Free Would You by Marthe Jocelyn Page A

happened. But he still came home without seeing Joe.
    I look in my phone and I've got his number.
    I text him,
come down.
    I see his head silhouetted upstairs, looking out.
    I wave. He disappears, without a signal. Is he coming, or what?
    Why did this happen only to Claire and not to Joe? Did he jump out of the way? Did he try to save her?
    Did she break up with him?
    I hear the side door open, so I ride up the driveway.
    “Nat?”
    “Hey, Joe.”
    “How are you?”
    “Oh, you know,” I say. “Bad. How about you?”
    “Really bad.”
    I'm glad they don't have one of those lights, like we do, that pop on when a raccoon goes by. A raccoon or a skulking teenager.
    “I'm so messed up,” says Joe. “I keep thinking someone is going to shake me awake and tell me it was a nightmare. It's just so, just so …”
    And here's another reason boys cry: their girlfriends get hit by cars. Joe covers his face. I don't want to watch him, soI go to lean my bike against the wall, but it sways and twists and knocks into him while he's trying to pull it together.
    Then I lunge to catch the bike but Joe misunderstands and thinks I'm trying to embrace him. We end up standing there in this wrong hug, with the bike kind of pinned between us, and it's
so
awkward.
    I step back and get the bike set. I sit down on the little step by the door.
    “Have you seen her?” He sits next to me.
    “Yeah.”
    He wants to know but he's afraid, I can tell. I'm waiting to ask him, but I'm afraid too.
    “She's pretty bad,” I say.
    I think about today. I see her head and the gash and her swollen face and the tubes. I grope for the real Claire. The old Claire. I remember the prom photo taped to her mirror. Joe was her date, wearing a tuxedo, and they were so gorgeous it was ridiculous, like movie stars at a premiere. Now I can see her face, clear as clear. Her hair, darker than mine, cut so it would fall just right, no hokey updo for Claire.
    “She was crying,” says Joe. “She was telling me …” He stops, and when he talks again his voice cracks like a sad little kid's. “You can't tell anyone this.
Please
, don't tell. She was saying she thought we should, you know, spend the summer apart, because of going away in the fall. I couldn't even listen. I knew from the first sentence she was breakingup with me, and I felt like my heart stopped. I got all… well… I cried, Natalie. I cried. And then
she
started crying and she tried to hug me and I told her to get lost and I punched a telephone pole.”
    He holds out his knuckles, scraped and scabby. “See? And then I turned around and said, ‘I mean it! Get lost! I don't want your pity! Don't be nice to me while you're breaking up!’ And I was sort of yelling but I was hiccuping too, and that got me more pissed off. And Claire was crying so hard she must have … well, I guess she couldn't see properly. And she went… stumbling back across the sidewalk and turned around to cross the street and then … oh god…”
    He has a hand over his eyes and he shudders.
    “Did you … did you
push
her?” I say. “Is that why she—”
    “No! We were just, you know, mad, and …
emotional.
But then this car came out of nowhere and …
boom!”
Joe is whispering now. “Except it wasn't a boom…. The sound I remember was the brake grinding, like
eeeeee…
and a thud. A hollow thud. I keep hearing it, I keep trying to figure out what it sounded like….”
    “Like a body,” I say.
    Joe moans. It's miserable. Animal in pain.
    A light snaps on inside.
    “Oh Nat.” He grabs my arm and yanks me off the steps, around the corner of the house. “Ssssh! My mom—”
    We're in the dark near the garage. I can feel loops of hose on the wall next to me. Joe is leaning against the bricks, trying to recover his composure. The door opens.
    “Hello?” calls Mrs. Russell. “Is someone there?”
    Joe puts a hand over my mouth, but I twist away.
    “What?”
    “My parents said not to talk to you, or
anyone,”
he