Until I Die - By Plum, Amy Page 0,18

an arm cautiously across his rib cage, dropping the keys he had pulled from the ignition.

As I reached him, he squeezed his eyes closed in pain, and a small stream of blood oozed from a cut on his forehead. I crouched down beside him, feeling like I was the one who had been thrown to the pavement, the breath knocked out of me. “Vincent, are you okay?” I asked, blindly sticking my arm into my bag and coming back with some Kleenex. I dabbed at the blood before it could run into his eye.

“Hurt rib, but I’m fine,” he said, gasping for breath. “But the driver’s in the truck.” I cupped his face in my hand and breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God, Vincent.” I turned to the approaching policemen. “The driver’s still in there,” I yelled, coughing and blinking as I inhaled the acrid smell of burned rubber.

One climbed up onto the truck and, after taking a look inside, pulled out a walkie-talkie and called for emergency assistance. Another knelt down next to us and began asking Vincent questions. Was he okay? Could he move his fingers? His toes? Was he having trouble breathing? Only after Vincent sat up (against the policeman’s advice) and reassured him that he had only had his breath knocked out and cut his head in the impact did the policeman turn to ask me what had happened.

By then a crowd had gathered around us, and an elderly man spoke up before I could respond. “I saw the whole thing, officer. That truck was out of control, with no driver behind the wheel, rolling steadily down the boulevard. And that boy there,” he said, pointing to Vincent, “commandeered it, steering it off the road. If he hadn’t, it would have plowed right into the people crossing the road.” He pointed to the headphones girl, who had been led to the sidewalk and was sitting with her head between her knees as someone rubbed her back.

The bystanders began buzzing excitedly with the news—the word “hero” being voiced more than once—and cell phones were pulled out as people began typing messages and making calls. Vincent closed his eyes tiredly and then, as someone tried to take a picture, pulled his sweater’s hood up over his head and asked me to help him up, wincing as he stood.

“Are you going to need me, Officer?” he asked the policeman who was mapping the truck’s path with another witness.

He saw Vincent and said, “You really shouldn’t move, sir, until the paramedics arrive.”

“I told you, I’m fine,” Vincent insisted politely. The way he held his arm carefully across his torso suggested that he was anything but.

The policeman looked conflicted. “We’ll need your testimony,” he said finally.

“Then can we wait in your car?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” the man responded, and flagged his partner to come get us. We were led away from the excited crowd and toward the privacy of the squad car. On the way I retrieved Vincent’s coat and draped it around him.

We scooted into the backseat of the squad car, and the cop shut the door behind us. We were finally alone, and I turned to Vincent, who was holding my tissue to his head. “Are you really okay?” I asked him, reaching up to gingerly pull his hand away from the wound. “You might need stitches.”

“Do you have a mirror?”

I handed him a compact from my bag, and he held it up to the light, inspecting his wound. “A butterfly bandage will hold it fine.”

“And besides that?”

“I might have a bruised rib. JB will send for a doctor once we’re home. I’ve got a couple weeks until I’m dormant, and then my body will heal itself. I can wait. I promise, Kate. I’m fine.”

He leaned back on the headrest and closed his eyes.

I sat with my head on his shoulder and my arm around his chest and wondered what might have happened had things gone differently.

What if Vincent hadn’t been fast enough and one of those people had been killed? What if in attempting to reach the truck, Vincent had been the one mowed down? Instead of sitting in the back of a squad car, I could be kneeling over his mangled body. He had been just inches away. It had been so close.

I closed my eyes and tried to focus on what was instead of what might have been.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

.....................................................................

SEVEN

WE SPENT OVER AN HOUR WAITING IN AN OFFICE at the police station