whew, this is a monster of a chapter lol. please be mindful of trigger warnings from previous chapters; they'll be applying to some degree for the remainder of this book!
//
Car tires screeched, and a long honk from the semi truck's horn rang out.
Zach was trying to shake off the nightmare, but he kept seeing parts of it flash through his head.
Cody screamed as the truck barrelled into the passenger side of the car, and Zach saw flashes of different colours of lights as his head was thrown back into the side window.
"Fucking hell," he muttered. He wiped the sweat off of his brow and gripped his hair.
His thigh felt like it was being ripped apart, and Zach couldn't pull it from where it was stuck between the car and the road.
He clasped his hands around the end of his leg, trying to ignore the crushing sensation that his brain was trying to tell him he felt.
Not real.
But it was.
He took a few deep breaths.
His head hurt and his leg hurt and he felt sick and there were voices everywhere and all he could smell was smoke and he looked beside him to see how Cody was doing and—
He breathed in, then slowly let it out through his mouth.
In, and out.
In.
And out.
Zach sat up, hanging his leg off the side of the bed. He held his hands in front of him, staring numbly at the palms.
In, and out.
He clenched his right hand in a fist, then slowly moved it in a wave to form the sign for "hi."
In, and out.
He brought it towards his chest, pointing at himself.
my
In, and out.
He held his middle and pointer fingers together, then tapped them together once, beginning to sign "name." He felt his breathing quicken and his heart began to pound again, and he tried to muster the courage to tap them together once more to finish the word.
In, and out. In, and out. In. In, in, in. He tried to force the air slowly out of his mouth again, but found himself unable to let it fully out before he needed to gasp in more.
Fuck.
He sat there, seeing the last moments before the crash play out over and over.
"We need a card and balloons for Mom."
Then it was black, and then it was full of light, and everything hurt.
Card and balloons.
Those were his last words to his brother before he killed him.
YOU ARE READING
The Way We Feel
Teen FictionLeila, her mother, and her twin sister relocate after a family tragedy that's left them all damaged in different ways. Finding herself at a new school partway through her senior year, she is paired up with the ever-annoying Zach. Leila passes him of...
