Erin knew that was true, and she was determined to fulfill Ms. Thornton’s faith in her.
“Hey Erin! Shara!” Donna Gaines called. “Come on out here. Ms. Thornton’s gonna show us the tape of the show.”
The girls hurried back to the main stage, where everyone was sitting on the floor, eyes glued to a TV that had been propped on the table beside the half-eaten cake. Ms. Thornton asked, “Back with the sodas, Erin?”
“I—um—I let Amy go get them for us.”
The rest of the dance troupe moaned. Someone said, “Amy! Good grief, the party’ll be over before we see her again.”
“Yeah,” someone else added. “Amy has two speeds—slow and no-show.”
Laughter rippled through the group. Erin felt as if she should say something in her sister’s defense, but nothing came to mind. After all, it was true.
“Settle down, ladies,” Ms. Thornton directed. “Shell be here eventually. Lets start the tape.”
Erin dropped to the floor next to Shara and drew her knees against her chest, watching the screen intently. The sound quality was tinny, but the images were clear and sharp. One after the other the dance numbers proceeded across the screen. The girls pointed at themselves, with several groaning over mistakes. By the time her number started, Erin’s palms were sweating. She wanted so much for it to be good.
On the tape she heard Amy’s voice and vaguely wondered why it was taking her sister so long to return. Erin concentrated on her movements, evaluating them critically. Her leaps were high, but she decided she needed more arch to her back. She made a mental note to work on flexibility. Could she ever be ready for a place like Wolftrap?
Applause sounded as the tape ran out and electronic snow splattered over the screen. Everyone began to stand and stretch, and Erin pulled herself up too.
“Is that someone pounding on the backstage door?” Ms. Thornton asked.
“Maybe it’s Amy,” somebody suggested. “Her timing’s perfect. The party’s over.”
“I’ll get it,” Erin called, rushing for the door, determined to throttle her sister for blowing such a simple mission. She jerked open the door and looked right into Travis Sinclair’s face.
“Where’s Amy?” he asked. Erin realized that Travis was mad. “She said shed be waiting right here by the door. I knocked real quiet, but she didn’t open it, so I had to beat on it.”
“Gosh, Travis, is it eleven o’clock already?”
“Eleven-fifteen. Hey, Erin, it’s wet and cold out here. Do you think I could come in?”
Flustered, Erin held open the door, and a dripping Travis stepped inside. “This was supposed to be a subtle exit,” he grumbled. “Now it looks like half the worlds in on it.”
Erin turned to see the Terpsicord girls as well as Ms. Thornton emerging from the backstage shadows. Ms. Thornton asked, “What’s going on?”
Erin felt her cheeks grow hot. How did Amy always manage to put her on the spot? “Um—this is Travis Sinclair. He was supposed to pick Amy up and take her—er—home,” she finished lamely, hating herself for lying.
Ms. Thornton looked doubtful. “I was about to give out some awards for our work here tonight,” she said.
Travis shifted, jamming his hands into the pockets of his trench coat. “I could wait here by the door.”
Ms. Thornton glanced at her watch. “It’s late, Erin. What time did Amy leave anyway?”
“Ten-thirty.”
“Even Amy should have been back by now.”
A small shiver of fear shot up Erin’s spine. “I can’t imagine what’s keeping her. Maybe she had car trouble. I mean, my cars old, and sometimes it gets cranky.”
“We could drive around and look for her,” Travis suggested.
Several girls offered to take their cars and look also. “No,” Ms. Thornton said. “You all stay put. Erin, you and Travis go. But be back here in thirty minutes whether you find her or not.”
Erin agreed and ran behind Travis through a pelting rain to where his car was parked. Her teeth were chattering, and Travis, fiddling with the heater buttons, asked, “Which way did she head?”
Erin pointed, and he drove out of the lot and down a dark, deserted road. Erin chewed her bottom lip, peering through the side window. It was hard to see through the film of rain, so she kept rubbing the palm of her hand over the glass, even though it didn’t help. “I should have never let her go in my place,” she said miserably.
“Don’t worry. Knowing Amy, she ran out of gas and is sitting in some diner munching out.”
Erin was touched by his attempt to comfort her, but she knew that she’d had a full tank of gas. The rhythmic slap of the wipers matched Erin’s heartbeat. Steady, she told herself. Everything’s fine. “I don’t see any cars broken down along the road,” Travis said after he’d driven several miles. “What store do you think she might have gone to for the drinks?”
“I don’t know There’s a bunch of minimarts on this street and two grocery stores farther north.”
“Then we’ll stop at all of them and ask if anyone’s seen her.” Travis made a U-turn and headed back toward Briarwood. “We’ll start at the one closest to the school and work our way down.” Erin clutched her coat—Amy’s coat—closer to her body. “Are you cold?” Travis asked, turning up the heater.
She was shivering, but she was sweating too. “Thanks,” she mumbled.
They stopped at each brightly lit store and described Amy, and each time the sales help shook their heads. In one of the larger grocery stores, Travis talked to the store manager while Erin canvased each checkout girl. The answer was always the same: “Sorry, haven’t seen her.”
After having no better luck at the second of the big supermarkets, Travis sat in the car brooding and staring out at the falling rain. “Wed better keep going,” Erin told him.
He turned to face her in the bucket seat. “We’re ten miles from the school, Erin. She wouldn’t have come this far.”
Erin grew agitated. “You don’t know that for sure. It’s too soon to give up.”
“I’m not giving up. It’s just that she must have gone somewhere else.”
“But where?” By now Erin was really scared, because even Amy wasn’t this irresponsible. They sat in silence. The rain beat on the metal roof, and Erin felt a headache coming on.
“Maybe she went home,” Travis ventured.
Instantly Erin brightened. “I’ll bet you’re right. She probably wanted to change clothes before going to the movie. Let’s go check my house.”
Travis started the engine, and Erin caught sight of the digital clock on the dashboard. “Ms. Thornton!” she cried. “We promised her we’d be back in half an hour.”
“Is there a phone at the theater?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll go back and call your house from there.”
“The more I think about it, I’ll bet that’s just what happened,” Erin insisted. “Honestly, my sister can be so thoughtless sometimes. I know you like her Tree spirit,’ Travis, but you’ve got to admit that sometimes she’s her own worst enemy.”
They returned to the back parking lot of the theater, and Erin jumped out before Travis had turned off the engine. She raced through the rain, stepping into puddles and feeling the water sop through her sneakers and thick socks. She forgot to turn up her coat collar, and cold water ran down her neck. She pounded on the stage door, and it opened immediately.
“Did you find her?” Ms. Thornton asked.
Travis came through the door, and it banged hard behind him. “No luck,” he said. “We hit every store for miles, but no one remembered seeing her.”
“We thought that she might have gone home for some reason,” Erin said, her voice sounding breathy. “I thought I’d call my house from here.”
“Of course.” Ms. Thornton led the way to a small office and flipped on the light.
The glare stung Erin’s eyes, and the room seemed to take on a surrealistic glow. She picked up the telephon
e receiver and punched her number. “Where’d everybody go?” she asked, counting the rings.
“I sent the girls home, but I promised to start the phone chain once we heard something.” The phone chain was Ms. Thornton’s method of dispensing information to the dance troupe. She called one person, who called another, and so on down the line until everyone got the message.
By the tenth ring Erin realized no one was going to answer. A hard, heavy sensation lodged in her stomach. “No ones home,” she said.
“Had your parents planned to go out?”
“No.” Erin’s voice had become a whisper. She hung up the phone. “Something’s wrong, Ms. Thornton.”
Ms. Thornton put her arm around Erin’s shoulder. “Let’s not jump to any conclusions. There’re lots of possible explanations—” She was interrupted by the sound of someone banging on the back door.
The three of them ran toward it, but Travis got there first and yanked on the handle. A blast of wind and rain blew in with a short, plump woman.
Erin blinked. “Inez!” she cried, recognizing her mothers sales assistant from the boutique. “What are you doing here?”
Inez wrung her hands and grabbed Erin by the forearms. She was crying. “Erin, there’s been an accident.”
“Mom and Dad?” Erin almost gagged.
“They’re at County’s emergency room. It’s Amy, Erin. Amy’s been in a terrible wreck.”
Chapter Seven
Erin would remember the ride to the hospital with Travis as a series of dreamlike impressions—rain falling, the red gold aura of mercury vapor lamps flashing past the windows, the stuffy heat in the car, the silence between her and Travis, the thudding of her heart. None of it seemed real. Yet when Travis turned the car into the entrance marked Emergency Only, Erin recoiled. The building loomed tall and forbidding, not at all friendly. Somewhere inside Amy lay, hurt and maybe in pain, and that frightened Erin even more.
The emergency waiting room was a zoo, with too many people crammed into too small an area. Babies cried, and people who looked very sick slumped in wheelchairs. Erin searched for her parents. “Where are they?” she asked.
“Maybe we should ask someone,” Travis suggested.
“I’d rather look for them myself,” she told him, darting up a hallway like a mouse caught in a maze. The smell of alcohol and disinfectant was making her nauseous. Nurses passed her, too busy to stop, so Erin ventured up another corridor, where she saw her mother and father huddled outside a closed door.
She ran toward them. Her fathers face was the color of chalk, and her mothers mascara made dark smudged rings beneath her eyes. Erin threw herself into her mothers arms. “What happened? How’s Amy?”
“No ones sure what happened,” Mrs. Bennett’s voice sounded tight and very controlled. “The police said that she lost control of the car, it hit a tree, and her head hit the steering wheel. Evidently she didn’t have her seat belt on.”
“Amy hates the shoulder strap,” Erin mumbled. “Have the doctors told you anything? How long has she been in there?”
“Maybe an hour. The ER doctor came out once and said that since it’s a head injury, they’ve called in a neurologist. We’re waiting for him to tell us something now.”
“But she’s all right, isn’t she? I mean they’re probably just stitching up cuts or something, right?”
“All they told us is that it’s a head injury,” Mrs. Bennett said again. She let go of Erin and stared at her full in the face. “What was she doing driving in the rain at night anyway?”
Erin’s voice began to quaver, and she clenched her fists to control her shaking. “She went out for sodas for the party. We ran out.”
“What’s the matter with Ms. Thornton? Why would she send Amy? She’s only had her license for a week. I always considered Thornton to be a responsible person.”
Erin squeezed her mother’s arm to stop her angry tirade. “I–it wasn’t her fault. I was supposed to go, but Amy begged me to let her go instead.” Erin dropped her gaze to the floor, where shiny tiles marched in neat, clean green-and-white formations. The pattern began to blur as tears filled her eyes. “I–I let her take my car.”
Mrs. Bennett grabbed Erin’s shoulders and shook her. “Erin! How could you have been so thoughtless? You know Amy’s not an experienced driver.”
“I know.… I’m sorry.…”
“I’ve always counted on you, Erin, to have common sense. I would expect Amy to be careless, but you!”
Her mother’s face was livid, and Erin shrank back toward the wall as her father stepped over and put his arm around her. “Stop it, Marian. It’s not Erin’s fault. It was an accident.”
Erin huddled against her father’s side, watching her mother’s eyes blaze and her lips compress into a line. Mrs. Bennett turned and walked away down the corridor. “D-daddy …” Erin buried her face in her father’s coat. It smelled of rain and pipe tobacco.
“It’s all right, Princess,” he said soothingly. “She’s upset. She doesn’t really blame you.” He stroked Erin’s hair absently. “We were getting ready to watch the eleven o’clock news when the cop came and told us. He gave us a police escort down here.”
“Inez came to the theater to tell me.”
“We figured it would be better than having the police come tell you. And even if I could have reached you by phone, I didn’t want you to hear it that way.” He glanced both ways down the hall. “Where is Inez anyway?”
“I guess she’s out front with Travis. I rode here with him. Maybe I should tell them something.”
“Go on. I’ll talk to your mother.”
The waiting room was even more crowded now. It was warm too, heavy with the distinct odor of pain and sickness.
“Erin, what’s happening?” Travis asked. She felt her knees buckle, and he guided her to a chair that was miraculously vacant.
“We don’t know much yet. Amy lost control of the car, and it hit a tree. A specialist is in with her because it’s a head injury.”
Travis knelt beside her, and Inez hovered at her elbow. Erin twisted her hands in her lap. They felt like blocks of ice. “She’s hurt real bad, Travis. I can feel it.”
“Maybe not. Maybe she just needs stitches, or some bones are broken. It takes time for them to check her over and figure it all out. I came here with a broken arm once, and it took forever for them to check me over and send me to X-ray and everything.”
“This hospital has a good reputation,” Inez interjected in a soft Spanish-accented voice. “The trauma unit was featured in the newspaper last month. You know, they have a heliport on the roof, and they fly in patients from all over Florida because the best doctors work right here.”
“I hope she isn’t hurting,” Erin whispered.
“Don’t worry, they give you a shot for pain,” Travis said.
“Amy hates shots. When we were little, I always had to go first, and if I cried, nothing could make Amy take her shot. One time it took two nurses and Mom to help hold her down. After that I didn’t cry again.” The memory was so vivid that Erin could suddenly smell the isopropyl alcohol and hear Amy shrieking. “Maybe I should go back to Mom and Dad.”
“You’ll let us know when you hear from the doctor, won’t you?” Travis asked.
“Yes.” Erin saw fear in the darkness of his eyes. “As soon as I know anything.” She hurried out of the waiting area and returned to her parents.
“I didn’t mean to blame you, Erin,” Mrs. Bennett said the minute Erin appeared.
“I know, Mom.” But truthfully Erin felt guilty. She never should have let Amy talk her out of going to the store, or she should have at least gone with her.
Mrs. Bennett leaned against the wall. Mr. Bennett asked his wife, “Would you like some coffee?”
“No, I’d like a cigarette.”
Erin knew that her mother had stopped smoking three years ago. “There’s a soda machine in the other corridor,” she said, trying to take her mother’s mind off the ner
veracking wait. “I could get you something cold.”
“No. Thanks,” she added as an afterthought. “What’s taking so long?”
Erin was wondering the same thing. Her stomach felt queasy, and her head was throbbing. Down the hall doors swung open, and a tall man in a white medical coat emerged. Erin tensed. She knew he was coming for them.
“I’m Dr. DuPree, your daughter’s neurologist,” the man said when he approached. Introductions were made, but then the doctors attitude turned crisp and professional. “Your daughter has suffered a massive head trauma.”
“Amy,” Erin blurted, not sure why she wanted him to know. “My sister’s name is Amy.”
Through black-rimmed glasses his blue eyes studied her kindly. “Amy is stable now. We’ve got her on a ventilator—that’s a machine that breathes for her.”
Erin’s heart squeezed as if fingers had grabbed it. “Why?”
“We’ve done a CAT scan. That’s a special X-ray of her brain,” he explained. “Right now there’s a great deal of swelling, and we can’t determine the extent of her head injury. But she can’t breathe on her own.”
Erin’s mother gave a little gasp, and Dr. DuPree turned his attention to Erin’s parents. “I believe in being completely honest with my patients and their families. I won’t lie to you, but I won’t give you false hope either. Amy’s condition is very serious. I’m having her moved up to Neuro-ICU, where she’ll be monitored around the clock. We’ll run another CAT scan in a couple of days.”
He used such phrases as “severe contusion” and “intracranial pressure” and “diuretics to reduce fluid,” but the words slid around in Erin’s mind. The only thing that made any sense was when Dr. DuPree said, “She’s stable, but comatose.”
For a moment no one spoke; then both her parents began to talk at once, questions upon questions, which Dr. DuPree answered. Erin backed away, picturing Amy in a hospital bed surrounded by strangers. “I want to see my sister,” she demanded, interrupting the dialogue between Dr. DuPree and her parents. “I want to stay with Amy.”