Chapter 1

My whole childhood had gone by in a haze. Now, at the age of 16, I felt as if it was over altogether. I didn’t know what was going to happen the next second, but as our car flipped over, the only thing I could hear was my family’s screaming and my little sister’s crying. I couldn’t move; I was frozen. The black Audi sedan that had crashed into us burst into fire when we landed on the roof. Pain, pain, pain. Suddenly everything was hurting, my ears were hooting, and I started vomiting. Once the fire spread around us and my skin started burning too, I knew I was dead.

#

My eyes blinked open in panic, revealing a plain white ceiling. My breathing accelerated, hand trying to shoot up to my throat, only to realize it was restrained against the hard bed I was lying on. My throat started to get thicker and thicker, and with every breath I took, I was able to catch less and less air. Until there was none. I wasn’t getting enough air—it felt as if the room was a plastic bag—and I could feel my face getting paler with every second.

My brother’s panicking face came into my view, and his hand caught mine on the bed, holding it tightly, his mouth moving as if he would’ve been talking. I was trying to talk back, but I could only move my mouth as he did; nothing came out of it. His face was red, and his eyes were bloodshot as if he had been crying before.

Two pairs of hands pulled him away, and another man started working on me, moving his mouth and staring into my eyes as if I was supposed to understand anything he was saying. At this point, my eyes were falling shut again from the lack of air.

The visual plastic bag around my head was removed as he pushed something into my nose, his face hopeful, but eyes big and scared. Was he scared for me? Who even was he? A new amount of oxygen sprung into my throat, through my nose, as my brother’s warm hand landed on my shoulder. When I turned my head, I could see his angry face, his mouth opening way too much for him to be just talking. He was shouting. And I couldn’t hear.

That’s the moment I understood that I lost my hearing. And everything went black all over again.

#

The next time I woke, there was a different kind of lighting in the room. It was the same ceiling, but the lamps weren’t turned on over my head, instead, the strays of light were shining from the windows, noting it was a day. I couldn’t open my eyes just yet, but I wasn’t deaf this time. There was a quiet murmuring in the room, voices I didn’t recognize were talking in a hushed tone, just like someone was sleeping. Some kind of machine was beeping next to my ear.

My eyes flickered open and I tried to move my hands again. The left hand was still restrained against the bed, but the right one I was able to move, only to be stopped by someone’s hand on my wrist. On the moment that happened, my head whipped to the right, and the world started rolling in front of my eyes. I could hear myself groan quietly as I pressed my eyes together, and then blinked them opened again. The dizziness from the rapid move disappeared with a few seconds, and I saw an oddly familiar face in front of me.

I hadn’t seen him for years. We had kept talking on social media—sharing posts with each other that we both found funny—but other than that I hadn’t seen him for… 4 years? He had changed. His face had slimmed down, he was still skinny, but his arm had muscles. His lips and hair and eyes were still the same. He was still wearing the same old comforting hat on his head. I couldn’t remember him ever taking it off.

I wanted to pull my arm away, to keep moving it, but his greenish-blue eyes were staring into mine and they comforted me enough to let him keep touching me. He didn’t smile. Not once.

“Lizzie?” I heard my older brother’s voice. I looked at him, but because I had already learned from my mistake of moving too fast, I did it slowly, and the turn of my head took a few more seconds than it should have in normal circumstances. My eyes met his. They were still red like he had been crying and hadn’t slept for a long time. “Lizzie,” he breathed, relieved. “You can hear me, yeah?”

I blinked in confusion, observing my little sister sleeping on his lap. Her tiny face was covered in bruises and she had an oxygen mask on. Other than that, she looked fine. Relief washed over my body as I sank more into the mattress. She was alive, I was alive. But where were Grace and my mom? Were they attached to hospital beds like I was? They must’ve been.

“Where’s mom?” I asked slowly, and then frowned, trying to understand why my mouth didn’t want to move well, and why my tongue was so numb. I looked at my brother for an explanation of why I couldn’t talk normally and also for an answer to my question. His eyes filled with tears immediately, and I couldn’t do anything else than to look away.

He was crying. Mom was dead. “And Grace?” I asked as good as I could, pressing my eyes together as the waterworks started.

Evan’ hand landed on my arm and he started moving it up and down slowly. “You’re gonna be okay,” he said with a choked-up voice.

Knowing I couldn’t get an answer from him, I opened my hurtful eyes again and observed Kyle’s reaction instead. He wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were down on his lap, a tear rolling down the side of his face. His dad was sitting next to him, and I could see him getting up slowly. “I’ll get the doctor,” he said and left. The door shut with a quiet click as I closed my eyes.

My mom was dead. My sister was dead. My brother and my little sister were sitting next to me. As was the boy I used to have a crush on when we were younger. Why was he here? I didn’t know.

My breathing got heavier and faster, the tears wouldn’t stop, and when the same man who was here before—the doctor, probably—ran into the room after Evan shouted something inaudible, a syringe entered the arm I couldn’t move, and I fell into slumber with a few seconds. Kyle’s hand slid down my wrist, into mine, and he gave it a light squeeze before intertwining his fingers with mine.

#

My older sister was screaming. My mom’s dead face came into the view, and as I whipped myself around, my sister was there too. I jerked at her burned face, her arms that were stretched out, and her dead-looking eyes, mouth fallen open. She was dead, too, but she was screaming. Why was she doing that? I tried to click my ears to focus on the words instead of the voice.

“You killed us!” she screeched.

“You’re a murderer, Elizabeth!” my mom screamed. “You’re a murderer! Just like your father!”

“It was your fault!” Grace cried. “It is your fault! You deserved death, not me! You unbuckled my seatbelt! You were the one supposed to die, not me!”

“No,” I whispered, tears falling down my cold face. “No!” I shouted back.

“You’re a murderer!” mom cried again. “You’re a murderer just like your father!”

“No!” I screamed, my voice breaking. “No!” I kept repeating the word as I pressed my hands onto my ears, trying to block their screams and cries out, my little sister’s cry joining them. “Leave me alone!” I sobbed. “Stop!”

“Lizzie!” Evan shouted as I felt my body shaking. “Lizzie! Wake up!”

My eyes shot open as I tried to sit up, choking on my own screams. “Hey, hey,” Bob said, his hand landing on my shoulder comfortingly. My eyes moved onto his face in panic. “Calm down,” he said strongly. “Calm down. It’s just a dream.”

My mouth fell open as I tried to talk, but only heartbreaking sobs left it—all which hurt my throat more than anything else would’ve. “Lizzie,” Evan’ voice said somewhere when my eyes went blank. “Breathe. Come on. Slowly.”

I tried to follow the instructions as Bob’s hand started rubbing my arm up and down gently, helping me with the rhythm. With ten minutes, my vision was back, and I was staring at the white ceiling with a blank look.

“Lizzie?” the doctor asked, sitting on the place Bob was before, both Kyle and him standing, staring at me worriedly. I moved my eyes on the man, attempting to move my left arm that had never been tied against the bed as I had thought, but instead was in a cast. Why I couldn’t move it, I still didn’t understand. “How are you feeling?”

I turned my face away with a small roll of my eyes, back to staring at the ceiling. He kept talking softly, explaining to me why I needed to answer. “Do you remember the crash? Do you know why you’re here?”

“Someone saved me,” I said, and were surprisingly happy to find that the numbness in my mouth had gone away. Which explained why the ache in my head had tenfold.

“They did,” he agreed, getting my attention again, my head turning to look back at him involuntarily. “Do you remember anything from that?”

“The crash?” I asked carefully, finding that it was painful to raise my eyebrows like I was used to doing.

“Yes.”

“The road was slippery. There was smoke coming from the woods. Cars were honking somewhere in front of us. There were two cars in fire in front of us and the black car who had already crashed kept driving. Mom tried to turn away,” I whispered the last sentence, my jaw starting to shake, chills running over my body. “But the Audi was faster, and we crashed…” I explained quietly, looking at the doctor in confusion, trying to ignore all the eyes on me. “My mom let go of the steering wheel and we flipped onto the roof,” I explained, my breathing slow like before, jaw stiffened, and head aching. “I tried to keep my sister alive. But the smoke was hot. And I… I thought I was dead.”

Evan breathed out sharply on the other side of my bed, the doctor looked happy (probably because I remembered), and Bob had obvious tears in his eyes that he was trying to hold back, but my eyes stayed on Kyle. He looked sorry. Sad and worried, but overall, he was just sorry. I wanted to hear his voice. I needed to.

“Alright,” the doctor said finally, and I was forced to pull my eyes away from the boy’s face, moving them onto the doctor, Cabello, as his nametag stated. “Do you remember what you did before that or where you were headed to?”

“Competition,” I whispered, my eyes moving onto my legs on the bed that I wasn’t able to move for some reason. I gulped my tears back. “A skiing competition.”

The doctor looked shocked, his eyes moving onto my brother’s as did mine. Evan gave him a nod, knowing that my story was right. Suddenly the doctor looked in more pain than I did, and he stood up with a small nod. “You need to get some more rest. I’ll bring you some food and after that, we’ll have to put you back on the medicine.” I didn’t say or do anything, just stared at his face as he observed my legs painfully. “We’ll have to talk later.”

#

The next time I woke up was when the medicine faded away. My eyes flickered open, there was a lot less pain in my body, and I found my little sister awake as well. She was sitting on Evan’ lap and smiled at me when she noticed my eyes were open. She tilted her head to look at me like I was looking at her, which made me smile a bit. She smiled back, reaching for me.

Evan’ head moved, looking at what she was doing, and then smiled at me softly as well. It was another day, he looked better, he had changed his clothes. His eyes weren’t as tired as before but were still red. “Lizzie,” Olive said quietly and kept reaching for me.

“Can you move your arm?” Evan asked me.

I gulped, ready to be disappointed, as I tried to lift my left arm. My eyes went wide as I actually could do it and looked at him in shock. He smiled at me softly, placing our little sister onto the bed. There was more room than I thought, and the small girl crawled up to my face, touching my cheek with an excited smile on her face. She was about to get two. Or…

I frowned, which didn’t hurt to my surprise, and I also couldn’t feel the bandage on my eyebrows or forehead anymore. “Evan?” I asked quietly.

“Yeah?” he asked softly when my hand moved onto Olive’s blond hair, starting to stroke it as she lied down next to me, looking up at me with her big blue eyes.

“What day is it?”

He cleared his throat uncomfortably, my eyes burning into his. “Uh… You remember what day it was when… You know.”

“October 24th?”

He nodded with a small smile. “It’s the 12th now. November.” My eyes widened in shock, my brain trying to calculate the days that have passed. “You first woke up on the 4th. I don’t know if you remember it, but they had to put you back asleep. And then you’ve occasionally been up throughout some days.”

“But what…” I breathed out sharply and turned my head, not finding neither Kyle nor Bob there.

“They’re getting food,” he explained. “Olive’s not allowed to leave the hospital just yet, but they told us that instead of soup you should be able to eat something else now. They went to get pizza.”

I smiled a bit sadly. “But… Why are they here?”

He sighed. “Somebody needs to take care of you two,” he said quietly. “I’m 20, they didn’t let me do anything. So, it’s either grandma or Bob. I thought you’d prefer him.”

I gulped while giving him a nod and turned my eyes back onto my little sister who had closed her eyes, wanting to sleep probably. “I’m going to live with them?” I asked quietly.

“We don’t know yet. They’ll be here for a while though. Might as well start talking to them. And if you have questions, which I know you do, ask as well.”

“When did Olive wake up?”

“A day after,” he said. “She’s been tested. She can still walk and run like before, nothing’s broken. She keeps having nightmares and crying herself up though… Just like you.”

I shuttered at the thought of seeing the same thing all over again every night. “And um… What about mom and Grace?” I asked with a shaky voice, too tired to cry again.

“The front of the car burned,” Evan whispered. “The firefighters got you and Olive out, but as the police said, Grace’s neck had broken in the crash, the death was immediate, and mom was unconscious. She was brought to hospital with you two, but her skin was burned. They didn’t even let me see her.”

I stared at my brother who was crying again and tried to hold back the tears in my eyes as I looked down at my little sister. Did she know all that? I really hoped she didn’t.