Crash (Visions (Simon Pulse)) by Lisa McMann

past him. Trey was with us, and Aunt Mary, too. We must haveclosed the restaurant . . . I don’t remember. It doesn’t really matter.
    I wonder what goes through my father’s mind every day. If it’s anything like this, well, I guess I feel sorry for him.
    •       •       •
    Around two in the afternoon, I hear a soft knock on the door. I want to ignore it, but for some reason I say, “Come in.”
    It’s my father. I turn over in bed, hoping I look as sick on the outside as I feel on the inside. “Hi,” I say.
    He looks scruffy and tired, but he’s wearing his chef jacket. He puts a plate of toast, complete with parsley garnish, on my bedside table and sets a glass of clear carbonated liquid next to it. “I thought you might be getting hungry,” he says, his normally booming voice softened. “Did I wake you up?”
    I shake my head and sit up. “Thanks.”
    He puts the back of his hand on my forehead like Mom always does, and holds it there for a few seconds. Then he pulls it away and says nothing.
    “It’s more of a stomach thing,” I say.
    He nods, and we both know I’m lying.
    “Well,” he says. He fidgets with his hands, his big thumbs bumbling around each other, and I realize I hardly even know him at all. I’ve lived with this man for almost seventeen years and all I know about him is that he’s anembarrassment to me. It kind of leaves a gigantic hole in my heart.
    I wonder what he thinks about. If he ever thinks about killing himself. He turns to go, and I almost call out after him to wait. I almost whisper, “Do you ever see visions?” But I don’t say anything.
    The reason I don’t is that even if his answer is no, I can guess that he, out of anyone in the world, will know why I’m asking—because I must be experiencing them. Which would lead to my parents putting me Someplace Else. And right now, today, a partly cloudy February day just outside of Chicago, I cannot risk leaving this bed for anything. Not for any doctor, not for any vision.
    Not for any boy.

Twenty
    When Trey sneaks upstairs after the dinner rush, around nine, he doesn’t ask for permission to come in. He sits on the bed and looks at me.
    “So. What are you sick of?”
    I smirk. “You.”
    He rolls his eyes. “Are you going to live, or what?”
    And that question, that joke, makes me hesitate. It burns through me. Am I? I look up at him, and my chest feels so much fear it squeezes my heart, makes it throb faster and faster.
    “It’s not a difficult question,” he says with a smile, but I can see him searching me, trying to get inside my brain. He’s been giving me a lot of looks like that lately. He knows me too well.
    “Yes,” I decide, thinking of body bags in the snow. “I’ll live.”
    He rests his elbows on his knees, thumbs on his forehead, holding it up, massaging it, maybe. He closes his eyes, like he needs to think. And then he takes an audible breath and says, “I’m just gonna say this: You’re not pregnant, are you?”
    I almost laugh. And then my eyes get wide, because he’s not laughing. “No, of course not. Is that what Dad thinks?”
    “Yeah.”
    I let my head fall back on the pillow. “Jeez. I haven’t even kissed anybody yet. I’m, like, the poster child for purity. I still have my freaking . . . my freaking . . .”
    “Cherry?”
    “No—”
    “Hymen intact?”
    I slug him. “Oh my God, shut up .”
    “Virginity?”
    “Ugh! No! Well, yes, but—dammit, I can’t think of the term. What’s that thing girls used to wear in the olden days to keep the—just, never mind.”
    “Chastity belt?”
    “Yeah. That. Sheesh. Joke gone horrendously wrong.” I laugh, and it feels weird, like I haven’t laughed in days.
    Trey still holds a deadpan look. “So, to confirm:You’re not having an alien Antichrist baby from the seed of Angotti.”
    “Ah, no. Correct, I mean. Gross terminology threw me off.”
    “I will deliver the news thusly.”
    I stare at him.