There’s a longer-than-average pause as he tries to figure out how exactly to break the bad news. To me.

I almost can’t breathe, feeling my heartbeat bellowing in my ears, trying to expect that version of ‘the worst,’ that I can only imagine. My phone blinks and his reply appears suddenly, like a dark genie, blotting out the emoji wallpaper with a long trail of black.

“Well, would you believe it? They told me the darndest thing. There will be no more Bulgarian folk dancing.”

I think I was supposed to laugh here. 

He goes on, in one paragraph of a ramble, as if he’s afraid of stopping. There are no periods in the right places, and my mind whispers menacingly…

He’s not. Breathing.

“Apparently, the crash did a pretty serious number on my spine - the cord's sticking out through a damaged spot - just a tiny bit. So I’m currently paralyzed from the knees on down.”

All the color seems to disappear out of the room like dirty water down the drain, leaving a smutty gray film. I’m slapped by the ghostly weight of his words, behind the forced laughter, the glittering glibness. The diagnosis reverberates through the silence in fractured screams as I try to unpack the nonchalant gift wrap and make sense of what he just told me.

Paralyzed. He’s paralyzed-

How can that even be possible? That isn’t karma - it isn’t even fair. To think he would draw the worst lot out of everyone involved. I know it’s not right but I think it anyway, too angry to resist my intrusive thoughts. Why Kattar? Why not me? It’s not -

The driver doesn’t have to live with his guilt - hit and run away from the aftermath and the carnage in the lives he almost ended. I just have to live ugly, crossed, and spotted with ‘x’s and ‘o’s from where I kissed death and made it back again. But of all the people involved, Kattar was the least to blame and had the least to gain from being there in the first place.

I make myself breathe - thinking black, glaring at the darkness on the inside of my eyelids until the memories are washed out in mechanical oblivion.

I press against the headache, trying unsuccessfully to make time stop spinning so I can try and process the words pouring onto my screen, but for all the world, he can’t make himself stop talking.

“They say there’s still a good chance that I can learn to walk again with some physical therapy - there are lots of people who are born with a similar level of paralysis and still manage it.”

“For now I’m going to have some caregivers to help me through my daily routine. It’s not glamorous, I tend to prefer playing Prince Charming over ‘damsel in distress’ but it’s not as bad as it could be, in the long run. I’m almost spoiled rotten by the nurses. I’m kind of an urban legend, “the ‘hero boy’ from the car accident.” The doc says with the way I managed the chaos, I would have saved your life and the other driver’s if his airbag hadn’t malfunctioned.”

The airy fury diminishes, and in its place, a heavy weight sinks to the bottom of my stomach like an osmium anchor.

“You won’t be able to drive anymore.”

I say it out loud and let it sink in, first for myself, and then again through the text. I can tell he doesn’t know what to say to that. 

There is no silver lining.

“How are you going to make a living?”

I feel the slow, deep breath through the screen, and imagine I can see the clouds gathering in his eyes - that stormy expression I’ve only seen once before.

He sighs, I’m almost positive.

“Fortunately, that’s not going to be a problem. My mom is paying for the caregivers, and all my necessities, apartment, and such.”

“She probably would’ve just taken me to live with her, but she knows I still want some level of independence, as much as that’s possible right now. 

You know, she would be more than willing to help you out too, until you get your bearings again if you wanted.”

“I’m fine,” I reply quickly, “My prints are still selling.”

At the mention of his mother, I feel myself bristle as if I’ve been prodded with a hot poker. Discomfort and repulsion swim in the back of my throat, and I can’t stand it. I’m a selfish little beggar, but I’m not ready to talk to her, at least not in person. Don’t want to accept her help, or look her in the face, though I realize it would be water off a duck’s back. The benevolence burns me from the inside out. Somehow it seems twisted, after all she’s done for me, to take anything more at this point, when there’s nothing I could possibly do to pay her back - make up for this mess. 

It would almost be better if she blamed me, instead of acting like nothing at all had happened. Then at least I would have an excuse to shrink from her presence. One I can explain, anyway. 

As it is it feels like spurning the sunshine, though I know I would avoid that too, if I could.

Kattar’s mother has always spoiled me, almost as much as she spoiled him, ever since he and I met in Junior high. They had just moved into their new house then, and I had just moved in with my aunt, so I spent as much time as I could at their place, instead of mine.

Kattar and I used to talk for hours about television and art. He made me watch action movies I couldn’t stand, and he listened for longer than any reasonable person should, to me explaining the ‘story’ behind each of my ‘masterpieces.’

I worked with crayons back then, and office pens, cuz they were cheap. But Mrs. Moon said she “just couldn’t have that.” Not for a girl as talented as me. 

She was the only person who actually managed to convince me I could be a professional artist and the first person who had actually tried.

She bought me my first professional-grade art supplies. She taught me about branding and marketing when I was sixteen, and helped me set up the online store I still have today.

Almost nothing Kattar and I wanted or needed ever stayed on the ‘wish list’ for very long, a luxury I didn’t have at home. 

Ever since my mother was put in rehab, I lived with her older sister, and she relented to me the legal bare minimum while wearing herself thin in an attempt to satisfy the whims of my pretty bratty cousin, Natividad. Everyone basically worshipped her like a teenage Jennifer Lopez, forever as ‘on fleek’ as I was shabby. Every penny my aunt saved on me was thrown into the designer clothes that her ‘angel’ HAD to have, lest she lose her popular girl status, made possible through the facade. I was fortunate enough to be younger, and shorter than her, so I lived on the hand-me-down and discarded fashion, and crumbs of attention, for most of my high school years.

Horrible as it was, I honestly kind of sympathized with my aunt. She was a single mom like mine, and she certainly didn’t need me to add to her worries, when she could barely afford the ones she had birthed herself.

Mrs. Moon was a single mom too, but she and Kattar never struggled, like we did. 

Kattar used to joke that the only thing that ever slowed his mom down was the weight of her own pockets and her big brain.

She was the first woman I’d ever met who had her life under control, under an iron fist, almost, which some people say is the reason why she was divorced.

She and Kattar’s father were only married for one year, exactly long enough to have the son, that she wanted. The husband was apparently just a necessary evil, as he couldn’t fit into her executive lifestyle. She used to tell me, ‘he had the drive of a tricycle.’

For as long as I’ve known them, Kattar and his mother have been vehicle obsessed. She drove a Porsche until she got a Lamborghini, and from the Lamborghini, she transitioned to one of those ‘new-fangled’ electric cars. Any car she didn’t want anymore she gifted to Kattar, and I guess it was this sense of security that bred the daredevil into him. 

I could never understand his obsession with stunt driving and motocross - flirting with the afterlife - when all I’d ever wanted was to be sure of my next step, to know that the earth wouldn’t drop out from under me. The biggest worry of his mother’s life was that he was going to kill himself with one of his movie stunts. She never imagined that I would be his downfall.

I still remember the night when she told me, that if my mother ever died, she would adopt me. 

I was 16 years old then, but she cuddled me up in her arms like a baby, letting me cry until I finally fell asleep, and every night since the car crash I’ve wondered…

If I had told her about the photo shoot, and the painting, and the breakup, instead of Kattar - if I had asked her for comfort and advice, instead of locking myself away in the house until my best friend was left to wonder if I was living or dead - if I would have been stable enough to function, drive myself to the award show, and none of this would ever have happened.