Free The Rapture by Liz Jensen Page B

she interrupts breezily. 'Coincidence. That's what you're thinking, right?'
    I smile. 'But I admit it was odd.'
    She cackles but says nothing. We move in silence for a while.
    'So this car crash you had,' Bethany says abruptly. 'Fucking spectacular, eh.' I am confounded. I haven't told her anything about the accident. How does she know it was a car crash? What does she mean by spectacular? 'Anyway, tell me something. I'm curious. What's it like being '
    'Disabled?' I offer, to regain control, to buy time, as we round a bend. ' Confined to a wheelchair?'
    'I was going to say challenged ,' she ripostes merrily. 'Or differently abled, yeah?' It seems that today is a good day.
    'I'm fine with paralysed.'
    She stops and closes her eyes. 'He was driving, right?' she says, knowledgeably.
    My brain jams, then restarts with an internal thud, catapulting me into the offensive. 'OK, so tell me more,' I say. 'Since you know, let's hear the rest.' But I immediately regret it. In giving in to my anger, I've betrayed myself.
    'I can't see the details. But I know the result.'
    So do I, and so does everybody, big deal, I think, and move on. But how can she know who was driving? Because men usually drive? Just another 'lucky guess'? For a few minutes there's no sound but the crunch of gravel under her feet, and the quieter press of my wheels. If I give her something, she might give me something in return.
    'OK,' I say. 'Here's the short version. It's night-time. He's driving, as you suspected.'
    'Knew.'
    'Well, you knew right. Anyway he loses control, the car veers off the road, it rolls over a few times, I land in some mud, and when I wake up in hospital they ask if I'm aware of a loss of feeling anywhere.'
    My voice has stayed calm but my heart is bashing and I'm unbearably hot, and suffused with a feeling of disgust, as though I have rolled over a slug and it's stuck to my wheel and any minute I'll feel the slime of its prolapsed innards against my palm. Next to me, Bethany nods as if recognising the scenario. Nothing fazes her. On the contrary, what I've said seems to give her nourishment.
    'But it was your fault, right?' Like a lot of disturbed kids, Bethany has a sure instinct for locating one's jugular vein. I shut my eyes and stop the wheelchair. When I open them again, Rafik is at my side. I breathe in and out slowly.
    'In a way it was, and in another way it wasn't,' I say as evenly as I can, moving on. 'Depending on the mood I'm in on the day, Bethany. I wonder if there's anything that feels familiar in that, when you look at your own life?'
    But she isn't going to be side-tracked in that direction. Her refusal to countenance the past has shown no signs of erosion. The occasional biblical quotation - usually citing chapter and verse from Ezekiel, The malonians or the Book of Revelation - is the closest she comes to revealing influences from her life in the outside world. It could be months, or even years, before Bethany decides she trusts somebody enough to talk about her parents. If she ever does. And why would she? She'd have everything to lose, and precious little to gain. If whatever happened to her was bad enough to prompt her to kill her mother, then convince her that she herself had died -
    'So just how paralysed are you?' she asks. I've recovered now.
    'My legs don't function,' I answer, pushing my wheels faster. Rafik holds back; she stays alongside. 'I can't stand up or walk, but I can still swim. It's my arms that do the work.'
    'She can still swim,' she says, as though pondering it. 'But can she have sex?'
    I take a breath. It's the question everyone secretly wants to ask, in a normal world. But a maximum-security forensic hospital for criminally insane minors is not a normal world. 'I have no feelings below the waist. I'm what's called a T9 paraplegic, complete,' I reply. 'Meaning nothing much happening from the belly-button down. Or thereabouts.' Slowly, and with much experimentation, I discovered in rehab that I can