Hanging limply against my seatbelt, I gasp in excruciating pain. There’s so much of it, I can’t pinpoint where it’s coming from.
Everywhere, all at once.
It’s blinding.
The pain in my chest is hard to breathe around — radiating down my arms, throbbing like a heartbeat. I try to move my limbs, but they don’t cooperate. I taste hot copper in my mouth and know it’s not a good sign.
In the distance, sirens approach, growing louder and louder.
Are they for me or my parents?
I hope its the latter.
The world outside the crunched cab of my truck is fading a bit more out of focus with each passing second. It’s all rather hazy; as though my head is stuck inside a ball of cotton. My thoughts are equally muddled.
Time is a funny thing. More fickle than funny, actually — making promises and breaking them. Handing you hope for a future and then snatching it away.
You always think you’ll get more minutes on the clock than you do. More play time on the field than you’re given. You see the stories of lives cut short on the nightly news… you read the sad headlines scrawled across the morning paper… and you think to yourself,That will never be me.
How vastly unfair to learn you are not the exception, but the rule.
Something warm and wet is dripping into my eyes, making it hard to see. It might be blood. I lack the energy to search for its source. I let my lids flutter closed, embracing the cold reality of my present.
Because the present is all I have left.
One hour in the past, I was holding the girl of my dreams in the circle of my arms.
One hour in the future, I was meant to walk across the graduation state to collect my diploma.
And now, instead…
I’m dead.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
JOSEPHINE
Where are you?
Where are you?
Where are you?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
ARCHER
Okay,so I lied.
I’m not dead.
I just feel like it.
Blinking awake, I wince at the bright fluorescent light beaming directly into my retinas. Machines beep all around me as they monitor my vitals — a mechanical din that intensifies my headache tenfold. My right temple throbs, swollen to twice it’s normal size. I must’ve cut my head open.
I try to lift my arm to feel the gash, but meet unexpected resistance. I glance down for the first time and feel my stomach turn to stone.
A metal handcuff is fastened neatly around my left wrist.