Bridger Read online

  BRIDGER

  By Megan Curd

  Copyright 2011 Megan Curd

  For my mom, Julie, who always humored my random musings, and my husband, Matt, who allows me to live in my own world and patiently awaits my return. Finally, this is for Hope, who continues to be the cream of my Twinkie.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  SNEAK-PEEK OF THE SEQUEL, TRAITOR

  WHERE TO FIND ME

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  An ambulance siren screamed in the background. Red and blue lights bounced off the frigid water of the neighbor’s pond. My once-wet clothes were now frozen stiffly in place. Hypothermia was becoming a very real possibility, but it didn’t matter. Dad was the only thing that mattered. I rocked back and forth on the solid ground, grief and panic overtaking me. My hands were on either side of Dad’s face, but nothing was working to get him to respond. What tears didn’t stick to my cheek splashed down onto his forehead. Dad’s eyes were lifeless and empty as Chris continued to do compressions on his stiffening chest.

  Pump. Pump. Pump. No response. Pump. Pump. Pump.

  Keeping up a steady chant to the rhythm of his frantic pounds, Chris was crying as well. His voice trembled. “Dad, you can’t do this. Dad, come on.”

  Seconds felt like years. With every passing moment that Dad didn’t respond, the tension rose. Chris was growing frantic in his thrusts to bring Dad back. The EMT training class was compulsory for freshman. I’d gotten a higher grade than anyone else last year. However, there hadn’t been a chapter on how not to freak out while your brother was performing CPR on your dad. That had been missing. Nothing in that class could have prepared me for this.

  Every time it had been necessary, Dad saved the day. What happened when there was no way to save the day for him? I willed him to respond by shaking his head once more. His red flannel shirt stuck to my frozen pant leg. “Dad, you gotta stay with us. Please, for Mom, for Memaw, for us.”

  I knew he was gone; he took his last breath minutes ago in the lull between Chris’ CPR. There was no way to tell Chris. Saying it out loud would make it final, make it impossible to take back. Besides, maybe God would still give him back to us.

  A man in a white medical jumpsuit pushed Chris out of the way, causing him to slide down the slippery bank toward the deadly pond. “Kids, let us do our job.”

  Chris didn’t have anything left in him, so he lay motionless in the snow. His eyes were shut tight, as though he was trying to escape this endless nightmare. My heart broke for him. He was in so much pain. The paramedic pounded rhythmically against Dad’s chest, the only sound being his thrusts against Dad’s still body. There was no option but to look away. It was too much to bear.

  Mom came from behind, trying her best to pull me away to give the paramedics room to work. Tugging once more, she caused both of us to tumble backward in the snow. Finally free to work, the other paramedic moved in. He put three of his fingers on Dad’s neck in search of a pulse. Looking up at his partner, he minutely shook his head.

  It was official.

  Dad was dead.

  I lost it.

  I screamed in defiance. Mom buckled under the news, collapsing into a heap in the snow once more. And Chris? Where was Chris? He had become as still as Dad, his eyes devoid of all emotion as he stared at us from the bank. Leaving Mom in the heap she’d become, I was back at Dad’s side, administering CPR once more. “If you wouldn’t give up on him, he’d be fine. He’ll come out of it. He’ll wake up. He has to wake up. Mom, Dad’s gonna wake up. He’s – ”

  “Ma’am, please, let us take care of him. You’ve got to let us do our job.” The man sounded annoyed, as though I wasn’t allowing him to take our trash. Infuriated by his callousness, a scene from the movie I’d watched the week before came to mind: a bounty hunter slamming a man against a wall, the man dangling off the ground.

  I found myself pinning the man against the back of the emergency vehicle a moment later. Usually my voice was lower, but now it cut through three octaves. The paramedic had brought me to the breaking point. “Do you not understand my dad just died?”

  Hanging three inches off the ground, he struggled to free himself. I slammed him against the back once more. The metal protested, contorting to the shape of the man’s body. He stopped fighting. I’d never practiced slamming people up against cars but here I was, doing a better job of it than an actor. It was as though I had memorized the move from simply watching it on the screen.

  The sudden hostility distracted Mom from Dad. Fear was evident in her voice. “Ashlyn! What are you doing? You’re hurting him!”

  “Ma’am, I understand,” the man blustered, searching for words to make me feel like letting go of the death lock on his shirt. His eyes were unfocused. Mom was trying to separate us. I pushed her away with my free hand, still completely focused on the man.

  My voice cracked. “No, I don’t think you do. He was everything to me.”

  Memaw appeared out of nowhere as always. She grabbed the collar of my shirt and yanked backward with surprising force. “Ashlyn, what do you think you’re doing?”

  Losing my balance, the man and I landed in the snow at the same time. He shuffled backward on all fours, slipping in his frantic attempt to get away. Shaking my head did nothing to clear the countless thoughts and emotions fighting within. Looking at him once more, I started to apologize but was cut off by his horrified look.

  Memaw responded before I could string something coherent together. “Don’t worry about her, doctor. Why don’t you go take care of my son?”

  Memaw was as hard and cold as the ice her son had fallen through. She had no tears in her eyes at all, but instead a look of resignation. When I reached out to her, she recoiled in her customary fashion. She shivered to cover it up and began barking commands. “Sarah, go be with Peter before they take him to the hospital. Ashlyn, get inside. You don’t need to see this. Take your brother with you.”

  I opened my mouth to protest. “But – ”

  “But nothing. You’re lucky that man isn’t severely hurt. You could have killed him. We’ll talk later.”

  She turned to retrieve Mom, who was still sobbing in the snow. There was no arguing with Memaw. Looking around, chaos and pain were in no short supply. The surrounding neighbors had come to try and help, or maybe just to get a look at the scene.

  Chris was sitting at the bank of the pond, his head in his hands. Running over to him, I pulled his hands away and looked into his eyes. The words he needed to hear almost broke me in half from the weight they carried. “Chris, you did everything you could. There was nothing more you could have possibly done.”

  “I couldn’t pull him out, Ash. It was like he weighed a ton.”

  “I know. It’s not your fault.”

  Chris looked down, trying to hide the tears he was wiping away. The salt froze on the cuff of his sweater. “Pulling Ryan out of the fishing hole h
e fell through last year was hard, but it wasn’t like this. It was like someone was underwater, yanking him deeper.”

  Arguing with him was out of the question. He could have said the Loch Ness Monster had been on the other side of the ice waiting to attack. Nodding, I put my arm around him. We were frozen to the core. “Memaw said to get you inside.”

  Chris dipped his head in shame. “She’s going to blame me.”

  Anger flared inside of me as I listened to him become worried about Memaw’s reaction to it all. Why did it matter what she thought? Didn’t she always think the worst in every situation anyway? “No one’s going to blame you for anything. It's not your fault. You didn’t know the ice was weak.”

  “That’s the thing, it was like five inches thick! I don’t know what happened.”

  Pulling him up, the tears still streamed silently. “Let’s go. We’re going to freeze to death.”

  We staggered toward the house, each of us pulling the other forward. His body shivered against mine. The twinkling Christmas lights that Dad had strung up mocked our grief. I glanced back at the haunting scene unraveling at the pond; the shimmer of ambulance lights glinted off the ice and broken section of water. A ripple broke the still surface of the water, moss rising to the top and sinking back down as soon as it had appeared.

  Once inside, Chris turned to gaze back down at the pond, his hand on the frosty window. He fought against the chatter of his teeth to make a coherent sentence. “I’m going to have to look out there every day of my life and know he died because I didn’t get him out in time. I don’t know if I can do that, Ash.”

  Not knowing how to respond, I walked to the bathroom in search of towels and dry clothes that may have been left on the floor. Making myself do something other than focus on what had just happened made it feel like it might not all be real.

  Not thirty minutes had passed since Dad died in my arms. Then I had somehow pinned a grown man against an emergency vehicle and made his rear end a permanent imprint in the metal. The need to run from the day’s events gnawed at my insides, eating away everything that wasn’t frozen already.

  Walking back out, Chris took the towel and pair of dirty jeans without a word. I turned and went downstairs to my room in the basement. There was no way today could have seriously happened.

  Dad couldn’t be gone. Not really. How had I pinned that man? Nothing made sense. My mind was racing. The weight of the day threatened to crush me as I lay staring at the ceiling that was covered in posters of my favorite bands. This had to be a bad dream. Dad had to come thundering down the stairs to say my best friend, Jamie, was at the door any time now. Sleep wasn’t an option. Closing my suddenly tired eyes would give way to images worse than the ones playing out in my head.

  I curled under the thick comforter as I tried to warm up. Even with the layers of warmth surrounding me, I still felt cold. Rolling over, I punched the pillow, causing it to fall off the bed. As it hit the floor, the manila envelope full of information on my upcoming trip fell out. I had hidden everything there in excitement, wanting to look at it each night before going to sleep.

  Dad and I had been planning the adventure to Ireland forever. Just the two of us, we were going to go visit family from his and Memaw’s side after Christmas. Now that would never happen.

  Gathering up the travel brochures, tears spilled over again. The happy faces of the people on the fronts made me ill. Dumping the contents of the folder into the trash, all the smiling faces were purposely pointed down.

  TWO

  Pinning the man against the ambulance had been an adrenaline rush. That’s what Google chalked it up to. Nothing budged when I tried to pick up the dresser, bed, or desk. When did it seem like a good idea to try those ideas? Frustration peaking, I turned on my music, sat down on the bed and leaned against the wall. Eyes closed, I tried to focus on remembering what had happened. It had happened, right?

  The other unavoidable issue to wrestle with was Memaw. Sure, she was seventy years old, but that didn’t change the fact that we had never gotten along since I was old enough to walk and talk. She’d never wanted a granddaughter; it was always clear in her demeanor. I couldn’t even remember doing anything with her like a normal grandparent would. Not that I wanted to start now. Maybe I could get out of the house before she yelled at me some more with how horrible I was for beating up a paramedic. Memaw was old, but she was fierce.

  Not five minutes later, Mom barged in unannounced and broke my concentration by turning the music off. Memaw was with her, holding onto her arm. “Ashlyn, Memaw wants to talk to you.”

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  Memaw limped forward. “I don’t care what you want to do. We’re talking. Sarah, could you leave us alone, please?”

  Mom nodded, still in a daze, then walked upstairs. I sighed, grabbed my pillow and held it tight to my chest. Memaw stood at the side of the bed, her eyes boring holes into me. “What in the world were you thinking out there, grabbing the man like that? You could have killed him.”

  “It would be great to know what I was thinking out there, but the problem is, I wasn’t! Why are you acting like I did it on purpose? It was in the heat of the moment; it was just an emotional thing. There’s no way I could do it again anyway, so why does it matter?”

  She looked at me with pursed lips, then quickly turned away. That was a sure sign she was holding something back. I stood up and threw the pillow back on the bed. “Is there more? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t act like there’s no Irish fairy tale story to tie into this. You always have one that refers back to me as a horrible person, anyway.”

  We stared at each other. Memaw was impossibly stubborn. Luckily, it was a family trait. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Silence.

  This was stupid. What was the point of her yelling if she wasn’t even going to explain what crime had been committed? I stormed away from her and kicked the trashcan, which ricocheted off the wall and flew toward Memaw.

  I watched her eyes as they landed on the manila folder. “You threw away your flight tickets?”

  “What’s the point in them if Dad’s gone?”

  She picked up the folder, examining everything. “You need to learn about your heritage. Your past.”

  “You know a lot. Why don’t you just tell me?”

  Her face turned red. “Ashlyn Marie McVean, respect your elders.”

  “Why? It’s not like you respect me.”

  She stomped over and grabbed my face. Memaw had never felt like a threat, but her grasp was stronger than I had imagined possible. A wave of fear washed over me. She felt like…more. There was no logical way to explain it.

  Jerking out of her reach, I turned my back on her. “You’re hiding something.”

  “You’re not ready.”

  Bingo. “So there is something! You just yell at me for almost killing someone, but you won’t explain what happened.”

  She reached out once more to try to connect. I took another step away. Then, an idea struck. Snatching the folder from her, I stood on my toes and looked in her eyes. “You know, maybe I’ll use those. Jamie would go.”

  Memaw’s face changed. Instead of angry, she looked scared. “You’re not going anywhere with Jamie. She’s an accident waiting to happen. We’ll have to pick you up from the airport in a matchbox.”

  “Just watch me.”

  “If I told you how you pinned that man against the ambulance, you wouldn’t believe me.”

  My phone was on the stairs across the room. Crossing the space in three strides, I grabbed it and texted Jamie quickly. It was already a fact that she’d say yes. Her life was the envy of everyone at school. Her nomadic, carefree lifestyle came from having parents who were always gone and didn’t seem to care what she was doing. Returning to the conversation at hand, my focus returned to Memaw. “You’re right. I won’t. I did a Google search and
it was an adrenaline rush. You don’t know anything that the Internet didn’t already explain.”

  The reverse psychology worked. Finally driving her to the edge, her Irish accent was thick once more. “Seen any action movies lately?”

  I stopped, stunned. Did she know Jamie, Reese, and I had gone to see that bounty hunter movie? No, she couldn’t. We didn’t tell anyone, especially our parents. Sneaking into R-rated movies wasn’t something you discussed over dinner with them. It kind of killed the point. “Why would that matter?”

  She smiled. “I thought so.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that you’re more than you think. It means we need to have a talk. You and I. You need to start listening to the things I’ve been telling you.”

  “You never tell me anything but one more of your Irish legends. I’m not interested in –” I wanted to continue, but at that moment the phone went off. Reading the text, a smug grin came over my face. “Jamie can go to Ireland. We just need to call the airline and change the name on the ticket.”

  Memaw was as white as the sheets on the bed. “Ashlyn, don’t.”

  “Why not? Will I kill Jamie by accident? Snap the plane in half? Shoot fireballs from my eyes?”

  “Just…don’t. You’re a –”

  “I’m a what? A girl who overreacted after watching her dad die? That’d be right. A freak? If so, it doesn’t change the fact that Jamie’s my best friend and we’re going to Ireland next week.”

  With that, I stormed up the stairs, leaving Memaw to fend for herself.

  Mom was standing at the top. She must have been eavesdropping. “Ashlyn, you’re not a freak.”

  I grabbed my coat and headed for the door.

  Mom started again. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To see Reese.” I slammed the door before she could respond.

  * * *

  Reese opened the front door before I could even knock. There was worry etched in every line of his face. “Hey, Ash. Shouldn’t you be with –”