Love Sucks and Then You Die (Eve & Adam 0.50)

I’d seen pictures of her, of course. You can’t go into Terra Spiker’s office and not see photos of her daughter. My favorite’s this one where Eve’s crossing a finish line, all sweaty and flushed, with a killer smile on her face.

I glance down at the stretcher. Eve’s got a serious bruise coming up under both eyes. Still, you can see the resemblance to her mom. High cheekbones, big, deep-set eyes. Tall, slender.

That’s about it for similarities, though. Terra’s a total ice queen bitch: frosty blond hair, calculating gray eyes. Eve … well, she’s different. Her hair is sun-streaked gold, and her eyes are this mellow brown color.

At least I’m pretty sure they’re brown.

They’re a little wobbly at the moment.

There’s not a lot of room on the narrow bench in the back of the ambulance. I nearly go flying when they pull away from the emergency room and crank on the siren.

I grin. “Floor it, dude,” I yell to the driver.

The doctor sitting on the other side of Eve’s stretcher sends me a what the hell? scowl.

I know it seems wrong to enjoy this, but still: the siren and the zooming through the streets of San Francisco while all the other cars scatter? Very cool.

Besides, Eve’s going to be fine.

I think.

We’re at the bridge in no time. The bridge. The Golden Gate, still the best, never get tired of it. I fantasize sometimes how great it would be to ride a longboard down the cable. Yes, there would almost certainly be a long plunge to a hideous death. But before that it would be amazing.

I sit with my elbows on my knees, trying to hunch my shoulders forward a little. I have good shoulders, might as well reveal them. I know she’s checking me out. Fair enough, because I’m checking her out.

“Ah ahhh ahhhh!”

Eve cries out suddenly. She’s in pain. Bad pain. So it’s possible she’s not really checking me out.

“Doc,” I say, “can’t you help the girl out?”

He leans over to check the IV tube. It’s gotten kinked, the flow cut off. He straightens it and tears off strips of white tape to hold it in place.

“She’ll be better in a second.”

“Cool,” I say. I lean in close so she can hear me. “I got him to crank up the morphine,” I say, speaking loud and slow.

Her eyeballs kind of roll toward me. She doesn’t seem to be focusing very well. And for a second I think, whoa, what if I’m wrong? What if she actually dies?

All of a sudden it’s like I want to cry. Not happening, obviously—crying, I mean—but there’s just this sudden wave of sadness.

I shake it off as well as I can. But once you start seeing the Big D, the Reaper, sitting beside you, it’s very hard to stop.

“Don’t die, okay?” I say.

Her confused eyeballs are looking for me. Like I’m a target and she can’t quite line up the sights.

So I get close again and I kind of touch her face and aim her head at me. Unfortunately, I lean my other hand on her leg—the wrong one—and there’s some yelling from Eve and from the doctor.

Which makes it impossible for me to say what I had planned to say to reassure her: Don’t worry. I’ve seen things. I know things.

Your mom has powers.

She won’t let you die.

4

Operation? What operation?