The Good Son by Carolyn Mills (best novels for teenagers .txt) 📕

confusion. Then I remember that Champ is dead and I realize in that same moment what the tapping sound is. It’s Amy Nessor, rapping at my window with her little dead fingers, begging me to help her. My heart lurches in terror. The sound gets louder, more insistent, until I realize it’s not coming from my window at all. Someone is knocking at my front door.

I stagger out of bed. What now? If this is Ricky, I will kill him. I’m shaking as I approach the front door, still in my clothes, which are rumpled from sleeping.

It’s Gary, standing on my front steps in full uniform. I step back, and because it’s Gary, give him a brief nod, intended as a greeting. I don’t trust myself to speak. I don’t know what to feel, so in that instant, I choose to feel nothing.

“Zoe,” he says, and my former friend’s face is so full of sympathy I almost collapse against him. I’m surprised they sent him, of all people. Maybe the police are hoping, because of our history, that I’ll be more cooperative. I motion for him to come in and watch as he closes the door gently behind him.

I start to say something, but the words get stuck in my throat. Instead I stare at him helplessly, feeling the brittle threads of my life snapping one by one.

“Zoe,” he says again. “There’s been an accident.”

“An accident?” I repeat dumbly. “Where?” I am imagining some kind of catastrophe at the plant, while at the same time a slow, seeping relief spreads through my veins. This isn’t about Amy.

“On Snyder’s Road, coming into town. Richard’s car —”

“Richard?” I interrupt. “My brother, Richard?” My head is spinning. I can hardly make sense of what Gary is saying. I put a hand on the wall to steady myself.

“It’s pretty bad, Zoe. He’s been airlifted to Jefferson Memorial Hospital.”

“Okay,” I say. My mind is a whirlwind of confusion. “I need to find my keys. Does my mom know?”

Gary lays a gentle hand on my arm. “Zoe. It would be better if someone else drove you.”

“I can drive,” I answer automatically.

“Let me call you a cab,” Gary says. “I would take you myself, but I’m still on shift.”

I am about to argue, to insist that I can drive myself to the hospital, when what Gary is saying finally registers. And I wonder, for just a second, if Ricky’s accident wasn’t an accident at all. If this was his way of running from the truth for good. But why was he running back to Dunford?

CHAPTER TWO

•

JEFFERSON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL IS A monstrous brick building. My cab driver, Leroy — he told me his name, but otherwise didn’t speak to me during the forty-minute drive to the city — drops me off at the front entrance just before midnight. I stagger inside, unsure what to do or where to go. I spent most of the ride in a dazed panic, only half registering my surroundings as Leroy drove out of Dunford and along the dark highway. I didn’t bring Mom. I didn’t even call her. I want to see how bad it is before alarming her. The last thing I need is for her to have another heart attack.

At the first counter I come across, I ask for help. There are two people sitting at a desk, wearing uniforms of some sort, and after typing Ricky’s name into a computer, one of them tells me he’s in the Intensive Care Unit. A nurse is summoned to escort me there. She walks briskly and I have to scurry behind her on my shaking legs. We arrive at a waiting room outside the ICU doors, and when the nurse turns to face me, she eyes me carefully before asking if I am sick.

“Me?” I say, confused. “No, I’m here to see my brother. Richard Emmerson. He was in an accident.”

“If you’ve had a cough or fever in the last twenty-four hours, we can’t let you in the ward,” she explains.

The back of my neck is sweating and my hands are shaking. “I have a cold,” I admit. Can this nurse see how feverish I am?

She purses her lips and nods at me. “Someone will be out to speak with you, but I can’t let you in,” she says. “Wait here.” She disappears through the doors that lead into the ICU. Within less than a minute, she returns. “I told the staff at the desk that you’re here,” she says. Then, without so much as a backward glance, she walks away, leaving me alone in the waiting room.

A different nurse emerges from the ICU and establishes my relationship to Richard. “I can’t let you see him, but I will come out to notify you if anything changes,” she tells me. “If you need to contact us, use this.” She indicates a phone mounted beside the ICU doors. “It connects straight to the desk.”

At first, I pace around the small waiting room, counting the chairs to distract myself. There are fourteen in total and all of them are empty. There’s a TV on the wall, tuned to a news station, but the sound has been turned off. I am too wound-up to watch it anyway. Eventually, I collapse into one of the plastic chairs, holding my aching head in my hands. I am sitting like this, folded over myself, when Brenda arrives.

She nods at me before being led through the doors into the ICU where I am not allowed to go. Eventually, Brenda returns to the waiting room, white-faced, with a doctor close behind her. I try to stand up, but I’m shaking so badly I have to sit again. Brenda’s eyes are red-rimmed and teary. She’s looking somewhere beside me, as if she can’t bring herself to look at me directly and I feel something in my chest breaking apart.

It is the doctor who speaks. Richard is in a coma, he explains. At his words, Brenda shakes her head slowly, although