with every heavy, slow blink I took. I stared at it for what felt like hours but what the fuck did I know about the passage of time? It could have only been minutes. My perception of everything felt skewed and wrong. Time seemed to pass too slowly and too fast at the same time.
So I laid there with limbs made of cement and a brain full of fluff, staring at the lime green blob until I could make out a swoosh on the front and a black strap snaking to the side. It was a bag. A Nike bag.
Everett’s bag.
I tried to sit up but everything inside my body screamed to life with excruciating pain and stiffness. A memory slammed into me out of nowhere and rendered me still.
Metal on metal crunching.
