Free Going Dark by Robison Wells

ONE
    THE POLICE TOLD MAMA THERE wasn’t anything that Celia could have done. The other driver never tried to put on the brakes, and even if Celia had been looking in her rearview mirror there was nowhere she could have gone—the light in front of us was red, and traffic was heavy.
    I don’t remember the accident. I don’t remember anything but sitting in the car and talking. We’d been saying something about getting Slurpees, and how Celia wanted to go out to Lake Mead and cannonball into the water. I remember imagining us both stripping down to our bras and underwear and plunging into the cool lake.
    The first memory I have after the accident is lying in a hospital bed, my neck in a brace, asking what happened to the other driver. They wouldn’t tell me anything. Celia was in the bed next to mine, but she wasn’t in a brace—she was sitting up, a bandage around her head and some blood on her clothes.
    I wasn’t in pain, and I remember thinking that was strange, because I felt broken. It was the meds, of course. I was on some kind of painkiller that made everything slow and muddy.
    Mama was praying over me, sitting in a chair between my bed and Celia’s. Papa was standing in the doorway, his face in a frown that was sad and . . . something else. Angry?
    What little energy I had was focused on the ceiling tiles. It strained my eyes to look at anything else, and straining my eyes made me feel like I was going to throw up.
    Mama pressed something into my hand.
    â€œIt’s my Saint Christopher medal, Krezi,” she said, and she began praying again.
    The patron saint of travelers. That seemed like closing the barn once the horse had escaped, but I didn’t say anything to her. I held the medal and stared at the ceiling.
    They did tests on me. There must have been something wrong with my face, because each new nurse that came in stared and made a comment like, “It looks like you’ve had better days” or “Did they already get you some pain meds, honey?”
    I dozed on and off, but I don’t think it was really sleep—it was just unconsciousness. Blank and empty.
    After what felt like days, but was probably only hours, I was awake and sitting up. The doctor announced that I didn’t have a spinal injury, and Mama praised Jesus and Our Lady. I was too drugged to feel anything, good or bad.
    I had a concussion, the doctor said, and a broken nose. And I had a fever of 102, which seemed to worry everyone most of all. They made me stay in the ER for a long time, even after they’d released Celia. But once I’d endured several more hours, another scan, and another wait for another doctor, they decided that the fever wasn’t related to the concussion. It was the flu, or a cold, or something else. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention. I was thinking about the black circles forming around my eyes and nose, and about how awful I’d look when school started next week. By then the bruises would be a sickly yellow green. A perfect way to start high school.
    It was nighttime when I got released, but the ever-present heat of August in Las Vegas still hung in the air, adding to my nausea as an orderly wheeled me out to Papa’s waiting minivan.
    I cautiously took a few steps across the asphalt and climbed into the backseat. The medicine was wearing off, and I could feel a heavy pressure in my face, like my nose had been stuffed full of tissue. My head didn’t hurt exactly, but I was dizzy and still felt—I don’t know. I felt off .
    Papa drove quietly, and Mama seemed to have tired herself out praying. Papa was probably thinking about the hospital bill. Maybe Mama was, too. I know I was.
    But that turned out to be the least of our problems. Because when we went home, I got in bed, and then burned the house down.

TWO
    CELIA WAS ALREADY HALF-ASLEEP, BUT she opened her eyes when I came in. She reached for the lamp on the table