What Remains by Helene Dunbar Read Free Book Online

really want Lizzie, in particular, to get it because otherwise she’s going to ride me mercilessly. “There’s more to it than that. I mean, you can figure out the best flight plans for airplanes or study the chances of hurricanes. There are a lot of options.”
    â€œYou can plan ahead, you mean?” Spencer manages to sum up my entire psyche in under a minute. “Yeah, makes sense.”
    Before they can analyze me any further, I pass the question along. “We all know where Yeats is going, so you’re up, Lizzie.”
    She’s quiet for a minute. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her lean forward and grip onto Spencer’s headrest.
    â€œWell, in five years … ” she begins. I twist my head as much as I can and still watch the road. I’m eager to know where she wants to go from here. Lizzie rarely talks about the future.
    â€œI want to be someplace other than this shithole. I want to be able to paint full time. I’m not really sure how to make that happen.”
    â€œAnd what about in twenty?” I ask.
    This time there’s no pause. She stares right into my eyes in the mirror, deadly serious. “Come on, Cal, do you really think I’ll still be alive in twenty years?”
    I have to stop myself from jamming on the breaks in the middle of the freeway.
    â€œLiz,” Spencer says, before I can get a word out. “Really?”
    â€œYeah, really. I mean, what? You see me settling down and having kids and a normal life? I don’t even know what a normal life is like.” She doesn’t say any of this like she’s upset. Just resigned. It must be hell to go through every day thinking that life is never going to get any better. It makes me think of Alice, the “ghost” from The Cave.
    I glance over at Spencer, who looks like all the air has been forced out of his lungs.
    â€œLiz. Do you really think that we’d let anything bad happen to you?”
    When he says it I feel a crawling up my back that makes me shiver. That’s the kind of tempting-fate comment that made my grandmother knock on wood and spit on the ground.
    â€œSeriously, Lizzie,” I say, “you’re going to be a beautiful, artsy, bitchy old lady with equally beautiful, misbehaved kids who are afraid of nothing.”
    That at least brings a smile to her face.
    â€œYou’re up, Yeats,” I say, but we all know his plan. His life stretches ahead of him like the freaking yellow brick road complete with lion and wizard.
    Lizzie jumps in before he gets a chance to answer. “In five years, Spence will be accepting his second Tony award for best male lead on Broadway. In twenty, he’ll be living in California with one of the top movie studio executives and a slew of servants in their gated estate. They’ll throw parties where champagne runs out of the faucets and everyone is beautiful, and creative, and insane. But in a good way.”
    Spencer laughs, but really, she probably isn’t that far off from the truth.
    I blink and then swerve a little. The conversation woke me up, but Lizzie’s bleakness about her future has worn me out.
    â€œAre you sure you’re okay to drive?” Spencer asks.
    â€œI’m fine, Yeats. And it’s still better than letting one of you drive.” Spencer drives like my grandmother and Lizzie drives like a demon from hell is chasing her.
    Spencer and Lizzie start their usual tug of war over the radio again and I smile at how comforting and familiar it is. I try to look over at Spencer, but Lizzie is leaning between us and I catch a whiff of patchouli before I glance up and see 3,507 pounds of gray steel flying towards us over the median.
    Despite what I’ve read, my life doesn’t flash before my eyes.
    Time doesn’t slow down.
    I’m not able to process why an SUV is blocking out the clouds.
    I don’t have time to utter a sound before everything goes