Page 51 of When the Night Comes Knocking

The air began to press down on Jane’s chest then, taking hold of her heart and lungs with a viselike grip.

“But you knew that already, didn’t you? You knew I just wanted to take it easy for the weekend since practice was starting back up on Monday,” he continued in that low, stripped voice. He looked down at his arm, where various pins were stuck in place, then closed his eyes as they started to water. “But instead you called me crying, wasted out of your mind.”

“Tommy,” Jane whispered, feeling the grip inside tighten until she thought whatever hole the surgeons patched in her lung had blown wide open all over again.

“Don’t.” His voice croaked on the word, and Jane forced her face not to crumple. “Did you know that some people think I was the drunk driver?” he said next, eyes flaring with only the briefest spark. “That they think I got completely shit-faced before deciding to get behind the wheel to kill someone?”

Jane felt frozen in her chair. She had seen some of the news articles covering the accident over the past few days, mostly with obscure, misleading headlines like “Athens University’s Star Pitcher in Drunk Driving Accident” or “One Student Dead, Three Injured in Drunk Driving Accident with AU Baseball Pitcher.”

The day before, Thomas’s baseball coach had come to the hospital to speak with their parents regarding an update on Thomas’s injuries. Soon after, Jane spotted Coach Scott’s press announcement floating around online. It included the key point of “Thomas Wilson was not in any way under the influence while driving prior to the accident. He was getting ready to put in the hard work for a new season of Hounds baseball, and the whole team is praying for his speedy recovery.”

But that did little to change the fact that a student was dead.

“Thomas, I’m so sorry,” Jane said, but the words came out more like a plea. She could no longer keep the tears at bay. “I never meant for any of this to happen. I’m so sorry—”

“Stop,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut. “Please, just…leave.”

The pressure in Jane’s chest felt ready to implode as she choked on a sob. “Tommy, please.”

“Just go, Jane!” he shouted, loud enough that their mother stepped back into the room.

“Is everything alright in here?” she asked, glancing between the devastation on Jane’s face and the hatred on Thomas’s.

Though her brother was only a few feet away, Jane felt an abyss shoot up between them, as deep and dark as the ditch they’d free-fallen into. She tried to catch his eye, but he had turned his face toward the covered window as effectively as slamming a door.

“We’re done here,” he announced to their mother.

Jane was silently rolled out of the room as the implosion within her commenced.

In the weeks following the accident, life took on a foggy gray tint. Many of the days blurred in stitched-together fixes of fatigue and denial, and Jane found herself being guided along through them by someone or another, for a short time. Her mother and Cassie called nearly every day once Jane returned to classes. Some of the sorority members and other pledges she had been rushing with brought bright-colored flowers or cookies from the cute bakery downtown. They insisted on taking her to the memorial service being held on campus in honor of the student who died, wiping their faces with tissues during the picture montage while Jane’s remained dry, her mind drifting off somewhere far outside of herself.

But soon enough, she repelled more than just Thomas. When the flowers and cookies obviously weren’t doing their God-given job of cheering up an eighteen-year-old girl, they stopped coming. And when Jane quietly and unofficially quit the sorority, the check-in texts from the friends she had made became less frequent, until eventually they stopped altogether.

She hadn’t even noticed that she was moving through each day alone until she bumped into her old pledge friend Sarah in the dining hall. Jane could see how awkward the girl felt by the interaction, how quick she was to try to end it. It seemed absurd to Jane, that this girl could feel so uncomfortable during a simple conversation with someone she used to know but had fallen out of touch with.

Surely there were other things this girl had to be more concerned with?

But then Jane realized there probably weren’t—not really. Through no fault of her own, Sarah was still a normal college student, focused on finals and finding the perfect dress for the sorority’s holiday formal. The brief, dark cloud of a fellow student passing added some sad, surface-level depth to her freshman year of college, where she leaned in close to the tragedy through Jane but not close enough to actually touch it.

The accident was the explosion, and Jane was the shrapnel flying outward in wide, violent sweeps. This girl had simply stepped out of the way like the rest of the world.

—

Now, Jane pauses at the threshold of the store’s back office, where the others are already inside, waiting to discuss a new escape plan. She imagines the cold honesty of Jim’s eyes again as he gripped his gun and spat, I don’t want her anywhere near me.

She understands, truly.

She takes a step back and eyes the far wall of the office she had been pressed against when she unknowingly confessed to the Mimic—when the monster had made its want for her heart so perfectly clear.

You’re the shrapnel, she reminds herself, thinking of everyone here currently caught in her explosion. A chill licks over the back of her neck where the air from outside filters through all the open cracks in the entrance. It would be so simple to go to it—to walk out into the night and close her eyes, spreading her arms out wide like a bird readying for flight.

As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, Thomas turns away from Kimi and Ashley. He observes her face for a few seconds, so similar to how he first did in the hospital. She waits for the words—that Jim is right, and that it’d be best if they part ways before she gets anyone else killed.

We’re done here, his voice repeats in her mind, a bell tolling over and over.

Thomas takes a step toward her. “Come on, Jane,” he says. “We need your help.”

Nineteen