God, no,” she moaned, and started running, stumbling, trying to get to her brother.
The windows of his car were all broken, and the passenger’s side door had popped open. Haley crawled into the front seat and then fell onto her knees beside her brother. Blood was bubbling from the corner of his mouth, and coming out of his nose and ears.
“Stewart? Stewart! Can you hear me? Why in God’s name did you do this?” she asked.
But like Mack, Stewart wasn’t talking. In a panic, she backed out of the car, and as she did, she felt something beneath the palm of her hand.
Stewart’s cell!
“Thank God,” she said, and hit 9-1-1.
“Stars Crossing Police Department. How may I help you?”
“God … oh, God … I need help. We had a wreck. My brother and my boyfriend crashed their cars. They’re hurt bad.”
Suddenly the dispatcher was all business.
“Who is this?” she asked.
“Haley Shore. My brother, Stewart, and my boyfriend, Mack Brolin … they’re both trapped in their cars. I can’t get them out, and they’re both bleeding. We’re about two miles west of town on North Hollow Road.”
“Stay on the line with me, Haley,” the dispatcher said. “I’m going to send ambulances and the police. Don’t hang up while I do that, okay?”
“Okay,” Haley said, and then started to cry as she ran back across the road to Mack.
A few seconds later, the dispatcher was back on the line.
“Are you hurt, Haley?”
“I don’t know…. I don’t think so. I got out of the car on my own, and I’m walking.”
“I want you to sit down,” the dispatcher said. “You could have internal injuries. Just sit still and stay on the line with me. Help is on the way.”
Haley sank to the ground right beside Mack’s door, reached in the window and wrapped her hand around his wrist, then drew her knees up and lowered her head to keep from passing out.
“I’m here, Mack, I’m here,” she mumbled. “Stay with me. Help is coming.”
She was starting to crash from the adrenaline surge that had gotten her out of the wreck and across the road, and she could feel herself coming undone. Her voice began to shake, and when she started to talk, it came out in sobs.
“Haley … talk to me,” the dispatcher said.
“You need to call my mom and dad,” Haley said. “And Tom and Chloe Brolin. You need to tell them Mack and Stewart are hurt.”
“We will, honey. Just sit tight. You’ll hear the sirens any minute now. Can you hear them yet?”
In the distance, Haley could just make out the thin, high-pitched wail.
“Yes. I can hear them,” she said.
“You’re doing fine, Haley. You’re doing fine. Help is on the way.”
Chapter 2
When word of the wreck began spreading through Stars Crossing, it abruptly brought post-graduation parties to an end. The emergency room quickly became packed with Haley’s classmates, who had come to be with her.
Judd and Lena Shore arrived within minutes of Tom and Chloe Brolin and their daughters, and the two couples sat on opposite sides of the waiting room, glaring at one another in stoic silence. Neither couple had spoken to Haley or bothered to ask after her welfare. The fact that she was mobile and alert was enough for them, even her own parents. They didn’t seem to care that she was pale and shaking and covered in blood, or that she had three stitches in her hairline, bruises rising on the side of her face and kept breaking into sobs every time another friend called her name.
Her best friend, Retta, a short, perky blonde, was sitting with her, running interference every time someone asked too many questions for which Haley had no answers.
An outpouring of blood donations had come in from friends and families alike, but the boys’ conditions were as yet unknown.
It wasn’t until Jack Bullard, the chief of police, arrived to speak to Haley that Judd and Lena got up from where they were sitting and moved toward her.
“Hey, Haley … how you doin’, honey?” Chief Bullard asked.
She shrugged, her chin quivering too much to answer.
“I know this is a rough time for you, but do you think you can talk to me for a bit?”
She nodded
Bullard smiled, and then sat down in the seat beside her.
“I need to ask you some questions about the accident.”
“Okay,” Haley said, and swiped her hands across her face, wiping away tears and smoothing back the tangles of her hair.
Bullard waited until she seemed to settle, then said, “I need you to tell me, in your own words, what happened.”
Suddenly Lena Shore pushed forward and started screaming. The rage in her voice was impossible to mistake.
“I’ll tell you what happened!” she shrieked. “My slut of a daughter was sneaking around with a damned Brolin. If it wasn’t for her, none of this would have happened.”
The minute the Brolins heard their name being slurred, they were up in the chief’s face and shouting back at Lena.
“There’s nothing wrong with our son,” Tom said. “Your daughter is the one who kept chasing after him.”
Haley shuddered and covered her face with her hands. This nightmare just kept getting worse and worse.
Chief Bullard stood abruptly and put one hand on Tom Brolin’s chest and the other on Judd Shore’s before they came to blows.
“Shut up!” he yelled. “Both of you. I’m talking to Haley, and unless you were in one of those cars, I want you all to be quiet.”
Judd cursed.
Tom puffed out his chest.
And in the middle of the melee, Haley slowly stood. Something inside of her had finally come unwound. After all these years, she’d had enough. Suddenly the room went quiet as all eyes turned to her. Her words were angry, her own rage evident as her hands curled into fists as she spoke.
“Just for the record, Mother, not once during the two years Mack and I have been seeing each other did I ever sneak anywhere. Just because you people have issues with one another, that didn’t mean we did. I love Mack, and he loves me. I don’t know what’s wrong between you and the Brolins, and frankly, I don’t care. You people have wasted eighteen years of my life acting like children.
