Not the Only One (Book 1 in the Four of Us Trilogy)

Six

Rachel

There was a cool breeze blowing off the Gulf, and I was riding with my windows down. It was at least a 30-minute drive from school to Panama City proper, where my brother was. I had driven over with the radio on full blast, but when I turned onto Harrison Drive, I lowered the volume to silent.

Kent-Forest Lawn Cemetery was empty today. I pulled up close to where they'd buried my brother, and after taking a deep breath, stepped out of his car. Twenty feet from me was my brother's headstone—the headstone they just put down six months ago, weeks after his death.

My brother James was only twenty-one when a hit-and-run driver killed him. He'd been walking alone down Thomas Drive late one Saturday night; James was a server at Schooner's and had just pulled a double. He was crossing the street—at a crosswalk—to meet some of his friends at Waffle House, when someone in a black minivan ran the red light and hit him, killing him in an instant. 

A black minivan. That's all we've ever known about the car that hit him—in the last six months, the police still cannot identify the person who hit him. It's maddening; the monster who killed my precious, hilarious, hard-working, beautiful brother was still out there, still driving, living with no consequences for his or her actions.

I did well holding it together in public, but in private, his death wrecked me.

I dropped to my knees at his headstone and ran my hand along the ridged letters: James David Cross. Tears filled my eyes, and I tightened my hand into a fist, my nails digging crescent moons into my palm. The past week had been horrible. I hadn't spoken to Brooke since our argument in the cafeteria, and I'd been trying to help everyone else—Luke, Miles, even my mom and dad—but I hadn't been taking care of me. And when that happened, my anxiety took the wheel.

It was now in the driver's seat.

I laid my head against James' headstone and wept, sobs leaving my throat like strangled cries of an animal. James was my best friend—the only one who I felt understood me...and a monster—drunk or otherwise—took him away from me. He was putting himself through college to be a civil engineer; he was going to make something of himself. He had a girlfriend he was soon going to make a fiancée, but all that disappeared. In three seconds flat, his life ended. His friends saw him get hit from the Waffle House window, my parents have never been the same, and me? I cry myself to sleep every night and pretend during the day that I'm just fine.

It was exhausting.

I heard the soft step of sneakers on the grass behind me and then a surprised voice: "Rachel?"

I looked up, and through teary eyes, saw Miles Jefferson standing over me.

My eyes widened, and I wiped my cheeks with the backs of my hands. "Miles? What are you doing here?"

"Visiting my mother."

Miles

I felt like the biggest fucking tool. How did I not know that Rachel's brother was the one that was killed on Thomas Drive back in September? How did I not put two and two together?

As I sat down next to Rachel, I felt as tall as a fucking ant. We had been in school together our entire lives, and I didn't know her brother's name was James.

But she didn't look at me with any kind of disdain. Of course she didn't...she was a fucking saint.

"Your mother?" she asked, shifting her body so she was facing me.

I nodded. "My mom died of breast cancer when we were in 5th grade," I said, trying to swallow the lump in my throat.

Her face fell. "My God, Miles. I didn't know. I am so sorry," she said, throwing her arms around me in what felt like a spur-of-the-moment decision.