Full Share (Shore House Book 1) (12 page)

Mila stood next to me at the scene of the crime, the three-deep line for a beer at the Starboard. “You okay?”

“I’m maimed.” She laughed at my statement that wasn’t meant to be funny. “They might have to amputate.” She passed back shots Jack had bought and a beer. I waited for the house to regroup, and I slammed the shot down my throat to dull the pain. It didn’t touch it. “Here.” I handed my beer to Jack.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“To redress my wound.” I lifted my foot out of my shoe and turned it so both of us could see it. Blood covered the bandage.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Text me when you get home.”

“I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

“Of course. You’re always fine.” He took a sip of the beer I’d just handed him. “Text me anyway.”

I walked through the crowds. The one in the bar, the groups waiting to get in, and the throngs of people filling the sidewalks of Dewey Beach. No one noticed I was limping. Every step was a knife stabbing into the bottom of my foot. I sat on the front stoop of the house and crossed my ankle over my knee. I had to take the weight off of it. I removed the dressing and washed my foot under the hose. Based on the pain that caused, the cut hadn’t closed at all in the last few hours.

I walked on one foot and a tiptoe through the front door. The house was deserted; the quiet engulfed me. Jack must love it down here during the week. He probably dreaded our arrival every Friday.

The bag full of medical supplies still sat on my bed. I bandaged my foot the exact way Jack had, except I doubled up on the gauze pads. Apparently, one layer wasn’t enough.

A low, almost knocking sound came from the silent kitchen. I leaned over to see what was making it, but the noise stopped as soon as my awareness arrived. I’d imagined it. I rested on my pillow and wallowed in the silence of our shore house.

The knocking came again. This time it was two distinct bangs without much humph. It wasn’t coming from the kitchen. It was farther inside the house. My heart raced in my chest as I mentally recounted each roommate’s attendance at the Starboard. No one else should be in here.

Two more knocks.

I followed the sound, hating myself for being afraid.

“Hello,” I said and felt ridiculous. This was Dewey, after all. I should be running toward the sound.

A pale hand shook against the doorway of Heather’s room. The nails were painted a bright blue, which was the same color the sky had been earlier in the day. The hand jerked again, and I ran to it, ignoring the pain that shot through my foot.

Heather laid on the floor, her dress from the night before half off and her makeup smeared across her face. Vomit pooled next to her. The smell repulsed me more than her appearance.

“Heather?” I stepped over her so I could see her face better. Her lips were dry and cracked. I wanted to run out of the room and somehow take Heather with me. “Heather, can you hear me?”

“Fuck you, Nora.” There was no strength in her horrid words, and my name hung on a dry heave. Even with her hate-filled sentiment, I felt for her, and I wasn’t sure what to do.

“Maybe I can help you into the shower.” Her eyes closed and her arm jerked again. Something was very different about this hangover and Heather. She’d been sick for three days after her twenty-first birthday. Hadn’t eaten a thing. It was all I could do to force her to drink so she wouldn’t become dehydrated. But even after her twenty-one shots, she didn’t look like this.

I found my phone and called Jack.

“I didn’t expect a call. Is this you begging?” His smug voice, a vital distinction from the lifeless body in front of me, made me realize Heather was further gone than I’d thought. The sounds of the bar a few blocks away invaded the silence of our house.

“I need your help. Can you come home?”

“You are begging.”

Heather’s head shot to the side and vomit flew out of her mouth. It was a white liquid mixed with bright red that I thought was blood. I flinched and forced my eyes shut.

“Nora?”

I opened my mouth, not sure if I was going to scream or cry, and pleaded, “Jack, come home right now!”

I hung up and stared at Heather’s lifeless body. I knew what to do. I called 911.

They were unsettlingly calm and professional on the phone. This was their shift. I was their customer calling, and they showed as much urgency on the phone as I did when an insured called me. I gave them my name, our address, Heather’s condition, as much as I could tell them, and pleaded with them to hurry.

Heather dry heaved twice more before I hung up.

“Heather, can you hear me?” I ran my hand roughly up and down her arm.

Heather jerked forward; she was shaking and then engrossed in a seizure, kicking her legs wildly to the side as her eyes rolled back in her head. She was a terrifying movie hurling toward me, and I was paralyzed at the sight of it.

Oh my God . . . she’s going to die.

“Heather!” I screamed.

Jack ran into the room and stopped short at the sight of us. Heather’s seizure was subsiding. I moved her legs out straight.

“I called 911,” I said to Jack without taking my eyes off Heather.

“Jesus.” He scanned the room, and my eyes followed his inspection. Her purse was on the bed. Her stomach contents were everywhere. “Is she breathing?”

I watched as Heather’s chest barely rose and fell. Peace had descended upon her. I thought she was dying. This was what it looked like. It was violent and wretched and then it was quiet before you were gone. “Barely.”

“Stay with her.” Jack ran through the house. Noises came from the kitchen, the living room, and all of the bedrooms. He stopped at the door midstep. “Still the same?” Car keys jiggled from his finger and his arms were full of bongs, bowls, prescription bottles, and bags of drugs.

“I think so.”

“I’ll be right back.” The screen door on the front of the house screeched when he opened it, and then I heard a car trunk close. The car chirped with locked doors seconds before Jack was on the floor next to me. “I don’t know if the police are going to come.” He took his phone out of his pocket and texted a message. “I’m telling Mila. If you’re okay in here, I’m going to go out front and wait for the ambulance.”

I was kneeling in a pool of vomit mixed with blood. I was holding the hand of a friend who I wasn’t even sure if she liked me, and I was terrified she was going to die. “I’m fine.”

It was as if he’d heard every thought. Jack rubbed my shoulders and took one last look at Heather before walking out of the room.

I thought they’d never come. As soon as they walked in with all their equipment, I knew I’d made the right decision. Heather was well beyond my level of responsibility.

“Do you know what she ingested?” the female paramedic asked us.

“No. We haven’t seen her since yesterday afternoon.” I stared at Jack, wanting someone to share the shame of not even knowing where’d she’d been. “I came home early and found her on the floor like this. I have no idea what’s she’s taken. If anything.”

She inspected the room and Heather’s purse while the male paramedic worked on Heather.

I moved out of the room. I didn’t want to be near Heather or the people who would save her. Eventually Jack met me in the living room. I was sitting on a wooden kitchen chair in the corner of the room.

“I almost didn’t see you there. You’re so quiet.”

“I’m here,” I said and wished more than anything that I wasn’t.

“They’re prepping her for transport. I’m going to follow the ambulance to the hospital.”

“On your motorcycle?” Jack nodded at my question. “I’ll drive. My car is the last one anyway.”

We rode in silence behind the ambulance. When it ran the red lights, we stopped. Jack’s presence was the only thing keeping the tears from pouring from my eyes. What had happened to Heather to turn her into this? Halfway to the Beebe Medical Center in Lewes, I turned to Jack and he was staring at me.

“What?” I asked, but he didn’t move. “What? You’re scaring me.” Everything scared me. I’d never known anyone who’d died.

“Nothing.” When he still didn’t look away, I braced myself for what he’d say next. “Don’t ever be afraid of me.”

I was too exhausted to engage in any real conversation. “What time is it?”

He turned his phone on. “It’s nine thirty.”

“It feels like three thirty.” I inhaled deeply and exhaled as I pulled into the entrance of the hospital. “What did you do with the drugs?”

“I put them in the trunk of Rob’s car.”

I nodded and parked in the first empty spot in the visitor parking lot.

Jack and I sat in the hospital waiting room next to each other. There was one other man in the room with us, but he was called to the desk and then disappeared behind double doors that automatically opened toward him. Neither of us was related to Heather. Neither of us was old enough to be responsible for her.

“I’ve never been in a hospital.” The time didn’t move here. I never wanted to come back.

“I broke my collarbone playing football sophomore year. That was enough for me.”

“High school or college?”

“High school. I didn’t play in college.”

“How come?”

“Because I went to Alabama. I tried to walk on the first two years, but every player there is phenomenal.” Jack abruptly leaned over and pulled his phone from his pocket. He read the screen and typed something. “Mila’s calling Heather’s parents. This should be good.”

“She hates them.” Heather and I spoke about our parents less than we spoke about any other subject, but I knew she hated them. Her dread at their arrival on the day of graduation told me everything I needed to know.

“You know that’s not her dad, right?”

“What? No.”

“Her mom left her dad for that guy. Heather hates both of them. That was in . . .” Jack thought for a moment. “Ninth grade.”

“You guys all know so much about each other.” There was no follow-up. I had that one observation. I wasn’t longing for close friends who’d known me my whole life. In fact, I’d run from every single person I had known before I’d caught my mother with my French teacher. Their faces reminded me of that day. Their references brought back the lost year of high school, and I’d chosen to be as far from it as possible.

I yawned. The memories were exhausting me.

“Come here.” Jack raised his arm, beckoning me to the perfect resting spot on his shoulder.

I could lean over the thin arm of my chair and fade away on his chest, but I glanced down and saw the vomit crusted on my skin. It was particularly bad around my knees. “I smell.”

“It’s okay. I can smell you from here.”

I’d gotten so used to the odor. Our house must’ve reeked of it. I leaned against Jack and tucked my feet under me in the chair. He pulled me closer with his hand on my shoulder. The last thing I remembered was his fingertips gliding back and forth across my vomit-covered forearm.

It was two in the morning before I moved again. Jack shook me awake upon the arrival of Heather’s parents, or her mother and stepfather. They thanked us for bringing her in and promised to call when they knew more. I followed Jack to my car, and when he held out his hand, I handed him my keys without argument. I was only half awake. I couldn’t shake the fog surrounding me. The entire night had been a bad dream, and I couldn’t quite remember the details to tell anyone about it.

Jack drove us home and parked my car in the exact spot it had moved from earlier. The windows were all open in the house. It was hot and smelled of bleach. Mila had cleaned the floor I’d found Heather on earlier.

“Do you want to take a shower?” Jack asked as I stumbled onto our porch.

“Yes.”

He rummaged through the pile of clothes on the floor next to his bed. “You take the bathroom. I’ll use the outside shower.” He pulled his towel off the hook he’d hung in the corner of the room and vanished into the darkness of the back door.

I found my shampoo and conditioner, a towel, a pair of underwear, and my nightgown. It wasn’t my usual just-drop-in-the-dress-I’m-wearing sleepwear, but I packed it every weekend and just never wore it. I was definitely
not
sleeping in the clothes I’d worn through our ordeal.

Chunks of throw-up slid from my skin as the hot water assaulted me. I couldn’t get it hot enough. I feared I’d forever smell the odor of what I’d thought was Heather’s death. I scrubbed myself and drenched my hair with shampoo. It would have to be enough. The sun would be up soon.

I brushed my hair and put the nightgown on while still in the bathroom. Through the wall, I could hear Blaire and Rob fighting.
Does it ever stop?
Was this what it was like to be in love with him? Because to the outsider, it sounded like pure hell.

I stepped out of the bathroom at the same time Rob slammed his bedroom door behind him.

“Hey,” he said when he noticed me.

“Hi.” I walked away. I could feel him following me, but I was too exhausted to be with him.

“I need to talk to you,” he whispered as he followed me onto the porch. Jack was lying in his bed with the sheet covering the bottom of him. It was hot, and without the air conditioners the rest of the house was stifled under the heat we dealt with every weekend.

“It’s late,” I pleaded with Rob.

“I know.” He ran his hand through his hair in frustration, and I thought he was going to make the decent choice and say good night. “Why didn’t you call me?”

I was wrong. I threw my towel over the door to the porch and walked past Rob to my bed.

“When you found Heather, why didn’t you call me instead of Jack?”

Jack didn’t move.

“I don’t know.” I shook my head and found a plastic bag to put my clothes in from the night before.

“Because you, Heather, and I spent a lot of time together at Delaware, and you’ve known him less than a month.”

I pulled the covers back on my bed.

This annoyed him. “Nora?”

“What? I don’t know why I called him.” I was whisper-yelling. “I needed help, and he came, and he helped. That’s all I know.” I calmed down, and the sadness of the night hit me again. “It wasn’t a popularity contest. I thought she was going to die.”