So there weren’t that many others. Jessie stayed on task as he pushed her along the hall. “Well, if you have rooms full of festering wounds, you had better do something about it,” she pointed out. “Or you’re headed for a world of trouble.”
He didn’t reply, just hustled her to her room and shoved her in.
“Seriously, I mean it.” She rounded on him.
“So do I,” he snarled, and slammed the door.
4
The images swam slowly into focus, and Zach heard his sister’s voice.
That alone told him it was a dream. His sister no longer walked the Earth. And suddenly, he didn’t want to be here. Because it wasn’t just a dream. It was a memory.
But, as usual, he didn’t have the option to withdraw.
“Zach, cut it out!”
“Then move over.”
His sister sighed theatrically. She did everything theatrically. It was her schtick. But she did try to squeeze aside, even though she couldn’t go far. Their middle sibling, Theo, was pressed against the window behind the driver’s seat.
All three of them used to fit nicely onto the narrow back bench. But both Theo and Zach—and to be honest, Audrey, too—had grown substantially over the last couple of years. Now it was a definite squeeze.
“For Pete’s sake,” their mother complained from the front passenger seat, “will you kids just get along?”
Zach stared at the back of her curly head. He hadn’t thought they weren’t. Heaving a martyred sigh, he shoved his thigh as close to the door frame as possible and hunched so his head didn’t hit the ceiling. He’d been doing so much growing that he’d outstripped most of his friends. His mom often let him take the passenger seat. Except today, she carried a casserole in her lap, so she needed the legroom. Their family never arrived at another’s home empty-handed.
Their dad twisted to fix Zach with The Look. The “you’re the oldest and I expect you to set the example” look. Zach opened his mouth to protest.
And the entire interior lit up like a supernova.
His mother screamed.
Something had slammed into them. Massive headlights filled the windshield in the split second before their vehicle went airborne.
The world flipped end over end.
The sounds reverberated through him. The crunch and shriek of tortured metal, the scream, cut off from his mother. Or his sister. Or both. Then the roof met his head, and everything went black.
Zach blinked. In the darkness, the ceiling fan spun slowly over the bed. He dripped with sweat, but at least this time, he hadn’t screamed himself awake.
Sometimes he did.
He’d grown up believing his future was set in stone. Zach was the oldest son, and tradition dictated the dairy farm go to him. It was a small farm, with only about sixty cows. The facility was old, and they’d been hard pressed to keep it up to industry standards. Some years they even had a difficult time meeting their quota for milk production.
Nevertheless, it was a living.
But all that changed when a semi lost control on the icy roads. Zach was the sole survivor. He’d been seventeen.
It had been a close thing. His brain swelled, and he was in a coma for two months.
When he woke up, his entire life had changed. Decisions were made for him by an aunt he barely knew. The farm was sold. In that region of southern Ontario, the land was worth far more than the farm itself. A tidy sum of money was put into trust.
Zach moved in with his aunt, her husband, and their five kids. For precisely the eight months it took him to turn eighteen. It wasn’t their fault he was in a hurry to leave. They’d tried to do their best by him. But the accident hadn’t just taken his family.
It had peeled open his brain.
Or at least that was how it felt. Zach had always had a good read on people and an uncanny ability with animals. Now he sensed the emotions of anyone who came near. If people were upset, they didn’t even have to be close for it to affect him.
