Radio Edit

It started with rain but most things don’t, most things just start smack in the middle or at the end or after six suns already blew the fuck up—whatever’s most interesting, I guess. That’s how they wanna play it. 

No. Here…here we just start at the rain.

No idea what day it was. Couldn’t tell what year or what time or what color…couldn’t tell, period. You can only tell one story so many times until… but it would all be a waste of money. 

That’s what they sell me: don’t bother. Don’t go back.

Well I wouldn’t be here if I had any choice, would I? 

“Can you turn the radio up?”

She jacks it up to fifteen and rolls the windows down right as the first thunder rolls over the horizon. Sammy and Ethel cheer from the back of the bus, hands clasped and grins turned up to the sky—or what would be the sky if we weren’t cramped under a gray metal ceiling banged out with weird holes. Like pockmarks. 

“Can you turn the radio down?” I ask, but most of the words are lost to the cracked linoleum creaking across my cold skin. No one hears. Sammy and Ethel bounce and swing, all laughter bubbling over, all jangling pockets with too much silver. They throw back a mix of lyrics like shots. I press my hands to my ears and try not to envy them in all their careless, painless glory. 

More like gory, screams the voice in my head. Seriously, my eardrums are gonna be smeared across the windows along with whatever’s left of them unless they shut the fuck up!

But the only thing on the windows is rain, rain, and more rain. I half expect the yellow paint to come smearing down the sides of the bus like my lipstick across Jeremiah’s chin—but no, it’s just rain. Just sheets of cold falling from the sky so fast the lights flicker into a rave.

“Heeeeey, let’s take it right back from Lakewood tonight!” Sammy shrieks and sings a couple notes off-key. “We’re gonna kick that winning goal, and then we’re gonna rock down to my place! How’s that sound?”

The girls cheer, screaming about their Johnnie Walker and pretzel sticks and the Hershey’s Kiss that Jeremiah stuck in Cynthia’s ratty-ass jeans. 

I scowl and sink down in my seat. Jeremiah didn’t have a problem with my jeans when he had both hands in them under the bleachers, the candy half-melted in my pocket. He just pushed me to the wall and held me there. Put his lips on mine. 

“Mmm, Cynthia, you’re sweet like chocolate,” he breathed. And breathed. 

And breathed me back to life—for all of three hours. Now I’m stuck in these drab gray walls and I’ve never felt so dead. The girls are still riling up for the game, all of them teasing me about the kiss while Zac Brown croons about fried chicken sunrises. 

All except Angela. “It’s coming down out there,” she shouts from the back, “we should shut the windows!” 

The driver slams her window shut and tells the girls to do the same. They do, with a whole lotta whining, and the bus is zipped into a bubble of almost-quiet. 

Almost because Carrie and Nancy have their whole selves hanging out the window like happy ragdolls. “It’s a rager!” yells Carrie with the biggest damn smile. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Nancy tries to pull herself back inside. “Carrie.” Nancy tries harder. “Carrie, get out! I’m stuck!”

Carrie goes on laughing, goes on grinning and singing and reaching for the rain.

Nancy isn’t laughing. “Carrie, you need to– TREE!” Her face goes white, and then so do ours. She yanks at Carrie hard, “THERE’S A TREE! MS. WINDY, THERE’S A TREE, STOP THE BU–”

It’s quiet. Carrie and Nancy are a blood spot on a tree trunk fifty feet behind, their torsos ripped clean off, only not very clean. Not clean at all, judging by the blood spots and skin spots smeared across the shattered window. 

We stare at the mess. There was no time. No time to scream or call for help, no time to duck down or take cover. Blood cakes my mouth. I think it’s Carrie’s. Or Nancy’s. They were attached at the hip when they were breathing, and they might as well be now.

We go on driving like nothing happened. Maybe nothing did. Maybe it was all just a bad dream…

A searing cold crawls down my back. I spin around toward the windshield and come face to face with the wrong side of the road. “Hey!” I yell. “Hey, Miss! LOOK!” But I’m not loud enough.

I scream, “MISSWATCHOUT!” just as our bus drifts into the other lane. It takes me a minute to realize why we’re gliding so smoothly—and then I see her slumped down in her seat, and she’s not jerking the bus back into gear. She can’t even see the road. 

She’s dead. 

Before I know it I’m dragging myself to the front, and damn is it a sight to see: buttons and dials and switches that won’t do anything to help us now. 

I touch her fingers by mistake; they’re jarringly warm, still gripping the two-way radio.

If only she’d stayed solid a moment longer. 

A body pushes at mine. “Miss! Miss, can ye hea’ me?” 

I push right back. “Sit your ass back down!” I shove her into the first seat I see, right next to Angela, and scream at her to stay the fuck out of my way. She sits. She snarls at me. She punches a number into her phone and shouts at someone on the other line, someone who isn’t careening straight for their death. 

I don’t try to wake the driver; I just grab hold of the wheel and throw us in the other direction. My muscles strain. (Shit, I wish I didn’t skip my workout this morning.) The wind roars. The sky flashes. The back wheels drag over the midline just as two headlights burn me to the bone. 

“Shit!” They’re heading right for us, a long bus with more boys than our own players, a mess of hockey equipment spilling between the seats. (I also wish I had a helmet right about now.) The driver stares at me with something awful in his eyes, a fear like no other. Not for his boys, though—for me. 

Must be the blood on my arms. Didn’t even notice. Glass must’ve hit us when the tree took Carrie and Nancy…must’ve been one helluva daze… 

Ahead of me, boys are leaning out their windows to tell me things I can’t hear, making all sorts of wild gestures, arms swinging every which way. I scream back, but not words—just pain. Just writhing, searing, blinding pain as the river rolls into view and my arms buckle. We fly past a tree, windshield bursting, and I scream again at a horrible crunch! ripping through my ribs. The branch breaks off but stays with me. Stays in me.

The boys are still screaming. 

“Hang on, we’ll come get you!” I’m not the only one crying. “We’ll get you out!”

The tires jump over the edge of the riverbank. 

The lightning bursts.

The rain shatters.

The lights spiral.

“We’ll get you out!”

And then it’s over. 

It started with the rain but most things start with the fire, the smoke. Shadow songs crawling in through my ratty-ass curtains and slithering down under the bed. It started with the rain, cold, full, double-edged rain, and it ended there, too. Right at the gravemarkers, right where only three trees stand.

And then just two.

Then one. 

And then it falls, and there’s nothing to cut down—just cut it apart and drag it inside to dry and wait for the bark to peel off. Naked branches go straight in the fire, leaves back outside, stuck to mud under daddy’s tire chains. All those deer tracks slashed apart from our boots. A storm takes a long time to get through.

And there, up ahead— see the smoke? How long will it take to burn out?

I reckon forever. These kinds of fires…they never die. 

“Can you turn the radio up?” 

She laughs up to the ceiling, real high and loud, and cranks the dial. We rumble down the ragged backstreet with music rolling out the speakers like some old country song, quick and hazy with a pack of cigarettes and some cold Coors Lite. Zac Brown throws back a couple sweet tea shots, drags his jean cuffs through the dirt, and clambers up into the tall forks of a Georgia Pine planted right on the property line. The girls dance and swing along with him, filling the aluminum skeleton up to the brim with fast hands and faster feet and tuneless laughter. 

The girls cheer, screaming about their vodka and the Hershey’s Kiss Jeremiah put in Cynthia’s pocket. 

I groan and sink down in my seat, ugly cracked linoleum scraping on my chapped skin. Jeremiah didn’t seem to mind it when he gave me that chocolate under the bleachers. He just tucked me away in the shadows and wrapped me tight in his jacket. Kissed me hard. Reminded me to forget.

I don’t forget easily, and sitting here now without him, I’m all too aware of my angry cold skin. Angry at the sky, at the walls, angry at the girls still screeching about the bleachers. Still teasing me about the sweet Hershey’s Kiss while Zac Brown croons about his fried chicken sunrises. 

“Ms. Windy,” I cry over the bass banging from the speakers, “it’s getting wild! We should shut the windows.”

Ms. Windy huffs to herself and relays the message. Ethel shuts her window, and I shut mine (it wasn’t my choice to open it), but Carrie and Nancy won’t hear a word of it. They’re hanging out the window, both of them at the same time, their hair in each other’s face and too much wind on their backs. I can just see the rain doing them in, crawling over them and pulling them closer to the ground–

“Girls, get yourselves the hell out of those widows!” Ms. Windy yells, but it’s only one window. And they’re only two girls. And only two of them are stuck—not that they care. (Yet.) “I ain’t got the damn time for ya, and the school don’t got insurance! Sit down if ya know what’s good for ya!” Ms. Windy goes pop-pop-popping her gum like we’re crammed in at a baseball game and the batter’s just scored the first home run of the sixth inning. Six half-hours of dead dirt and empty numbers, until they finally get it together and play. But all too late, as always. 

“We’re just having some fun, Windbag!” Carrie laughs. 

But Nancy’s starting to worry. “Uh, Carrie?” Carrie laughs and shoves her playfully into the edge of the window. “Carrie!” Nancy hits her back, right between the shoulder blades. “Carrie, get out! I can’t– I’m stuck!” 

Carrie goes on laughing. I catch the tears running down her face but no one else does. No one else sees the glass jammed into her side, or the glass scraping along her elbow, or the glass snagging up her jacket. 

Nancy isn’t laughing. “Carrie, you need to– TREE!” Her face goes white, and then so do ours. She yanks at Carrie hard, “THERE’S A TREE! MS. WINDY, THERE’S A TREE, STOP THE BU–”

“Can you turn the radio up?”

There’s the rain, smashing at our walls. There’s the rain, laughing at the wind. Pulling us round and round and so dizzy we can’t stand. The chocolate sticks in my pocket. I want to steal a swig of whiskey from Ethel, and all her crushed up pretzels. I wanna grab my sweatshirt to hide from the cold, but I wanna grab Jeremiah into another hot kiss, but I wanna grab the window. I wanna grab them, pull them back into the seat, and shut the window so hard it shakes. 

I wanna turn the radio back on, anything to drown out the silence.

It’s quiet suddenly. Carrie and Nancy are a red lipstick smear on a tree trunk fifty feet behind. Their torsos are ripped clean off, only not very clean. Not clean at all, judging by the blood spots and skin spots smeared across the shattered window. 

We stare at the mess. There wasn’t time. No time to scream or call for help, no time to duck down or take cover. Carrie’s blood is in my mouth. Or Nancy’s. Couldn’t tell the difference when they were alive, and there sure ain’t any now.

“Ms. Windy.” It comes out like a dry croak. It’s the only thing I can manage. “Ms. Windy, we need to stop. Need to clean it up…” I’m in a trance. It takes me a long, long moment—or several—to realize why the bus feels so almost-smooth: we’re gliding. Straight up drifting into the next lane. The lane that isn’t ours. We’re losing control. Because the only person in control is out cold against the steering wheel, and I can only imagine how white or blue or slate-gray her fingers must be underneath. 

She’s gripping the radio. 

If only she’d stayed solid a moment longer. 

Sid stumbles up to the front, trying (stupidly) to shake her awake. “Miss,” she says, frantic but timid. “Miss! Miss, can ye hea’ me?” 

I push past her and make myself ignore her voice scratching at the back of my neck. Sid’s always had a funny accent, from whatever part of London or Wales or who the fuck knows that she came from. I don’t try to wake Ms. Windy, though; it’d obviously be a damn waste. The woman won’t wake up for the end of the world.

Her eyes aren’t even closed. Not much to wake up for if you’re already awake. 

“Sid, sit down!” I scream at her out of nowhere. Or maybe just because the wheels are screaming on the pavement…I don’t know. “Sit down or call for help!”—but Sid won’t do either. I just take her by the wrist and shove her hard back into her seat. “911,” I yell at them all, “someone call 911! Tell ‘em the driver’s down–”

“Down for good?”

“Yes, dammit, down for good! Tell ‘em she’s down forever and ever Amen and the bus is heading straight towards the river! Tell ‘em we need EMS and some kinda water rescue, and maybe lifejackets, and-and God knows what else!” All the girls start dialing, trying to ring up friends and friends of friends and whatever connections they shouldn’t have but do. 

“Hey, get Marley on the line, we’re gonna need–”

“And tell them to bring a–”

“Don’t hang up, please don’t hang up! I just–”

“Mom! Mom, I love you, it wasn’t supposed to go this way–”

“I’m sorry–”

“I love you–”

“I won’t forget you–”

“NO PLEASE DON’T HANG UP!”

“Can you turn the radio up?”

I take the wheel in both hands. My arms scream with the effort to jerk it up and hard to the right, to the right, as far from the left lane as I can. It takes too long to get ‘er back in gear. By the time the back wheels cross the midline, we’ve spun straight into the headlights of another bus. A full bus twice our size, driver intact, and with more boys than bodies on here combined. I spot sports gear in the back and spilling over the seats. Some of them are wearing jerseys.

The boys in the front row see me; it’d be hard not to, considering. My heart flashes like ten million strobe lights in my chest. Blood on my cheeks and tears in my eyes, I give one loud scream and pull the wheel in whatever direction will get this damn bus away from forty-plus casualties. 

The driver looks stricken, hands tight on the wheel as he tries to steer away from us, but the boys don’t have to be so focused. They throw down their windows and yell a whole mess of things I can’t make out: 

“Tip it over on its side!”

“Jump out the emergency exits!”

“Hit the brakes! HIT THE BRAKES!”

Goddamn, why didn’t I think of that? I wedge my foot under and between Windy’s. My foot slips and crashes hard against every fucking thing but the brake pedal. I fall against the seat with an awful scream, pain racing down my leg. 

“I CAN’T!” I can’t hit the brake and I can’t breathe past the pain. My leg is stuck so far under I bang my head on the dashboard trying to get it out. “I CAN’T CONTROL IT!”

The boys watch me slip and slide and tumble, watch me struggle with all my might, and finally urge their driver to pull over. They all spill out the doors without wasting a second and before the wheels have even stopped turning—and sprint over to the edge of the river. Ready to dive in once we fall. 

“DON’T!” I scream, waving my hands frantically. “DON’T JUMP IN, YOU’LL ONLY KILL YOURSELVES TOO!” 

They scream back, “WE’LL GET YOU OUT!” They’re still running. Taking off their heavy coats. Slipping out of their heavy jean cuffs and boots. They leave behind a trail of shirts and hoodies and belts, socks lost in grass trenches. 

I catch someone’s eye. He locks on. I choke out, “Please,” and he shakes his head. “Please don’t.” 

“We’ll get you out!” the kid yells back. “It’ll be okay! You’ll be okay, just hang on!” 

“TO WHAT?!”

But he just yells again, “We’ll get you out!” 

The lightning screams.

The rain shatters.

The bus flips.

“WE’LL GET YOU OUT!”

And then it’s over.

“Can you turn the radio up?”

We never made it out.