Page 74 of Fall onto me
I hold my hands up as he pulls away to get a better look at the intruder. I’m cupping his strong jawline but he’s trying frantically to peer down. He traps my wrist, pulling me away to peek. And when he does, I see in his obsidian eyes a flicker of his soul vanishing.
It twirls up between us, floating to wherever she may be. He will never be the same.
She’s splattered and broken and gone from this world.
A feral, harrowing scream escapes him and then, he’s gone.
I want to chase after him, but Adeline is here, and she can’t be left alone. He zig-zags up the stairs and out of sight.
I shakily pull out of my phone and fail three times to dial 9-1-1, and when I succeed, I manage to give them the address.
Kneeling down beside her, I take in the pool of blood leaking down the side of her face.
The drip, drip, drip is going to drive me mad.
But what’s more horrid than anything is Foster, who returns with long strides and kneels down, sobbing and holding her lifeless body together.
“Where is my sister?” he cries. “Where is Sophie?”
One of his tears catches on my cheek, mixing with my own as blaring sirens wail in the distance.
I call Rita, willing the world to let Sophie be safe. Just the thought of her, of Foster, alone in this world all over again is crushing me where I stand.
“Hello, dear!” she greets.
I don’t have the heart to tell her that her friend has been murdered, but she’ll undoubtedly see it in a couple of hours. “Ri … Rita.” I stutter, trying to hold myself together long enough.
“What’s wrong, dear?” her voice is frantic. “Skyler!” Sophie sings from the background. I collapse, dropping the phone.
“She’s okay,” I tell Foster as he cups my cheeks, heavy tears streaming down his face.
He folds himself into me after I pick up the phone, informing Rita that her lifelong friend, a nurse who dedicated her entire life to helping people, was carelessly thrown from the balcony.
Just before I hang up, a paramedic shouts out, “We have a pulse!” They rush her away, gone before they see if we’d like to go.
A flicker of life passes through Foster’s lifeless gaze, but it doesn’t last long when a fireman walks over to us. “Would you like a ride to the hospital?”
He shakes his head. “I’m going to speak with the police, and I don’t know if my little sister is coming home. I need to be here.” He looks back to where his grandma fell down. “I have to stay here.”
I would go, but there’s no world in which I’ll leave Foster. I ask the thing he’s too scared to, “Will she be okay?”
The fireman looks down at his black boots, determining how he should word this. “I’m not a doctor, so I can’t comment on her condition. They will call you to let you know. But son …” He places his palm on Foster’s shoulder. “I would prepare for the worst.”
* * *
Outside has been pure hell,news crews like vultures waiting for their moment to capture a photograph of Foster’s crying face. Detectives clear the scene hours later. Adeline will be a blip on the nightly news and that will be the most the public will ever know.
The cops didn’t believe that someone pushed her, but Barnes did. The official report states that she fell off the balcony, lost her footing. Since it’s a low rail, and old and bent at the metal from the force of the push, they didn’t question it.
It wasn’t until Barnes got there that Foster began to breathe a little. He promised us he would investigate, but we have a suspicion that it’s the power of TK working from behind the bars.
* * *
For now,like so many times that he’s picked me up from the bottom, I lift him. He curls his arm around my shoulders, staggering until I lay him down on his bed.
I’m not scared that whoever it was will come back. Let them. Foster needs to be here.
His phone chimes.