Sara Shepard - Crushed

The doctors and nurses shocked him three times. Someone gently pushed Hanna out of his curtained-off area. She stood uselessly in the hallway. There was a sound behind her, and Kyla was sitting up in bed, her eyes black under the gauze. She looked as shocked as Hanna felt.

The defibrillator stopped. Someone called out a time, and several nurses pushed back the curtain and walked down the hall. Hanna covered her mouth with her hand, fearful she might throw up. She looked at Kelly, who had just emerged from the curtain, too. Her scrubs were spattered with Graham’s blood.

“Is he . . . ?” Hanna couldn’t even say the word out loud.

Kelly lowered her eyes. It was clear she couldn’t say the word out loud, either—but she didn’t have to. Her drawn, pale, astonished expression, however, said it all. Graham, who had just been communicating with Hanna, who had seen A, who could have known everything , was dead.

At the same time, Emily, dressed in a blue strapless dress she’d bought at the King James, swung her arms and twisted her waist in the middle of the Four Seasons dance floor. Swirl-painted silk banners surrounded her. Asterisk-shaped stars loomed above. Even the dance music seemed energized and psychedelic. It was like being in the belly of a Van Gogh painting.

Iris, who was wearing Emily’s pale pink gown from last year’s Foxy benefit, scampered over from the buffet. “ Look! ” She held up a silver crown. PROM QUEEN, it read across the front in sparkly letters.

Emily frowned. “Did you get this from Hanna?” She’d only seen Hanna for a second, and then she’d lost her. But she was probably having alone time with Mike.

“It was from that girl over there.” Iris pointed to Chassey Bledsoe.

Emily blinked hard. “Maybe you should give that back to her. Or find Hanna.”

Iris rolled her eyes. “Please. Everyone deserves a chance to be queen. Didn’t we all dream of this when we were little?” Then she positioned the crown on her head and skipped onto the dance floor again. She even grabbed the royal scepter and waved it in front of her face like an oversized glow stick. A couple of kids stopped and grinned at her. Iris did a twirling dance around Dominique Helprin and Max McGarry, one of those couples who would probably never break up. Then, when the song ended, she removed the crown from her head and placed it on Emily’s head.

“Now you’re queen for a song!” she proclaimed.

The crown’s teeth dug into Emily’s scalp. Iris handed her the scepter. “Come on, girl! Work it!”

At first, Emily refused, but then the beat infected her body. She moved one foot, then the other. She wiggled her fingers. After a moment, she waved the specter around like it was a baton at a parade. Dancers followed behind her around the floor. Halfway through the song, Emily broke into a line dance the whole school had learned in seventh grade—and everyone still remembered.

“Go, Emily! Go, Emily!” Iris chanted.

Emily grinned. She’d never dreamed of being prom queen, but it was fun for a song.

When a new song came on, Emily removed the crown from her head and passed it to Kirsten Cullen. A cheer went up, and a couple of boys on the soccer team tossed Kirsten into the air, crown, scepter, and all.

Emily grinned at Iris. “That was a good idea to share the crown with everyone.”

Iris shrugged. “Just trying to make prom fun.”

“I’m glad you came,” Emily said, really meaning it.

“Me, too, you crazy bitch.” Iris threw her head back to laugh, but suddenly she pulled her bottom lip into her mouth and gazed out the window. “My last hurrah in Rosewood, right?”

Emily touched her arm. “Are you okay about going back?” Iris had scheduled for a cab to pick her up at the Four Seasons and transport her back to The Preserve. She wanted to show up looking fabulous in a prom dress, she said, to prove to the other patients that she’d had a blast on the outside. This time, she was going to work hard to actually get better . . . so they’d release her for real.

Iris made a brave face. “Who knows? But I guess I have to try.” She peeked at Emily. “You’ll really visit me?”

“Of course,” Emily said, then nudged her. “I’ll even take you shopping, as long as you promise not to steal anything.”

“Deal.” Then Iris glanced at the clock over the grand, scalloped doors that led to the lobby. “Hey, it’s almost ten.”

“Oh, is it?” Emily said nonchalantly, as if she hadn’t been obsessively watching the clock all night.

Iris frowned. “How are you going to know what your surprise from Jordan will be? It could be anything . . . anywhere.”

“I’ll just know,” Emily said as they walked off the dance floor. Only . . . would she? Jordan could have hidden a secret message in one of the four Van Gogh–decorated cakes around the room. She could have stitched it into a hand towel in the bathrooms. She could have subliminally recorded something on one of the DJ’s tracks. It was like looking for a needle in one of Van Gogh’s Haystacks.

She looked around the room for the fifty-millionth time. Jordan would know what a daunting task it was and try to make the surprise something Emily would gravitate toward anyway, right? Then again, everything in the room was interesting and worthy of another look. The bouquets of flowers on the tables. The animal ice sculptures. The teenager-height, papier-mâché stars. The henna tattoo artist in the corner, the fortune-teller by the stairs.

“It’s conga line time, everyone!” the DJ called out, breaking Emily from her thoughts. A large easel was wheeled to the front of his booth. “Where are our prom king and queen?”

“I is prom queen!” called Klaudia Huusko, the exchange student, her words slurred. She staggered toward the stage, the prom queen crown askew atop her golden locks. When she was almost at the DJ booth, she tripped over the hem of her dress and the crown went flying. Everyone giggled. Klaudia’s dress slipped down her body, showing off a push-up bra and—horrors—a girdle. Everyone guffawed.

Emily’s gaze returned to the fortune teller. Their second day at sea, Emily had used the ship’s slow Internet to log onto an astrology site to get her daily horoscope. When she told Jordan that she did it every day to see if things were going to be good or bad, Jordan had looked at her like she was crazy. “What if the horoscope tells you not to leave the house?”

“Then I don’t,” Emily joked. She gave Jordan a playful shove. “But they never say that. Even if you’re going to have a bad day, they say it’ll be challenging . Or a learning experience .”

“And you really buy all that stuff?” Jordan asked.

“I do,” Emily had said.

Jordan had touched the tip of her nose. “I love finding out things about you.”

Now, Emily checked the clock on her cell phone: 9:53. As most of the kids on the dance floor were forming a long conga line, she drifted toward the fortune-teller’s table. The woman had long, scraggly, gray-streaked brown hair, a mole on her nose, and oblong-shaped glasses with purple lenses. She eyed Emily calmly and steadily, like she was drinking Emily in slowly, all the way to the last sip.

Finally, she smiled, grabbed Emily’s hand, and kneaded her palm. “You have smooth fingers, which means you’re artistic,” she started out. “Your thumb is strong, which means you’re logical. And you’re in good shape and able to overcome obstacles, aren’t you?”

Duh , Emily thought. That was an understatement.

The woman went on to say that Emily would have a love affair but never marry and that she’d live a long, happy life. Emily kept waiting for some sort of reference to Jordan, but the woman didn’t mention her. After about five minutes of kneading, she patted Emily’s hand. “There you go. Go forth and be happy.”