“What you need to do is run straight to my car and pull it around.” I was surprised at how calm I sounded.
“I don’t drive,” Cassidy said, her voice quivering.
“Bullshit you don’t drive. Get the car.”
Cassidy nodded numbly, and took off across the grass, her hair streaming behind her like it was a flame and the fog was smoke.
Cooper let out a heartbreaking whine, and I pressed my hands harder against the gash in his neck, trying to keep it, and us, together.
Cassidy honked the horn at me when she pulled into the parking lot.
“I can’t lift him,” I yelled, my voice cracking shamefully.
Cassidy came and helped, and we managed to wrangle Cooper into the backseat. She climbed in after him, placing her hands over mine on his wound.
“You drive,” she insisted. “There’s too much fog.”
I turned on the low beams and drove, the car thick with silence, and the steering wheel slick with blood.
32
CASSIDY AND I sat staring straight ahead in the frigid air-conditioning of the animal hospital’s waiting room. It was like a bad dream, and I was slightly hazy on the details, but this much I knew: it was seven thirty in the morning, and Cooper was in trouble, and I was terrified that they wouldn’t be able to save him.
Cassidy shivered, pulling her hands inside the sleeves of her sweater. I shrugged out of my leather jacket and handed it to her.
“Thanks,” she murmured, putting it on and curling her legs up under her, like she was trying to fit completely inside that jacket.
I was in shock, dazed by the vastness of what had just happened; we both were. The waiting room was empty. It was just us, and the animal scale that looked almost like a treadmill in the corner. The receptionist, whose presence I’d sort of forgotten about, cleared her throat and frowned in my direction.
“Excuse me, sir?” she called. “Why don’t you use our bathroom to clean up?”
Her smile didn’t quite match her eyes as she pointed out where she wanted me to go. Numbly, I drifted toward the bathroom and turned on the light.
A specter leered at me from the mirror. Gaunt cheeks, face too pale, button-down shirt streaked with blood. My hands were particularly gruesome. I thought bitterly that this was a far better Halloween costume than the one I’d attempted.
I hunched over the basin, watching the metallic orange water swirl down the drain, and even long after the water ran clear, I couldn’t bring myself to turn off the tap and go out there again.
I kept replaying it in my head: that coyote ghosting toward me through the fog, and the way my heart had lurched when Cassidy called my name and screamed for me to run. The way Cooper had fought the coyote even when the ground was coated with his blood, and how it was all my fault, because I’d known about the coyotes and hadn’t listened.
Eventually, there was a knock at the door.
“Ezra?” It was Cassidy, and she sounded concerned.
“Just a second.” I splashed some water on my face and opened the door.
“Hi,” she said. “It’s been forever. I was worried about you.”
I raised an eyebrow at this, and Cassidy looked away.
“Do they know anything yet?” I pressed.
Cassidy shook her head.
“Come on,” she said, taking my hand in hers. My hands were icy from the sink, and I felt her flinch, but she didn’t say anything about it. We sat back down in the waiting room, and she scooted up next to me so our jeans were touching. I didn’t know how she meant it, but it gave me a small glimmer of hope, the feeling of her—of us—touching, like maybe the distance between us wasn’t as permanent as I’d once despaired.
Cassidy pulled my jacket tighter around her shoulders.
“I remember the day we bought this thing,” she said, half to herself. “We made out on top of your lost library. McEnroe and Fleming watched the whole thing. Your wrist brace got stuck on my bra.”
“And here we are,” I said, trying to make a joke of it. “You and me and Cooper. We’re like a positively charged molecule, the rate we’re attracting tragedy.”
“Don’t,” Cassidy said. “Don’t build me a snowman out of tumbleweeds and say things like that.”
“I’m sorry?” I tried.
“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Cassidy muttered.
Outside, a fire truck sped past, its siren wailing, on its way to someone else’s disaster.
“How did you find out about my brother?” Cassidy asked, and I didn’t blame her for being curious.
“Toby,” I admitted. “The tournament last weekend.”
“And now you know why I don’t compete anymore,” Cassidy said.
“I do, and I’m sorry,” I said quietly, realizing how useless the word “sorry” had become.
“It’s okay. I mean, it isn’t. It’s completely not okay about Owen, but I guess I don’t mind anymore if you know about him.”
“Well, if you’d decided that three weeks ago, it would have saved us both a lot of trouble,” I said, and Cassidy’s shoulders rose slightly as she stifled a laugh.
“It’s just . . .” I said, and then started over. “I don’t get why you had to lie about it that night in the park. I would have understood that you didn’t want to go to that stupid dance for whatever reason, but you just pushed me away, and it hurt like hell.”
“I had to,” Cassidy whispered. “God, I can’t believe I’m even talking to you right now.”