The Moment Before

Chapter Fifteen

FIFTEEN

By the time I round the corner where I’d almost taken Sabine’s car over the edge, my eyes are so brimmed with tears, I can’t see. I’m sneezing like crazy—either the pollen or the sting in my sinuses from holding back crying. Don’t know. But what I do know is that if I start weeping now, I’ll never stop. The weight of everything is a cloudburst inside me. The sadness. The relentless sadness. My sister. Dad. Everything crash-landing.

I miss her so much. It feels like a canyon opening inside me, as though an Exacto knife is separating organs from tissue. This must be what people feel before hurling themselves over the Vista Bridge. The two suicides at Greenmeadow this year, one was a jumper and the other, pills and alcohol. What goes through a brain on its way out? And Sabine. Did she know she was going to die in that second before her neck snapped in two? Who was she thinking about when she landed, chin first on the gym floor? What last words did she want to say amid the gasps and disbelief, the still recording camera phones? She died cheering, my sister. Encouraging her team to victory. Never give up, that’s who she was. She died raising cheer.

Brady Brooder. The remaining Wilson girl. The half-empty sister. I feel like I’m treading water, not knowing where to go next. The rest of the world, they’re getting on with it—Martha and Nick. And Mom, scheming a new life for herself. Every step I take on my sore feet seems aimless, pointless, wrong. 

I continue down the hill in the direction of home. There will be consequences for missing the session at Dr. Stern’s, but I don’t care. I have a paper due on As I Lay Dying, and I have yet to start it. I flunked another trig test. Maybe I, too, will end up at BALC, or on track for a GED. Birds are singing all around me, oblivious that the world is a festering ball of shit headed for doom. The sun breaks through the leaden cloud, like it often does in late afternoon. Why didn’t Connor kiss me back?

My phone vibrates, and this time I just answer it. “This is Brady.”

“Hi there, Brady. Rory Davis again. Is this a good time?”

In the end, after my twenty-minute grilling session with the reporter, my stomach is a knot of panic. Judging by the tone of her questioning, this Rory Davis wants to stir things up in a big way. Leading the witness is how they put it on the lawyer shows when the defending attorney screams for a mistrial.

“So, they told you you’d won, and you didn’t find out they’d changed their minds until the ceremony?”

And,

“I understand that that very afternoon you were speaking with the vice principal. And he mentioned nothing, even though they’d had a meeting an hour earlier where they decided to give the award to Miss Hornbuckle?”

And,

“How did it feel, having just lost your sister in the most horrific accident imaginable, and then, having yet another rug pulled out from under you?”

The rug, pulled out from under me. My father, cracking me in the face. Connor’s lips, shrinking away from me in repulsion.

I don’t know if I answered any of the reporter’s questions, but I do know I said more than I should have. With all the sobs, the curses, the nonsensical rant, I’m sure I sounded like a raving psycho. What would this Rory Davis make of my weepy, angry words? Did she get the story she wanted, this hungry reporter? 

I conjure various headlines. Crazy student loses prize, or Angry nutjob embarrasses family, self. 

But the whole thing is out of my hands now. Whatever will be, will be.