Ride and Die (Ridgemore #1)

5 Miracle Kid

5

Miracle Kid

P ulling up in front of the hospital, I idled at the curb, not bothering to text Brady that I’d arrived. He’d exit the building the very instant he was set free, just as he’d been doing after every checkup over the last two and a half weeks since his accident. Brady and Layla shared a car, a 2014 Shelby GT500 named Bonnie that purred happily, even though it hadn’t seen a certified mechanic since Celia and Porter bought it as a surprise gift a couple of years ago. Before then, none of us knew much about cars, but when Brady fell in love with the Ford Mustang, so did the rest of us.

He taught himself how to maintain her, and then how to do his own upgrades—the four of us right along with him, devouring instructional YouTube videos like it was our damn job. Not that Brady—or Layla, for that matter—needed the extra horsepower. Ridgemore was a sleepy mountain town wrapped in winding roads that cut into steep hillsides covered in dense trees. But Brady was an all-or-nothing guy. He wouldn’t stop until he’d tinkered with every single part in that car.

The hospital’s sliding doors opened, their telltale whoosh filtering in the lowered windows of Griffin’s own Mustang, his 1976 Cobra II we’d fixed up together as a group project and that he’d named Clyde to pair with Bonnie.

Mine was our next project. A 1999 Mustang SVT Cobra that was left out in some junkyard to rot. My parents saw my baby, had it towed to the house, and slapped a ribbon on the rust-riddled shell as an advance graduation present. Propped up on blocks now and stripped down to her bare bones, she was rough and ugly, but she wouldn’t be for long. Not once we got through with her. She was going to be a wet dream of factory-original-matched electric green or shiny cherry black. I was still deciding.

Brady’s shoulders were rounded and his back hunched, as if his every step caused him pain. He walked gingerly, but the ferocity of his scowl and the cyclone brewing in his eyes gave him away. I rushed out of the car, playing my agreed-upon part, and swung open the passenger door for him.

He folded into the seat a little too easily, and I reminded him, “Not so fast, man.”

He glared up at me. “Shut the damn door, Joss.”

I chuckled instead of taking offense and closed the door with the respect the Mustang deserved, running a reverent hand along her deep-impact blue paint job. Brady had been a lit stick of dynamite since he was discharged from the hospital and allowed to go home. Once the shock of how close he came to dying wore off, he hadn’t been his usual self. Not that Brady was ever as easygoing as he liked to think he was, but I kept waiting for this version of Brady to shoot lightning from his ass or something. It was why we rock-paper-scissored to decide who’d come pick him up. Normally, none of us would mind the drive to the hospital, a scenic stretch of road, especially in Clyde, but Brady’s company lately was the kind that made a girl appreciate solitude.

I waited until I turned on to the road toward home. “If anybody’s watching, they’ll know you’re feeling fine from how you got in the car.”

He spun in his seat toward me with his usual agility. Despite the severity of his injuries, and the fact that barely two weeks had passed, he was healed up and itching to get back to his usual workout routines. All that remained was a puckered scar the size of a lemon on his chest where the rebar had pierced him.

“I hear it from my parents a hundred times a day. I don’t need that crap from you too,” he snapped, facing forward again and slumping into his seat with a sullen pout.

“I know.” I kept my eyes on the road, peeved that I was already annoyed with him when I should just be grateful he was sitting next to me— alive . “But we’ve been hearing it too. If you didn’t have your head shoved so far up your ass, you’d realize you’re not the only one dealing with helicopter parents all of a sudden.”

Well, so much for the patience I’d just finished promising myself I’d have with him…

“Your parents aren’t asking you to walk around like some wimpy asshole every time you leave the house. My mom actually asked me to limp—can you believe that shit? I didn’t even hurt my fucking legs.” He snarled, but this time not at me.

“You did nearly break your spine in half though.” The surgeon hadn’t mentioned it, but I’d been the one to see Brady strewn across that pillar like a damn sacrificial offering, not the doctor. A lot worse could have happened. A lot worse did happen. It was just that we got a miracle out of the deal—somehow.

“Dude,” I said, more softly this time as I glanced his way. “You died . Do you get that? Do you really get what that did to us? To your parents? Of course they’re gonna treat you like you’re made of porcelain for a while. Give ’em a break. It’ll wear off.”

He ran his hands roughly through his hair, short on the sides, longer on top, before allowing them to plop to his lap. “It’s not that though. That part I get. I know the accident was bad.”

“ So bad, dude. You have no idea what it was like to see you dead like that.”

“But I wasn’t really dead.”

“Oh, you were. At least for a while.”

“Okay,” he said shortly, probably sick of hearing it. “But I’m not now. Even so, that bit I get. Mom and Dad hovering over me like they can’t believe they almost lost me. Okay. But it’s not that, and you know it.”

Did I? I glanced at him again.

“All their rules only apply outside of the house. When I’m home, they probably wouldn’t care if I start doing backflips.”

I snorted. “Pretty sure your mom’ll handcuff you to a pipe if you start doing shit like that before she’s ready.”

He huffed. “Actually, she just might. I keep catching her just staring at me. It’s the weirdest thing.”

“Again, give her time. Both of them. Layla too, while you’re at it.”

He waved away my concern. “Layla’s fine.”

I wasn’t so sure. I noticed the way her eyes grew haunted when she stared off into space for long moments, thinking no one was watching her.

“If anything, our parents are probably driving her nuts too,” he continued. “They won’t shut up about how no one should see me moving around so well. That I already drew too much attention to myself by surviving. Blah, blah, blah. Like, seriously? Who the hell’s gonna be watching me when I’m walking around the hospital? No one’s just sitting around with their thumbs up their butts, waiting for me to show up for my appointments.”

I hesitated. “I’ve seen people watching you, actually, at the hospital. You’re the miracle kid.”

He rolled his eyes and scoffed. “Great nickname I get out of the deal. Do they not realize I’m about to turn eighteen?”

I shrugged. “Your birthday’s still a few months away.”

“Doesn’t make me a ‘kid.’”

No, it didn’t. Brady had outgrown his boyishness years ago, a fact that the girls at school who liked to drool over him hadn’t failed to notice. At Ridgemore High, Brady was considered hot stuff. So were Griffin and Hunt, for that matter. The sexy big fish in Ridgemore’s puny pond.

“I’m not kidding, Brade,” I said. “I’ve seen the nurses and doctors watching you. A lot.”

“Still, nothing for our parents to be so freaked out about that they have me fucking lying to everyone. My mom actually threatened to take Bonnie away if I didn’t tell the doc that I’m having heart pains and a stiff spine. Aching everywhere. My mom made me rehearse the whole convoluted story.”

I downshifted into third gear, sailing around a tight curve, then eyed him. “Really?”

“I shit you not. It’s like she’s become another person. Both of them.”

Celia may as well have threatened never to let him leave the house again. Brady loved Bonnie like she was an actual woman ready and willing to act out his every teenage fantasy.

“Well,” I said, “they don’t want someone to pull up in an unmarked black van and take you away.”

When Celia and Porter had first shared this concern while staring down the five of us, it had shocked me. Sure, I’d seen plenty of government ops take people away to study them in secret underground facilities— on TV . That didn’t happen in real life. Not to us, not to anyone we knew. But after a wave of awkward laughter, the rest of the parents had crowded in, glaring at us as one unit until we didn’t dare so much as crack a smile. No matter how ridiculous it might be, there could be no doubt that our parents were worried someone might take too much interest in Brady’s miraculous recovery and steal him away from us.

Brady sighed and crossed an ankle over a knee, his long legs pushing up against the dashboard. “It’s not like people don’t survive crazy situations all the time. It happens. Stories about moms thin as twigs finding the super strength to lift entire cars off their kids. Or like Truant Bell, you remember his story? The dude who fell two hundred feet off the crag leading down to Raven’s Lagoon?”

I nodded.

“He broke like every bone in his fucking body. They had to slice him open and put metal all up in him just to piece him back together. Told him there was zero chance he’d ever walk again. But then what happened? He heals when no one thought he ever would, starts walking again, and then, like a motherfucking badass, asks to go under the knife again to have all that metal taken out. Everyone thought he’d lost his damn mind. But what was it, three years after that? Dude’s doing actual backflips. Like a hoss.” He looked at me. “See? People survive from things like I did all the time.”

“Yeah, sure, but you didn’t just get hurt. You died .”

He grunted, but I cut him off, knowing full well he didn’t want to hear what I was going to say next.

“And you didn’t just die for a couple of minutes like those people who drown and get no oxygen for a bit and then come to, miraculously fine, no brain damage. You weren’t dead for even ten minutes. It was like thirty minutes from the time you fell till the ambulances got there, and then another twenty till you got to the hospital. They didn’t manage to revive you on the ride over, only when you were on the gurney—one last-ditch attempt away from being wheeled into the fucking morgue, Brady.”

I threw him a quick glance. “Not even the ER, the morgue . If we hadn’t begged them to give it one last shot, you’d be six feet under right now. The EMTs didn’t even want to defibrillate you anymore, said there was no chance you could come back, sorry , and all the usual platitudes. You were as flatlined as flatline gets, according to them. But Layla and I stuck out our boobs, batted our lashes, and legit begged. If not, you’d’ve stayed dead.”

He frowned. “Are you actually saying I owe my life to your rack and my sister’s?”

I didn’t even blink. “Yes.”

Shaking his head, he stared out the passenger window at the trees flashing by in a blur, still a few minutes out from the turn that led to the cul-de-sac that opened up to all our houses. Not only were the five of us tight, our parents had been friends for decades, and when they moved to Ridgemore, they bought neighboring houses—how quaint.

“You should’ve seen the EMTs when you gasped and started breathing,” I added. “They looked two seconds away from shitting themselves.”

“So … what?” Brady finally asked on an exasperated jerk of his shoulders. “I’m supposed to hide out for the rest of my life, pretending I’m all fucked-up when I’m not?”

“No, of course not.” Though given how panicked our parents were, it was actually possible that was what they expected. “Just until Kitty’s lady-boner goes soft and your story fades away.”

Kitty Blanche was a recent hire for the Ridgemore Gazette , with the kind of tenacious ambition for Brady’s story that suggested she thought it had the potential to elevate her to star status. Her near-daily articles on Brady’s accident, and then miraculous recovery, garnered national attention. So many reporters swarmed our little town that Sheriff Jones had to park cruisers at the entrance to the hospital so they wouldn’t converge there, bothering patients and staff. Despite his efforts, the occasional reporter still snuck in. Kitty, usually a redhead straight from a bottle, had donned a long blond wig the last time I saw her sniffing around the recovery wing of Ridgemore Hospital.

As if Brady’s thoughts also drifted to the journalists we’d eventually given up on evading, he asked, “Which house are we going to? Please say yours.”

I chuckled. “Yep. Mine.”

“Aw, thank God.” He sighed in relief, not because my house wouldn’t be swarming with reporters as much as his since they’d figured out we hopped houses constantly, but because my parents went back to work at the lab a few days after his accident. His parents didn’t, choosing to set up a home office instead, all the better to monitor his every move.

“The others there too?” he asked.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Did you guys draw straws again to see who’d come pick me up?”

“Nope.”

He turned my way, a smile already playing at his mouth. “You wanted to come get me?”

“No, I lost at rock-paper-scissors. We didn’t have straws or sticks.”

A frown wiped away any hint of a smile, and he crossed his arms over his chest, not even wincing as they pressed against his scar. “Nice, guys, real nice.”

“You know we love you, Brade. But no offense, man, you’ve just been surlier than a girl ditched on prom night lately.”

“Yeah. I fucking died . I think I’ve earned the right to a little moodiness.”

“Oh, so now you died. When it suits you.”

“You’d think you guys would be too happy I survived to be trying to ditch me.”

Damn . “We are. One hundred percent we are. So much so.”

“Odd fucking way of showing it…”

“It’s been a lot for all of us. You went through the bad stuff, but in a way we went through it right along with you. I think we all need to cut each other some slack.”

He turned accusatory eyes on me until I added, “And we def need to cut you a huge break and allow for mega mood swings.”

He pursed his lips, probably unsure whether I’d insulted him or not. Since I wasn’t entirely certain myself, I grabbed his hand, gave it a quick squeeze, then gripped the steering wheel again in time for the tight turn into our neighborhood.

“I’ll never stop being grateful you’re still here with us. My heart about exploded into a million tiny, jagged pieces when I thought we’d lost you.”

He must have picked up on my sincerity because he reached over to pat my thigh quickly before returning his hand to his side of the car. For Brady, that was practically a declaration of platonic love.

I swallowed thickly, but didn’t give in to emotion. “Just stop being such a dick all the time, mm-kay?”

He barked a laugh. “Joss Bryson. Mistress of the words.”

I smiled back, trying to catch his gaze before we reached the zoo of hungry reporters, but he didn’t look my way. So I asked, “Anything else bothering you?”

When he only snorted, I qualified, “You know, other than dying, coming back, and being forced to play the role of invalid?”

“Nah. I’m fine.” But his words hung suspended long enough to indicate he wasn’t telling me everything.

“ Brady .”

“Okay, fine. I’ve been having nightmares. A lot.”

“Oh, well, I’m sure that’s normal. Who wouldn’t dream about dying and all that shit?”

“No, it’s not that. Of us, being kids. We’re locked up in some”—he shuddered—“creepy-ass place. Like mega creepy vibes.”

I slowed down, preparing for the onslaught of questions and cameras I knew was coming, and flicked another glance at him. “You’re for real right now?”

He nodded.

“Okay. Then hold that thought till we’re with the others. We won’t let you take on the nightmares alone.”

Ordinarily, Brady would have shrugged me off, told me he wasn’t a freaking kid and he didn’t need our support with something so stupid. But he did none of those things, which told me that whatever he was seeing in his dreams was worse than he was saying.

With my lips already pressed into a tight line of concern, when the reporters swarmed the entrance to my driveway, I injected extra fuck you vibes into my death glare. It worked. None of them advanced on the car while I waited for the gate to slide open, none but one. Kitty.

She smiled at me like she was on camera already. Like she knew something we didn’t.

Then she was gone as I gunned the engine to shoo them all the way away, waiting until the gate snapped shut behind me before I headed down the long drive to my house, where Brady and the rest of us were hidden from view by thick walls of trees.

Where Brady was free to be the miracle that he was.