Extraordinary Means

I stared across the quad, at the clock tower. Five minutes until lights-out. And as much as I didn’t want to, I knew I should go inside. But I didn’t budge.

Come on, Sadie, I thought, fiddling with my iPod.

Sadie will be back before this song ends, I thought.

And then: Sadie will be back before this next one ends.

But she wasn’t.

The song was halfway through when the nurses came ru

And then I took off my headphones and heard that dark and terrible alarm.

Beep-beep-beep beeeeep! Beep-beep-beep beeeeep!

It was coming from the woods. And I knew, beyond a doubt, that it was coming from Sadie.

Everything stopped cold, except time somehow marched grimly forward, because my heart was hammering, and there was a pounding in my ears and my head, and I knew, I just knew, that something was deeply wrong with Sadie. Panic rolled over me, a dense fog of it, choking me, and blanketing everything.

I scrambled to my feet in the moonlight, desperate for that horrible beeping to stop, even though what I really wanted was for it never to have happened in the first place.

The nurses raced into the woods. Nurse Jim clicked on a flashlight, and I didn’t even think before I plunged in after them.

I didn’t have a compass, but I remembered the general direction, the clearing she’d pointing out to me. I didn’t know if she’d be there, but I had to try.

“Wait!” I called.

Nurse Jim turned.

“Lane, get back inside!” he said, as a tall, brunette nurse crashed into the woods behind me.

“I can’t get a read on this location,” she said, shaking her head. “Signal’s too weak out here.”

“None of us can,” Nurse Jim said. “We’ll have to spread out and hurry.”

He glared at me.

“Back inside, now!” he insisted.

“I know where she went!” I said desperately. “Please! I can show you.”

I didn’t want for them to say that I couldn’t. I just started ru

“It’s this way,” I said, pushing forward and willing myself to keep going as I raced toward that terrible beeping.

I knew something was wrong. And I wanted to kick myself for not realizing it earlier. For not going with her. For not insisting. And God, I wanted to kill Nick.

“Sadie!” I called. “Sadie!”

But part of me knew she wouldn’t answer.

It was so dark in the woods, even with the thin, white beams of the nurses’ flashlights. I could hear other nurses shouting to each other about how they couldn’t get enough reception to track the signal as the nightmarish beeping continued, getting louder and louder until the woods were pulsing in alarm.

The clearing Sadie had told me about was just ahead, and I hurried toward it.

“Sadie?” I called again.

And then I saw her. She was curled on the ground at the base of a tree, an empty backpack next to her. At first I thought she was sleeping, but then the beam of Nurse Jim’s flashlight passed over her, and I saw that the back of her head was matted with blood. It wasn’t the bright red of arterial blood. This was a different kind, darker and more urgent.

“No,” I whispered, sinking to the ground next to her.

There was a deep gash on her scalp, like she’d been thrown against the tree, and she was so pale that her skin was almost translucent.

I cradled her in my arms. She was so cold, and her breathing was so shallow, but she was still alive.

“Sadie,” I said. “It’s me. Please. Sadie.”

I was gasping for breath, and my heart had never beat so fast or so loud or so close in my ears.

Softly, Sadie moaned.

“You have to step back,” one of the nurses said, but he couldn’t have meant me. And then his hands were on my shoulders, and he was lifting me away from her, and I was crying and screaming, and I couldn’t catch my breath, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered except Sadie being okay and not dead.

“What was she doing out here?” one of the nurses wondered.

Everything was starting to spin, and I leaned one hand against a tree and pressed the other against my hammering heart, struggling to breathe.

“Is she going to be okay?” I asked. “Please? Anyone?”

“You’ve got to calm down,” a nurse told me. “Here, this will help.”

I felt a puncture, and then the whole world melted away.

I WOKE IN a hospital room in Latham’s medical building. It was just after four in the morning and eerily quiet. Something itched at my noise, and I reached up and unclipped an oxygen tube.

I was still woozy from the sedative, and it took an embarrassing amount of effort to push myself out of bed and stand without swaying. My brain was so foggy that I couldn’t quite remember why I was there, or where there was. And then the fog cleared, and the events of that night hit me full force.

Sadie, lying on the ground in the woods. That gash on the back of her head. Her shallow breaths. The way the nurses had surrounded her like she wasn’t a girl anymore but an emergency.

I had to find her. I had to make sure she was okay.

I shuffled into the quiet hallway. The nurse’s station was at the far end, and a television played softly, flickering through the glass barrier.

I’d never been upstairs in the medical building before. It was a small ward, not a full hospital, and I found Sadie’s name scribbled on the door plaque two rooms down from mine.

I tiptoed in, hoping desperately that I’d find her awake. I pictured her laughing at my terrible bedhead, then smiling sleepily and asking if I wanted to snuggle in with her until the nurses caught us.

But of course that didn’t happen.

She was asleep, or unconscious, I’m not sure which. She looked so small in the hospital bed, and so delicate, with a collection of wires and tubes disappearing under the blanket. She looked nothing at all like the red-lipped girl in the knit cap who’d tramped through the woods at night with a backpack full of contraband.

“Hi,” I whispered, but she didn’t respond.

I reached for her hand, wanting to hold at least that much of her. I remembered writing my phone number across the back of it, and feeling her fingers flutter across my jaw as we kissed in the woods. I remembered twisting around on the swing ride at the Fall Fest, reaching toward her as she held out her hand, daring me to grab it and get a medium-soda-sized wish.

I could have used that wish now. But something told me it wouldn’t have been big enough.

I don’t know how long I sat there before Sadie moaned softly and opened her eyes.

“Hey, you’re awake,” I said, squeezing her hand.

She winced, her face pale and drawn.

“Where am I?” she whispered.

“Medical building.”

She closed her eyes again.

“Everything hurts,” she whispered. “I think I’m actually made of pain.”

I looked around for something that would help, and then I spotted it.

“Morphine pump,” I said, guiding her hand over the button. “Nick would be so jealous.”

I waited for her to say something else, but a nurse came in. She was young and brunette and pretty, and she smiled when she saw that Sadie was awake.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” she said, and then she spotted me and frowned at my hospital gown.

“Out,” she insisted, daring me to argue. I staggered to my feet, still a bit unsteady from the sedative.

“I’ll be back,” I promised Sadie, glancing over my shoulder, but her eyes were closed again, and I couldn’t tell if she’d heard me.