The Death Trap

Rain was thrumming on the roof when I dragged myself out of bed early  in the morning. One glance at the alarm clock told me that I still had  plenty of time before I needed to get up. Under normal circumstances, I  would have slept in as long as possible, but it was pointless considering  I wouldn’t get any sleep with the weather like this. 

I had tossed and turned practically the whole night. Anytime I  started to drift off, the sound of it pelting my window would startle me  awake again. 

I hated the rain. It brought me back to that awful day, the day that  had ruined my life. The day I had stopped living.  

Of course, I hadn’t literally stopped living, but just because I had  a heartbeat didn’t mean I felt alive. My home consisted of a family that  stopped speaking to me after that day and a house that didn’t even feel  like my own anymore. The one person who I thought would always be  there for me–my best friend of eight years–hated me with every breath  he took for what I did to him. And every single day I was drowning in my  own guilt and self-loathing. 

No, nothing about this should be considered living. I was just  surviving. 

I rubbed the grogginess from my eyes and pulled open the curtain.  Outside, the rising sun cast soft rays of light between the horizon of  buildings, cutting through the haze of the rain but failing to make the quiet, suburban town any less depressing. The rain streaking down the  window turned everything into a blur, just as it had on the day of the  accident. 

I shivered as it all came flooding back to me. The squeak of the  windshield wipers as they fought tirelessly against the pelting rain. The  blast of music playing from the car’s speakers. Leo’s laughter from the  passenger seat as he drunkenly tried to sing along to the song… Stop it. 

I yanked the curtain shut to avoid the nightmarish flashbacks and  flipped the light switch, wincing as my eyes adjusted to the sudden  brightness. 

As I got changed into some comfy clothes, gathering everything I  needed for school, I glanced around my room. It was quite small, so  naturally, my bed took up most of the space, the sheets a snarled mess  since I refused to fix them. A cluttered desk was jammed in the corner,  and beside it, a full-length mirror that I examined myself in. 

My dark hair fell down to my waist in tangles, and my eyes were  puffy from lack of sleep. I traced my finger over the still-healing scar on  my forehead, one of the more severe injuries I had sustained in the  accident.  

My eyes slid over to the various photos taped around the rim of the  mirror. Leo was in over half of them, and they were taken across the  span of so many years, it was as if they were a timeline of our friendship. 

I averted my gaze as I thought of how, in many of them, he was  doing things like walking and running, giving me piggy-back rides with that stupid grin on his face. Things he could no longer do. Because of  me. 

It weighed on me so much it felt as if the pain were clutching my  chest, making it hard to breathe. Why? Why him out of all people? Leo  was so sweet, everyone wanted to hang out with him so bad that they  were willing to be friends with me as well. He had a future–he was a star  soccer player with dreams of going professional, unlike me with my poor  family and grades that wouldn’t take me anywhere. 

And now, thanks to me, he could never achieve his dreams of being  a professional soccer player. He would never walk again. Instead, he  would spend the rest of his life in that wheelchair, his paralyzed legs  slowly becoming thinner and thinner. 

It should have been me instead. I walked out of there with a head  injury that hardly took me weeks to recover from while I ruined my best  friend’s life. I was the one behind the wheel. It was my fault. 

Leo had every right to hate me, and it was no wonder my family  didn’t want to speak to their disappointing daughter as well. I didn’t  blame any of them; I would hate me too. 

That’s enough. 

I grabbed my things and headed downstairs. My mom was at the  kitchen island, buried in piles of paperwork and taxes. She hardly even  glanced my way as I headed out the door, which failed to surprise me. 

Obviously, I wasn’t allowed to drive after what had happened (not  that it mattered anyway since my car was totalled), so I set out on foot. 

Normally, since the school was so close, I didn’t mind walking, but in  weather like this, I couldn’t help but daydream about heaters and shelter  from the cursed rain. 

I pulled my hood over my head to deflect the rain droplets and  stuffed my hands in my pockets. I tried my hardest not to think about  the squealing sound as the tires spun out of control on the slick road, or  the sound of Leo’s gasp from the passenger seat. That moment,  seemingly frozen in time, when we slid off the windy road and I realized  what I had done. It was all burned into my memory, haunting me whether  I was awake or dreaming, and there wasn’t a minute that passed by  where I didn’t feel the weight of it on my shoulders. 

Inside the school, I shook the water droplets off my raincoat and  stuffed it inside my backpack, hastily running my fingers through my hair  to smooth out the tangles. 

Keeping my head low, I weaved in and out of the swarms of people  clogging the hallway. I was planning on not troubling myself by trying to  make conversation with any of my classmates, and just going straight to  my first class, but when my downcast eyes landed on a pair of wheels, I  couldn’t help but stop in my tracks. 

I slowly looked up. Everything about the green eyes in front of me  was familiar. As was his tousled, dark hair. The crooked smile I had seen  more times than I had seen my own, and the freckles that were in every  single photo we had taken together for the past eight years. 

But that was where the familiarity ended. Nothing felt right about  him sitting in a wheelchair instead of standing on his strong legs, or the  almost scared look he gave me when we locked eyes, as if my presence  alone made him uncomfortable. In fact, his clear hatred toward me was  so strong, I felt sure that a year ago, I wouldn’t have even recognized  the boy sitting in front of me. 

“Leo,” I stuttered. “How are…” 

My voice trailed off as he looked away from me, turning back  toward the group of people crowded around him–his new friends that,  prior to the incident, he told me he didn’t like. His cold shoulder toward  me was no shocker, but it still stung. Nearly every day, it was the same.  I would bump into him somehow, try to make conversation with him, try  to check in on how he was doing, and nearly every day, his reaction was  the same: he would give me a look I could almost describe as fear before  fleeing immediately. Sometimes–rarely–I got a few words out of him. 

Today was not one of those days. 

“We should get to class,” he said to the people around him, before  spinning around in his wheelchair and starting down the hallway in the  opposite direction from me. 

I let out a sigh and ran a hand over my face. 

He just needs time, my therapist told me at one of our sessions.  He is still recovering, just like you are. 

I wasn’t quite sure I would ever recover, but I could at least hope  she was right about the first part.

So, I would give him time. 

The following week marked a whole month since the date of the incident,  yet the only thing that seemed to have changed was the weather. Spring  was finally coming to an end, and the rainy season subsiding, the dark  clouds giving way to rays of sunshine. 

I slipped out of class without permission to take a stroll down the  oddly vacant hallway. I trailed my fingers along the lockers lining the  walls, killing time because my messed up head couldn’t stand another  minute in that cramped, musty-smelling classroom. 

As I passed by the copy room, I heard the printer machine hum as  it got to work. I slowed my footsteps as I walked by and peeked in,  immediately regretting it. Leo was idling in his wheelchair by the printer,  looking around the room as he waited for his papers to finish printing. 

I took a step back. If it weren’t for the squeaking sound my shoes  made on the tile, I would have gotten away unnoticed. But when Leo  whipped his head around and made eye contact with me, I knew it was  too late to back out. 

I finally worked up enough courage to join him in the room. He immediately looked away, fidgeting fiercely with his hands. I  noticed as he did so that the skin surrounding his fingernails was torn up  and scabbed over in some places. It was his anxious habit I had never  been able to get him to break.

I swallowed. I opened my mouth to say something, but, to my  surprise, Leo stole the first word. 

“What do you want?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the tile. I ignored the question and jumped right in, the words I had wished  to tell him that had been eating me up inside pouring out of my mouth  with no filter. “Leo, I’m so sorry. Everything about what happened was  my fault, and you have every right to be mad at me. I…” My words fell  off as I saw that he didn’t appear to hear a word I was saying. He grabbed his papers off the printing machine and stapled them  together. Then he wheeled right past me. He paused halfway out the door  and turned to face me, clenching his jaw. He enunciated every word he  spoke next, as if he were laying out ground rules for a second grader: “I  don’t know why you are doing this to me, Jada. But I need you to leave  me alone.” 

He started to leave again. 

Without thinking, I blurted out “It should have been me instead.” My words made him freeze just outside the doorway. He slowly slid  his eyes over to me. His entire body was rigid, making me believe  something about what I had just said had struck a nerve. I realized then  that there was something so off about his reaction, as if there was  something more he wasn’t telling me. 

“You don’t know, do you?” he whispered. His lower lip quivered,  and I couldn’t tell if it was just the lighting, or if those were tears in his  eyes.

“Know what?” I said slowly. 

He gnawed on his lower lip, tightening his grip so much the papers  in his hand began to crumple. 

“Leo, know what?” I demanded. 

In one quick motion, he spun around in his wheelchair and came  back into the copy room, shutting the door behind him. I had many  possibilities running through my mind about what he was going to do, but what he did next was not one of them. 

He wheeled right over to me, stopping just short of running over  my toes, and opened his arms. It took me a moment to realize he was  inviting me to hug him, but I didn’t waste another second. 

I bent down and threw my arms around his neck, fighting back  tears as I realized how much I had missed this. I felt safe with his arms  around me, and it seemed to heal something inside me. I knew that just  because he was hugging me didn’t mean he was forgiving me for what I  did, but nevertheless, it lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. 

We stayed like this for a few minutes, until our breathing had nearly  synced up, before pulling apart. Leo brushed away his tears in  embarrassment as I took a step back from him. 

“Okay,” I breathed. “Now that that’s over, explain. What did you  mean by ‘you don’t know, do you?’” 

“Right.” He gulped. “Do you remember when we were nine and  your cat died?” 

I was so caught off guard by his words, I took a step back. “What?”

“The little orange cat that died of old age,” he continued. “Do you  remember?” 

I shook my head. “Leo, I don’t want to hear about my cat dying, I  want you to give me answers!” 

“I am!” he yelled. Then he let out an exasperated sigh and lowered  his voice. “I’m getting there, if you would please just listen.” “Okay. Listening,” I mumbled. 

“Well, you were so upset about it that you created a whole story to  deny that it happened at all. You said he was still alive and that he was  just on a mission to find the rest of his litter, and that he would be back  soon. Remember?” 

My cheeks flushed red. It vaguely rang a bell, and that did sound  like something nine-year-old me would do. “I guess.” 

“Where I’m going with this is… sometimes, your mind doesn’t  always want you to remember everything.” He looked at me like I was a  ticking bomb that could explode any minute, but I still wasn’t grappling  the message he was trying to convey. “Sometimes, when something  really bad happens, it sort of… cheats.” 

“Cheats?” I repeated. “I don’t understand.” 

“It tricks you. It–” 

Before he could finish his sentence, the door to the copy room  swung open and a student entered. Leo immediately turned away from  me, briefly said hi to the student, and left without another word. As if I  hadn’t even been here in the first place.

I stared after him, my mouth gaping open as I puzzled over the  last thing he had said. I glanced over at the student, who didn’t  acknowledge me one bit, and decided I was done staying here. 

After grabbing my backpack and other things from the class I was  still supposed to be attending, I managed to slip out unnoticed once  again.  

My head was spinning as I walked down the hallway, Leo’s words  still echoing in the back of my mind. Anger at him for ditching me like  that the second someone else entered the room still boiled in my veins.  I couldn’t be in here any longer or I might explode.  

The breath of fresh air I took when I finally burst out the doors was  so immaculate, I nearly collapsed in relief. I set out down the street in  the opposite direction of my house. Going back to that cold, uninviting  place I was supposed to call my home was the last thing I needed right  now. Instead, I would go to a place that felt more like home than that  house would ever feel, despite not having walls or a roof. 

I finally crested the hill and arrived at my destination: a vast,  grassy meadow dotted with wildflowers and aspen trees. It was a place  I went whenever I needed space to think, a place I had spent countless  hours at in the weeks after the accident (probably the only thing that  kept me here). 

It was far enough away from the highway that it remained  relatively quiet other than the chirping of birds and the buzz of insects all around. And due to its odd location–just down the hill stretched a wide  cemetery–hardly anyone came here. 

I set down my things at the base of a tree and laid down in its  shade, stretching out my arms and legs, the grass gentle on my skin. I  soaked up the silence, inhaling the earthy scent, allowing myself to forget  about all else for a moment and pretend everything was fine. 

But that moment did not last long before reality set in and my  thoughts began to spiral again. 

Sometimes, your mind doesn’t always want you to remember  everything… 

How could that be possible when my mind seemed to never allow  me to forget? I spent every single day wishing to forget it all, willing the  pain to stop, and now Leo had the audacity to tell me I wasn’t  remembering everything. It made no sense. 

At what was that thing he said about cheating? Something about  my mind cheating on me? I was starting to believe that Leo was the one  who wasn’t in his right mind because none of this made sense! 

After an entire month of not talking to me, giving me the cold  shoulder and fleeing anytime he saw me, this was how he had decided  our conversation would go? I tangled my fingers in the grass and ripped  it out in frustration, tossing it aside. I wanted to be angry at Leo, but the  memory of our hug prevented that. 

I still had a thousand more questions, but before I could think over  any of them, a voice startled me out of my head.

“Denying the truth won’t help you find the answers you’re looking  for, Jada.” 

My eyes flew open and I sat bolt upright. I whipped my head  around for a moment, scanning the surrounding meadow, before locating  the woman who had spoken. 

She sat with her back against a tree a good distance away from  me, the sunlight gleaming off her silky blonde hair and pale skin, almost  making her look… angelic. 

“Ms. Aubrey?” I managed to get out. She had been my therapist  since after the accident, but this was the only time I had seen her outside  her office. It was strange that I had never heard her approach, as if she  had just materialized out of nowhere. 

“Jada,” she sighed. “You’ve come a long way, but it’s time to return  to reality.” 

I got to my feet, running my hands through my hair in frustration.  “What do you mean? Why does everybody keep telling me that?” I began to walk toward her, but she gracefully got to her feet and  began to walk away as well. It was then that I noticed the strange clothes  she was wearing–they were all white, made of a strange, soft material  that almost resembled feathers, and fell loosely around her small frame. She looked oddly bright in the sunlight, and it was unlike anything I had  ever seen before. 

As I hurried after her, I passed by a man walking his dog. I paused,  planning on asking him if he saw her as well, or if it was just me. I knew it was stupid, but at this point, I couldn’t even decipher what was real  and what wasn’t anymore. 

“Excuse me, sir?” He did even do so much as to turn my way.  Maybe he was deaf. I waved a hand in front of his face. Still no reaction. “He can’t hear you,” my therapist said. “Or see you.” 

I stumbled away from the man, looking down at my hands. I turned  them over several times but didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.  Then I looked up at the woman (it didn’t feel right to call her Ms. Aubrey when she was so… not human). By now, she was at the edge of the  meadow. 

“Wait!” I called. “I don’t understand!” 

She slowly turned around. “He needed you here, but now it’s time  to wake up.” 

“Who needed me here?” I demanded. 

She gestured down the hill, and I followed her line of sight to the  cemetery. There, following the stone path between the columns of  gravestones was a boy in a wheelchair. I gasped. 

I had another question on the tip of my tongue, but when I turned  back to where the woman had been standing, she was nowhere to be  seen, as if she had vanished into thin air. 

I didn’t waste another second; I turned heel and started down the  hill to the cemetery. My feet carried me faster than I thought possible,  the breeze whipping through my hair and cooling my sweat, my lungs burning. When I reached the cemetery, I did not slow down, continuing  to run along the stone path after Leo. 

I had nearly caught up to him when he paused at the base of a  gravestone. I slowed my pace to a walk, desperately trying to catch my  breath. I didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed me yet, with my loud  footsteps and heavy breathing, but that wasn’t my biggest concern at  the moment. 

I walked around him to get a better look at the gravestone, and  immediately felt my breath catch in my throat as my eyes skimmed over  the name etched into the stone. 

Leo set a bouquet of lilies–my favourite flower–at the base of the  gravestone with my full name printed across it. He wiped away the tear  rolling down his cheek and whispered three words that changed  everything. 

“I’m sorry, Jada.” 

Suddenly, all of the pieces in my head arranged, and it felt as if I  had just solved the greatest mystery ever.  

The reason nobody spoke to me anymore–not even my own  parents, who were better than that–other than the few interactions I had  with strangers that must have been all in my head. The way Leo seemed  genuinely scared the first time he saw me after the accident, eventually  fading into a weary look that crossed his face whenever I was around.  The way my memories seemed so much fuzzier before the accident, as  if they were a dream I couldn’t quite recall, and seemed to drop off right after I arrived at the hospital, only to resume a week later. It had been  easy to blame all of this on my head injury, but it should have long been  healed by now. 

Right as I thought of that, pain split down the left side of my skull  where my scar was, throbbing just as it had those last few minutes in  the hospital.  

Suddenly, I was back there, in the hospital bed, all kinds of wires  and monitors hooked up to me as doctors scrambled all around me,  desperately trying everything they could to keep my heart beating. 

The sound of my mom’s crying as she fought the doctors to get  closer to me, the beeping of the heartrate monitor as it slowly decreased  in frequency. The pain that consumed my entire body and every thought,  making everything weave in and out of focus. The noise was too loud and  the lights were too bright, and then I was falling down… 

Then came the silence, the end to the pain, the moment in  between. And after that, the beginning of something else… My eyes slowly opened as the thrumming of the rain on the roof  dragged me out of my slumber. God, I really hated the rain.