Page 19

“Oh my God, no,” I cried. “Mom, please. Please. Wake up.”
Vaughn kept going, rhythmically pumping her chest while foam frothed at her lips.
I clutched her hand, tears streaming down my face. I squeezed her fingers, desperately hoping for even the tiniest of movements. Just something that would assure me she was still there.
“The ambulance is here!” Vaughn’s mom shouted. “Make way!”
But I couldn’t move.
I clutched her hand, willing her to live, even when the paramedic gently moved Vaughn aside and took over.
Vaughn sat back on his knees, eyes wide with shock, staring at the officer while he tried to find a pulse.
The man frowned. “No pulse. How long has she been down for?”
“Fifteen minutes,” the judge supplied.
Fifteen minutes? How had it been only fifteen minutes when it felt like a lifetime?
The man shook his head and then checked his watch. “Time of death, twelve forty-seven.”
“What? No!” I lurched forward, pressing my own hands to my mother’s chest.
But instantly, I knew the paramedic was right. It was her eyes. Where they’d once held pride, and love, mischief, and affection for me, now they stared aimlessly.
She was gone. A deathly silence fell over the room as we all stared in shock at the body on the floor.
“Bart!” Karmichael’s shout caught all of us by surprise.
Bart’s body fell to the floor beside my mother’s, as poetic as Romeo and Juliet.
None of us had noticed him quietly slip away, sitting on the chair. But I didn’t need to check his pulse to know he was gone too. The paramedic launched into a frantic round of CPR, but Vaughn knew it as well as I did. He let out a roar of anguish that I felt right down to my toes.
“What is happening?” Vaughn’s mom clutched her husband’s arm. “They were a bit off…but…not this.”
Police swarmed in, and any response was lost in a sea of stomping boots and police radios.
It didn’t matter anyway.
They were gone, and there was nothing bringing them back.
6
REBEL
I wouldn’t let her go.
I knelt at her side, begging and crying for her to come back until my knees went numb and my throat ached. From outside somewhere came shouting, and sirens, but my whole world had shrunk down to me and the only person in my life who’d ever loved me.
She couldn’t be gone.
“Rebel,” Vaughn said in a voice as hoarse as mine would have been, had I been able to get out words.
I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t.
“Rebel, stop. Come on. The police are going to forcibly remove you if you don’t come with me.”
I didn’t care. Let them. I wasn’t leaving her.