Refill

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1Driving was fun. Driving was fast. Driving was easy. Anthony took his hands off the wheel and threw one out the window, one over the backside of the passenger seat. Outside, the wind was rushing down this rural Washington highway at eighty-five miles per hour, and the sun was bright. Beside him sat Hector, laughing through the straw of an orange soda filled fast food cup. The burger wrappers and old napkins were on the floor, smashed under Hector’s boots. There was music blaring on the radio, and everything was perfect.

“Put your damn hands on the wheel,” Hector snapped through a laugh. His cup nearly spilled as he slapped Anthony’s hand away, but Anthony just snorted.

“Here, here.” Anthony wedged his left leg up between himself and the wheel to rest his knee against it. He proved his great control by giving the car a sudden jerk towards the guardrail.

“Hey—!” Hector shouted.

The car returned to its proper path, down the road at ninety miles per hour. Anthony had a knee on the wheel, one arm around Hector’s shoulders, and his other arm still hanging out the window. There didn’t look to be another car for miles, out there on the open road. That was the joy of taking a quick trek out of the city. The open roads. The freedom. The bright sun unblocked from clouds and too tall buildings. It was what Anthony lived for—especially when there were no cars. He hated other cars.

Anthony had always been a bit of a troublemaker. Right from the moment he was born, he was figuring out how to get extra food or a newer toy. Eventually, it was the cookies from the cookie jar and better gifts at the holidays. Before long, it was alcohol and weed from the older boys. Once he was one of the older boys, he just needed the money, and money wasn’t too hard to come by when Anthony could smile like he did. He was good at getting what he needed. Better at getting what he wanted.

He pulled his arm away from Hector, not to grab the wheel, but to turn up the volume as a new song came on. He tapped his fingers along to the music on the center console. He had his sunglasses down, the wind in his hair. It was auburn hair, with painfully orange roots peeking through that said he’d been teased one too many times as a child.

“Come on,” Hector tried again. “Put your hands on the damn wheel and find some place to turn around. My show’s on tonight, and I want to watch it.”

Anthony laughed. “Really? Want to get home to watch some cute little show? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Hector rolled his eyes. “All right—all right, f**k. You got me.” It was a stupid show, a guilty pleasure.

“Few more miles,” Anthony promised. “Look, look, I’ll get you better.”

Anthony dropped his knee down and did put his hands on the wheel, both of them. He gripped hard enough that his knuckles turned white, and he pressed his foot down on the accelerator just a bit harder. Flooring it looked fun in movies, but Anthony had often found all it did was cause his tires to spin haphazardly before deciding that was all they were good for. Things never went well, after that. Anthony had learned not to do it. His car worked so much better with a gradual increase.

Ninety-five

One hundred.

One hundred five.

The music was blaring, loud. Hector sang along, off-key. Anthony whooped in his excitement, throwing his hands up off the wheel.

“All right, all right!” Anthony shouted. “About to pull off the most impressive of U-turns, are you ready? Heading back for Hector’s stupid show in, three—two—one—” Anthony grabbed the wheel again and yanked it to the left.

The car turned. The tires screeched. Rubber burned into the road. It was a two-lane highway, nothing to divide oncoming traffic from going traffic. Anthony hadn’t spent ten seconds looking to make sure this was safe before he wrenched the wheel, and once he had, it was too late. The car spun in the middle of the road, just like Anthony intended. It would spin three times before he got it back on track—that was the plan. He’d done this so many times before, it felt like second nature, the way he had to work the stick and the wheel, both at once.

Hector was laughing beside him, eyes closed and jaw open, crinkles around his nose. He was happy. He was enjoying himself: hands up and orange soda left forgotten in the cup holder. Anthony could see it all happening in slow-motion, hear the way the music slowed, and Hector’s laughing turned into shrieking fear. Anthony saw right through the passenger window on the second turn of the car. Another car.

Anthony hated other cars.

For a moment, he hated his own car. Hated himself.

The collision sent everything jolting back into real time. Real, painful time as the car crumbled under the impact and the insides shook, rattled like a can. The side of the car collapsed. The hood of the other car buckled and squished. Everything from the sound of cracking plastic and breaking metal, to the drip, drip, drip of leaking coolant. Somewhere. It was all Anthony could hear through the ringing in his ears. He seemed to remember a personal collision. His head, right into the crest of the steering wheel.

Something was broken. Everything was broken. His ears were still ringing, louder by the passing second. There was blood, somewhere—he could smell it. Remember what it smelled like from his first party in college when he’d gotten into a fight with some guy. What was his name? Benjamin, Bentley, something—maybe it was a girl. Beatrice. The broken beer bottle had scratched up his arm, and Anthony still had the scars from it. It smelled like blood. He knew the smell.

Everything right around the corners of his eyes had gone intensely dark, black, and focused. He couldn’t see anything beyond the mangled dash of his car. The broken glass. It smelled like smoke and coolant. It was the coolant. Anthony didn’t know why it was the coolant, but it was all he could smell. All he could focus on. It was easier to focus on than anything else. The broken cups. The spilled soda. There was no crinkling of burger wrappers beneath Hector’s boots—that was too much to think about. Too scary.

Time slowed back down again, and Anthony lost track of everything. Everything but the smell of coolant and the sound of his own voice. What was he screaming for? Who was he screaming for? Was there someone there? He didn’t know, anymore, just that there was pain through every inch of his body, and someone was yanking on him. Pulling him out of the car, as if that had even been possible. The frame had buckled, and the doors seemed too broken to ever open again.

It must have been the other driver. Maybe they’d had an older car—older cars were made of such stronger stuff. Slower. Worse gas mileage. But stronger frames. Maybe the other driver was fine. Anthony felt the hands under his arms, yanking and pulling with enough strength that he was sure his shoulders popped. Something wasn’t where it belonged. Broken. Bent the wrong way. Out of socket. Something, but it hurt. It hurt, and then Anthony was hitting the hard concrete.

Burnt rubber. Broken cars. Snapped metal. And all Anthony could smell was the coolant. All he could feel was that pain. Even the concrete that should have been roasting in the sun was nothing. He just laid there, ears ringing and vision black. Somewhere behind it all, there was rummaging. Through his jean pockets in a desperate search for something, but everything was in the car. His wallet and his phone. The person must have known that—smart, Anthony mused. Smart.

The rummaging continued. He could hear the metal and the leather creaking beneath weight that didn’t belong. Anthony hoped they’d find his phone, that they’d find everything. Get them help. It was all Anthony could think about, and it was strange.

Throughout his entire life, he’d caused trouble. He’d f****d in bars and drank in alleyways, shot up in seedy old houses on broken couches just for the rush. But none of it mattered anymore. All he could think about was his mother. He’d been nine years old, and his mother had just caught him running through the house. It’d been a school project, he thought. Something about cutting up magazines to make a collage. He couldn’t find the scissors. Where were the scissors?

He found them. The scissors. Mom had stopped him in the hallway with her face blanched white and knuckles strained from the grip she had on his shoulder. Terrified. She had every right to be terrified. He was dying, dying, dying, right there on the concrete of a two-lane highway. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

“Don’t run with scissors,” she’d said. “You could hurt yourself.”

I’ve f****d up, Mommy. It was the last thing he thought. I’ve f****d up, real bad.

* * * *

There was an accident. The call had been explicitly clear—two cars, two males, and one female. Horrible wounds, one dead. One of them must have been fine enough to call. There’d been a call. Explicitly clear. Horrible accident. And very polite. Please, please, come quickly. He might die if they didn’t. But who was he? It didn’t matter. The call ended right after that. The caller insisted he’d done all that he could, but it hadn’t been enough. It wouldn’t be enough.

He seemed to insinuate that this ambulance and this team were the only ones who would be enough, but that was a detail quickly forgotten and easily ignored. It wouldn’t save any lives.

They’d been sent right out in a rush. Gabriel wasn’t the one driving, but he wished he were. It was imperative that they arrive on the scene as soon as possible; if the call was to be believed, there were two people who were in potentially mortal danger. None of that meant they needed to weave in and out of traffic like crazed racecar drivers. Maybe Gabriel was gripping the seat because he was terrified. Maybe it was just the panic and the beating of his heart. This was his job. Still, being the only thing between people and death wasn’t an anxiety he was used to. He’d never be used to it.

When they arrived on scene, Gabriel was the first one out of the ambulance. He took the scene in, all at once. The burnt rubber, the T-bone collision, and the fact that there seemed to be someone standing there, entirely unscathed. He was a heftier man, a bit older. He was wearing a fine, old-fashioned waistcoat with a pocket watch chained to one of the pockets. He’d been looking at his watch, but the second Gabriel’s foot hit the ground, he looked at Gabriel.

By the sudden point of that man’s finger, Gabriel’s gaze was directed to a man lying perfectly posed and straight on the ground. Gabriel rushed forward, his supplies gripped tightly at his side. The windshield of the car wasn’t shattered, which meant the victim couldn’t have been thrown from the car. He was still breathing, too. Being thrown from a car like that would have likely killed him, but he was clearly alive. His breaths were ragged, slow, and shallow. The man’s eyes were closed. They wouldn’t have much time before he lapsed into unconsciousness.

Gabriel looked back up, where he’d thought to find the old-fashioned man, with intention to ask what had happened. The man was gone. Like wind. Like he’d never even been there, at all; the man was gone. If the situation was different, Gabriel might have pondered on it a bit longer, but there was a man in front of him in need of immediate attention. He could worry about a freak disappearance when there wasn’t a life hanging in the line.

“Hey—hey,” Gabriel started, trying to get the man’s attention. “Can you tell me your name?”

There was a groan. The man on the ground looked worse for wear, with bruising all around the face and an unfocused gaze. Gabriel couldn’t quite get those eyes to focus on him, which was never a good sign.

“You have to stay awake,” Gabriel urged. “Tell me your name.”