TWENTY-SIX
Colby
I’d finally made a plan and outlined my day. I was going to work for the first half of it and then run house errands, which I successfully did, yay me! Then I was going to go pick up Ben and take him out for a special afternoon. I was so freaking proud that he had worked so hard on his spelling test, and I knew Monica and Brooks were smiling down at him, at us.
I wanted to spoil him, tell him how amazing he was, how smart, how brave. I wanted to shower him with compliments, then have dinner with Rip—with my family.
I was grinning like an idiot as I drove toward Ben’s school, until I saw that traffic had suddenly stopped.
Frowning, I put the van into park and looked out the window.
There was a van ahead that was on fire. One much like ours, and people were screaming, a little girl was waving out the window, and people had stopped on the side of the road, all of them on their phones.
Is this how it happened to Monica and Brooks?
Did they scream?
Were they waiting for someone to save them?
Tears filled my eyes and spilled over as I opened my car door and started to run. I had no clue what I was doing or why, but I had to save them.
I couldn’t save my best friends.
But I could save these people.
I could give them a second chance.
I could hear Monica’s voice. “Help them.”
I could see Brooks’s smile. “Save them.”
I ran so hard, so fast, that I don’t even remember the time it took for me to hit the pavement next to the car and look inside, people screaming at me to back up, to move because there was no hope, the car would explode, they would die, and so would I.
Ignoring them, I was able to open the door and reach across as pops and cracks sounded all around me. Glass pierced my skin, but I continued reaching across the other seat.
A screaming toddler was still in her booster. Through the smoke and tears I tugged at her seat belt and got her loose and thank God another Good Samaritan was already waiting outside the car.
An elderly Black man wearing a postal uniform was holding out his hands. “Give her to me!” he yelled.
I did. I handed her over and went for the mom.
She was completely passed out, so much blood on her face that I couldn’t even decipher what she looked like.
The airbag hadn’t gone off, so she’d hit the steering wheel hard.
Her manicured hands were still gripping it so tightly that I wondered if I was going to be able to even pry her away.
An explosion went off in the rear.
“Hurry!” the man yelled. “You have to hurry!”
“OK, OK.” Why was nobody else helping?
I unbuckled the mom’s seat belt and started to pull her out. She didn’t wake up, but at least she wasn’t stuck on anything.
“Colby!” the man yelled. How did he know my name? “You have to hurry. You have to be strong, OK? I need you to hurry.”
“I’m trying.” I coughed from the smoke. “She’s heavy, I don’t know if I can do it!”