it, Jaz?” Mom could tell something was wrong just by the expression on my face. Then again, I felt like my blood had stopped pumping. Like I’d turned into a pale ghost, pallid and nauseous.
“Can I take your van?” I had no idea whether or not Archer had even hung up; I still held onto the phone, holding it near my ear, but I heard no sounds coming from the other line.
I hadn’t asked to take my mom’s van since coming to Midpark. Her face darkened, and she set down the bag of carrots she was about to bust into and cut. “Why? Did something happen?”
“It’s Archer’s mom,” I said, and the look I gave her along with that explanation must’ve been enough for her to realize something was majorly wrong here.
“Let me grab my keys. We’ll both go.”
Mom had never volunteered to take me to a boy’s house before. I’d filled her in on what was going on with Archer’s mom and what had happened with his dad, so she knew the Vega family was as fractured and as damaged as a family could be.
“Let me contact Oliver,” Mom said, “let him know where we’re going.”
I waited near the front door for my mom to gather her things and do just that. It felt like ages until we were in her van and I was telling her Archer’s address. I still gripped my phone like it was my lifeline, but Archer had long since hung up by then.
The drive took too long. Every minute that passed felt more like an hour, and the more time that ticked by, the worse I felt inside, the more my anxieties grew. I literally felt like throwing up whatever was in my stomach, like I wanted to upchuck everything I’d eaten today, and then some. This…this wasn’t like before. This wasn’t like any of them before. This was so much worse.
When we pulled onto the road where Archer’s house was, we saw flashing lights. Red and blue; the cops, along with an ambulance.
“Oh, dear,” Mom murmured to herself, parking along the side of the road, somewhere she would never normally park, but this was not a normal situation.
I flew out of the car, rushing to the house, past the cops who tried to keep me back. “Archer called me,” I told them, not knowing whether they’d know who the hell Archer was, that he lived here in this house. When strong, uniformed arms tried to bar me from entering the house, where I could see EMTs fixing someone on a stretcher, I shouted for him, “Archer!”
My mom was right behind me, calmly telling the officers to release me, but they weren’t listening. They were trying to drag me away from the house, away from Archer and the horror that I knew laid inside that house.
Something had happened while we were at school. Something awful.
Archer appeared in the front door, looking haggard, like he’d aged a thousand years in the last few minutes. He stumbled towards me, and the police finally caught the idea that I was here for him. The tall, muscular boy collapsed in my arms, sagging into me so hard he nearly knocked me over.
But I stayed upright, holding him to me, watching as the EMTs came out of the house with someone on a stretcher. Melinda, his mom’s nurse. Her head was bruised, her forehead cracked and bleeding. She looked like she was unconscious, but at least she was alive.
It was more than could be said about the other woman who was still in the house.
“I don’t know what happened,” Archer was busy saying, speaking into my shoulder. “I came home, and…Melinda was at the bottom of the stairs. My mom…she’s…”
I wanted to soothe him, to tell him that it was all right, but the truth was nothing was all right. Nothing would be all right for a long while, not for Archer, and not for me.
“She was in her bedroom. Her wrists were cut. I didn’t…” Archer was at a loss for words, his blue eyes crisp with tears. “She was never suicidal. Never. Not even on her worst day. I don’t get it. I don’t—” He rambled on, hardly making much sense after that. The police must’ve questioned him, but judging from the fact that the ambulance drove off with Melinda and they remained, they still had work to do in the house.
Did they already rule it as a suicide? Was Archer pushing for them to investigate it