“Nothing. He was . . . He was in the middle of the road. I stopped fast and skidded. There was a tree.” I try to sit up. “I can sit up. It’s just a little achy.”
“Stay there.” Nick surveys me for damage. “Can I open your jacket?”
“Yeah.”
He shifts me around so that I’m pretty much lying across his lap. He unzips my jacket and pulls my running shirt and my Under Armour down from my neck a bit and says, “You’re bruising. Are those sirens for you? Did you call 9-1-1?”
“He did. My phone’s in there.” I gesture toward Yoko. “So is my laptop and my iPod and—”
“He called? The pixie?” Nick interrupts.
“He saved me. He pulled me out of the car before it caught fire.”
Nick snarls. His back goes rigid and his head whips up. “He did not save you. He made you crash. He probably only left you because you were too injured to kiss and turn.”
“That’s not true. He wants to know where the pixies are. I think he wants to let them out.”
Nick groans. “This is all my fault.”
I pull myself in closer to him and wrap my good arm around his neck, even though he’s trembling with rage. It pulses through him. I don’t want to argue. I’m too tired to argue. “It’s not your fault. And it’s fine.”
Nick draws in a ragged breath and I can tell that a tiny bit of tension leaves him. His big hand rests on my neck and he starts kissing my face with these tiny, gentle pecks. At the same time his fingers reach up and stroke my cheek. It feels so good. I feel so safe all of a sudden. But it can’t last, can it? Of course it can’t.
A fire truck peels in next to my car. I notice it doesn’t skid. I am the one who skids in crazy directions because I am the one who does reckless things and then doesn’t fess up. Firefighters jump out of the truck, hauling hoses. One of them starts down the road toward us.
“Nick, even though I let him go and now all this happened,” I start to explain, “I still don’t regret letting him go. He would have died.”
“And that would be a bad thing?” Nick snaps. He tilts his head back for a second and closes his eyes before he speaks again, and this time his voice is much milder. “You are too kind for your own good, Zara. You’ve got to learn to not be nice.” He kisses my forehead to take the sting of his words away. “Especially to pixies. Deal?”
I nod, but I can’t promise it. I can’t say, “Deal.” Instead, I say, “I’ll stop being nice when you stop taking chances.”
He shakes his head but we both know that I mean it and we both know that neither of us is going to back down, at least not anytime soon.
Grandma Betty slams out of the ambulance and power strides across the snow, speaking into her radio and hauling her EMT bag. Only a flicker in her eye betrays any emotion. She is all business. There are no hugs from her right now. She leans toward me, hovers over my face, and checks my eyes. “Pupils look good.”
I open my mouth to speak.
She silences me with a finger. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes crease even deeper. “Tell me your name.”
“Zara.”
“What state are you in?”
“Maine. Or consciousness?”
“Funny. Nice sarcasm, miss. Although you have learned from the best.” She starts to smile and then gets professional again. “Were you thrown?”
I don’t understand.
“From the vehicle,” she explains. “Were you thrown?”
“No.”
Her eyes narrow the way they do when she’s trying to figure things out. The wind whips her gray hair straight above her head. “How’d you get all the way over here, then?”
“I—I—”
I must take too long, because she interrupts me. “Did you move her, Nick?”
Nick shakes his head gently, I guess so he doesn’t hurt me too much. “I wasn’t here when it happened. She was tinked.”
Betty nods really quickly and switches gears. “Where’s it hurt?”
“My arm. The one I broke. My chest. My head and neck. It’s not too bad, though,” I explain as Betty directs the other EMT, this tall guy, Keith, who has movie-star hair and a very bad chin. They get a gurney-bed thing out.
“We’re going to move her,” Betty tells Nick.
“Excuse me. I am not ‘her.’ And I’m right here. And I can walk,” I complain, struggling to get up.
“No.” Betty slaps a big, ugly neck collar on me.
“I didn’t break my neck,” I insist as they lift me up.
“I’m not taking any chances,” she states. Her boots clomp down in the snow, hard and no-nonsense.
Nick gives me a sympathetic glance. He almost looks like he’s going to laugh. I twitch my nose at him, which makes him smile.
“Can I go in the ambulance with her?” he asks.
Betty thinks about it for a second.
“I can walk,” I say again. “People are staring at me.”
“Firefighters are not people. Firefighters are professionals, and it is their job to stare. Yes, you can come, Nick,” Betty says just as Issie and Devyn pull up. Issie flies out of the car and rushes toward us.
“Oh man, Zara! Did the pixies do this?” Is blurts out.
Keith’s head whips up and his mouth drops open. He stares at her. “Pixies?”
“The rock group,” Betty covers. “Zara listens to music far too loud. The Pixies are one of those old alternative groups from the 1980s.”
“Very retro,” Is says, trying to cover up. “Very old-school. But hip. Yeah. Zara’s hip. Oh man, Zara, did you break your hip?”
Nick’s hand lands on Issie’s shoulder. “Is, take a deep breath.”
“Deep breath?”
“Inhale and exhale,” Nick says calmly.
Some firefighters start yelling. There’s a heavy knocking sound by Yoko’s remains and then the clanking of metal hitting metal, the whirling of water through hoses. Nick shifts his weight and keeps talking to Issie like nothing else is happening. “And maybe take a step back so they can get Zara in the ambulance.”
“She’s going in the ambulance!” Issie exclaims. She reaches out and grabs my hand. “We’ll follow you the whole way. We’ll be right behind you. Do not worry. Okay? No worrying.”