Pretty Little Truths

Chevelle

The red light hanging over the intersection looks too bright through the rain, like it’s glowing harder just to make sure we understand we aren’t going anywhere yet.

Sienna drums both hands against the steering wheel and looks over at me for the third time since we left the gas station. Her hair is damp around her face from the sprint through the parking lot, and she’s chewing the inside of her cheek so hard I can see the movement beneath her skin. “You’re sure he didn’t follow us?” she asks.

“I don’t know.” My fingers tighten around the phone in my lap even though the screen has been dark for the last ten minutes. “I told you I don’t know.”

“I’m only asking cause I’m worried, but I didn’t want to push you.”

“You’ve asked three times.”

“And you’ve answered like somebody’s holding a gun to your head.”

My stomach rolls. I turn toward the passenger window before she can see the look on my face, but my reflection is right there in the glass, pale and scared and looking nothing like the girl I remember being this morning. Rain races sideways across the window while lightning turns the empty lot beside us white for half a second.

I should’ve told her everything.

I almost did when she picked me up. I opened my mouth as soon as I climbed into her car, then I saw how tired she looked after working all day and decided I could wait until we were somewhere safe. Somewhere with a locked door. Somewhere nobody could show up and grab my wrist hard enough to leave fingerprints beneath my bracelet. The phone lights up without making a sound.

UNKNOWN CALLER.

My whole body locks.

Sienna sees it. “Don’t answer.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Then turn it off.”

“I did. It keeps coming back on.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Nothing makes sense anymore.”

The call stops. A message appears before I can breathe again. I don’t open it. I don’t have to. The preview gives me enough. You can’t keep running from me.

I shove the phone between my thigh and the seat, like hiding the screen might make the words disappear. Sienna reaches over and covers my hand with hers. “We’re going to my aunt’s,” she says. “She’s got cameras, three dogs, and a husband who sleeps with a baseball bat beside the bed even though he’s seventy-two. Nobody’s getting near you tonight.”

A laugh escapes me, but it’s thin and wrong. “That’s your safety plan?”

“It’s better than yours, which was apparently sitting in your apartment waiting for whatever the hell this is to get worse.”

“I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You called me.” Her hand squeezes mine before she takes it back to the wheel. “That was something.”

The light stays red.

Thunder cracks over us, close enough that Sienna ducks on instinct. I jump too, then glance into the side mirror because fear has turned every sound behind me into footsteps.

Headlights fill the glass.

A truck is coming up behind us too fast. For one second, I tell myself the rain makes it look worse than it is. The lights smear across the wet mirror, stretching wider, and maybe the driver is slowing. Maybe I’m seeing danger because danger has been living inside my skin for too long.

Then a horn blares.

“Sienna.”

She looks into the rearview mirror. “Shit.”

The truck jerks sideways. Its front tires turn, but the rest of it keeps coming straight toward us.

Sienna’s foot slams harder against the brake. “Hold on.”

There’s nowhere to go. A line of cars waits on the other side of the intersection, and another vehicle is moving through on the green light to our right. The truck’s headlights swallow the back window. The first impact lifts me from the seat even with the belt cutting across my chest. Metal folds with a sound so loud it doesn’t feel like sound anymore. Sienna screams. Her hands fly off the wheel as the car shoots forward beneath the red light.

I see the second vehicle coming from my side. I see the driver’s face. I see Sienna reaching for me. Then glass explodes inward, the door caves against my hip, and my head slams into something hard enough to turn the whole world white. The last thing I feel is warm blood running into my eye.

Then there’s nothing.