Red Leaves. Paullina Simons

was home.

      Locking the door, Kristina sat down on the bed and slowly examined her hands. They were dirty and bloody from clawing at the ground. Most of the nails were broken. The nail polish was chipped. She stared at them and then tried to get the dirt off the index fingernail, until she asked herself what she was doing and stopped.

      She had left all of her identification in the car. Great, just great, she thought. The police were sure to have a bunch of questions for her. Miss, could we give you back the stuff that belongs to you, please? You forgot it all in your inexplicable hurry to get away from the scene of the accident. Why were you in such a hurry? Is there something you should be telling us? Were you drinking?

      And then Kristina remembered Spencer O’Malley and wondered if maybe he would come to investigate her. She smiled lightly to herself. That wouldn’t be half bad.

      Drinking. Now that wasn’t a terrible idea. Her mouth felt wet already at the thought of the old Southern Comfort. Reaching over to her night table, Kristina opened the top drawer and took out a nearly empty bottle. There wasn’t enough to comfort her. She got up, went to her closet, and reached up to get an unopened bottle from the top shelf. Then she sat back down on the bed, opened the cap with one hand, opened her mouth, tilted the bottle, and poured forth enough liquor to comfort herself and forget about her car and about her three friends who at this time were certainly waiting for her to come and celebrate her twenty-first birthday with them.

      The pint bottle was a third empty when she was done. She hated seeing the bottle emptying, but when she was finished she felt immeasurably better. The shock of the accident was wearing off, and she was beginning to throb and ache.

      Slowly and uncertainly, she sat on the bed, bent over, and started to unlace her boots. The arduous procedure would have taken her five or six minutes under the best

      of circumstances. Tonight, under the haze of alcohol and the distant blur of pain, it took her three times as long. She thought she might even have nodded off in that position, hunched over her boots, as if she were about to throw up.

      It was difficult undressing. She pulled off her sweatshirt with one arm over her head. Her pink tank top came off the same way. The five-button-fly jeans were as hard to remove as the boots. She had to wriggle out of them in the end. The left arm just wasn’t pulling down those jeans. Then the socks. Then the underwear. And when she was naked, Kristina walked unsteadily to her closet and stared at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door.

      Her face was covered with blood that had streamed down her right temple and cheek and neck, clotting and drying below her collarbone. So it wasn’t sweat she had felt dripping off her, she thought. Her black eyes shone blacker than ever, glistening with the warm wet dilation of Southern Comfort. Her knees were skinned, and her left arm hung limply at her side. Kristina looked closer. Her left shoulder was a swollen, maroon-colored mess. God.

      Shit.

      Shit, shit, shit. During her first year, in a rough-and-tumble practice, six weeks before league play began, two girls had knocked into each other, one suffering a dislocated shoulder. The poor kid had to sit out eight weeks, and soon quit basketball altogether. Kristina had been glad not to have been on the receiving end of that one.

      She became so frightened, she actually thought of going to the hospital. Anything, dear God, anything. I have to play basketball again.

      However, the idea of getting the shoulder looked at terrified her. What if it was bad? She couldn’t deal with thinking about it. She pretended it wasn’t even that painful and tried to be brave. She gritted her teeth and moved her left arm. It’s okay, it’s okay. It won’t be so bad.

      Her right rib had the beginning of a large ragged black-and-blue mark that looked like a Rorschach blot.

      Kristina moved closer to the mirror; her face was almost touching the cool smooth surface. There was something stuck near her right temple, above the eye. Kristina lifted her hand to touch it. It was a piece of safety glass. It was not a big piece, Kristina thought, trying to comfort herself as she pried the glass from her skin. The empty bloody gash the glass left behind was scarier than having the glass in her head.

      Kristina went to have a shower after taking another sip of Southern Comfort. Her hand holding the bottle was steady.

      The hot water felt wonderful on her aching body but miserable on her shoulder, so she turned it off. Washing under cold water felt only marginally better. Every once in a while she would try to move her left arm and wince from the pain. But she didn’t feel like screaming, Kristina told herself. It wasn’t that bad.

      When she was trying to dry herself, another student, Jill, entered the shower rooms. They nodded to each other, and Kristina continued to pat her body. Jill looked over at Kristina and stared.

      ‘Hey, what happened to you?’ she said.

      ‘Nothing, why?’ Kristina said quickly. Rather, she tried to say it quickly, but the words came out dead slow, methodical and precise. It was more like Nooo-thinnnn-ggg. Whyyyyyy? Alcohol always made Kristina walk and talk slow but think she was walking and talking fast.

      ‘I don’t know,’ Jill said. ‘You look… terrible. You need help or something?’

      ‘Thanks, but you know, I just gotta get to my room, and I’ll be all right. Really,’ she said, staring into Jill’s disbelieving eyes. ‘Honestly.’

      ‘What happened to you?’ Jill repeated. ‘Did you get hurt at a game or something?’

      ‘Yeah, that’s it,’ said Kristina. ‘That Cornell, they’ll do anything to win.’

      Jill smiled thinly, helped Kristina dry her back, and then went and got her a bucket of ice and carried it to Kristina’s door.

      

      * * *

      When Kristina opened the door to her room, Aristotle greeted her. Albert was sitting on her bed, looking at her accusingly. Is that really accusingly? she thought, trying to get a better look at his expression. What did I do now?

      ‘God, what the hell happened to you?’ he said, getting up and walking over to her.

      Kristina pondered his question as she put down the ice bucket and threw the towel off her body. Albert was in a bad mood. His tone was inflammatory, not distressed.

      She didn’t reply. He’s mad at me. He doesn’t realize I almost died. Kristina decided to tell him.

      Albert’s tone softened. ‘What happened, Rock?’ he said, standing up and coming close to her. His fierce-tender way of looking at her usually made her crazy. This time it nearly made her cry.

      ‘What are you upset about, Albert?’ Kristina asked quietly, putting three ice cubes on her shoulder.

      ‘Everybody’s been waiting for you for two hours. You said you were coming back at six.’

      ‘I don’t know if you noticed,’ she said slowly, rubbing the ice over her arm, ‘but I’ve been hurt. My car was totaled.’

      ‘I didn’t know your car was totaled.’

      ‘No, how could you?’ said Kristina tearfully.

      Kristina sat nude in front of him. He looked at her breasts and then at the big black bruise on her side. The expression in his eyes made her feel better.

      ‘Look at you,’ he said in a throaty voice, coming closer to her. ‘You look so - what is that?’

      She rubbed her side with the ice. That’s nothing, she thought, and said so.

      ‘God, what happened to your face? And your shoulder? It’s bleeding.’

      She shook her head. ‘It’s nothing. It’s not bleeding,’ she said, not even wanting to look at it. ‘It’s just… discolored.’ Then, ‘It could be worse, you know.’

      ‘I don’t see how. How?’

      ‘I could