Beddy’s whole body pricks up, like from an electric jolt.
“Kelsey Taper?” he says, as if Beddy might not know who she is.
Sweet karmic justice from above.
“I heard it was pretty brutal,” he says.
She glances over at the undamaged ambulance, and as if on cue, its back doors slam shut.
English and Bouffant start yammering to each other, and maybe to Beddy, but Beddy isn’t listening. She is running through the good news center of her brain, a long, teeming field of berries. She stuffs her face with berries, popping them between her molars, their juice oozing out of her mouth, lubing her lips, staining her teeth, leaving sticky trails running down her arms, coaxing her brain with their delicious taste…
The scream of the siren pulls her back to the pier. She watches the ambulance drive away toward shore.
“Why are you smiling?” English’s date says.
Is she?
“Yeah, Tapeworm got tagged,” a boy comes pushing excitedly through the crowd. Beddy recognizes him as the kid who wears his basketball jersey most school days, “Fitz-Chavez” stitched in capital letters across the back. His bowtie is wrapped around his forehead like a bandana.
“I’m making the rounds,” he says. “Check it out.”
He holds his phone out proudly, and everyone squeezes in to look.
“It’s dark,” English says.
“What?” Fitz-Chavez says. “Oh.” He pushes a button on his phone and it lights up again. “Check this shit out. The scene of the crime.”
Sure enough. There is Kelsey, lying in the street, her canary yellow strapless dress tattered and dirtied. She lies on her back, but her bloodied face is turned away from the camera almost like she is being bashful.
“Truck hit her so hard, her titty popped out. But then some chick put it back in before the ambulance came.” He sounds disappointed. “I’da tweeted it, but we can’t get service out here, which is fucking bullshit.”
Beddy stares at the image harder. She heard that bodies caught on film can often look in a state of repose. This doesn’t look like that. This looks like a scene of devastation. She thinks she can make out the pattern of the truck’s grill marks on Kelsey’s dress. Then there is her face.
The screen goes dark.
“What, um, happened to her face?”
“The impact knocked her two front teeth out,” English says. “Or maybe falling did it?”
Beddy’s hand goes to her mouth instinctively. She feels her two front teeth, pushing them, testing their durability.
“Whooooaaa,” Bouffant says.
“Yeah, I saw them on the street,” English’s date says. “It was gross.”
“Yo, you think it’s just her teeth?” Fitz-Chavez says. “Did you see it happen? Naw. I did. That bitch went fly-ing.” He smacks his hands together sickeningly on each syllable. “She’ll be lucky to walk again.”
Walk again? When she first heard about Kelsey she thought it was a bump and trip to the hospital. Nothing serious. She didn’t want all of this. And then she remembers.
The sledge.