The Accident

Flashback Episode – Lisa Savage’s Memories

The memory came to Lila in fragments, like a photograph torn into pieces and slowly reassembled.

...She was lying in the hospital bed, drifting between sleep and waking, when the images surfaced unbidden Lisa’s memories, rising from wherever the dead girl’s consciousness has gone....

...----------------...

Lisa Savage was fifteen when she first saw Derek Cross.

It was the first day of sophomore year. She was standing by her locker, struggling with a jammed combination lock, when a shadow fell over her. She looked up into the most beautiful face she had ever seen: sharp jaw, lazy smile, eyes the color of cheap whiskey.

“Need help?” he asked.

Her heart stuttered. She nodded, unable to speak.

He reached past her, his arm brushing her shoulder, and gave the lock a sharp twist. It clicked open. “There you go.”

“Thanks,” she managed.

He smiled that slow, crooked smile and said, “I’m Derek.”

“Lisa.”

“Pretty name for a pretty girl.”

And then he was gone, swallowed by the crowd, leaving her standing there with her heart pounding and her cheeks burning.

She didn’t know then that it was a dare. That Derek had lost a bet with his friends and had to “bag the weird girl.” She didn’t know that Mandy her best friend since middle school had been the one to suggest her name.

...----------------...

The memory shifted. A year passed.

Lisa and Derek were “together,” though he rarely acknowledged her outside of their designated meeting spots. She was his secret, and she told herself it was because he was protecting her from his popularity, from the pressure of being seen with a girl from the Shallows.

Mandy was her anchor. They had been inseparable since sixth grade, bonding over shared lunches and whispered secrets. Mandy knew everything about Lisa her fear of her father leaving, her dream of becoming a photographer, her desperate hope that Derek might one day love her back.

What Lisa didn’t know was that Mandy had been sleeping with Derek for six months.

...----------------...

The night of the winter formal. Lisa had saved for weeks to buy a dress a deep blue thing from a thrift store that she’d altered herself. She’d done her hair, practiced her smile in the mirror.

She arrived at the venue alone, because Derek said he’d meet her there.

He didn’t.

She found him in the parking lot, pressed against Mandy’s car, his hands tangled in Mandy’s hair. Their laughter echoed off the asphalt.

Lisa stood frozen. Her hands trembled. She waited for one of them to see her, to acknowledge her, to say something.

Mandy glanced up first. Their eyes met. For a moment, Mandy’s expression flickered guilt? Satisfaction? and then she smiled, slow and deliberate, and wrapped her arms tighter around Derek’s neck.

Lisa turned and walked away.

Derek didn’t come after her. Neither did Mandy.

...----------------...

The memories darkened.

After that night, Derek became cruel. He ignored Lisa in the hallways, then started mocking her. His friends joined in. Mandy spread rumors that Lisa was crazy, obsessed, that she’d imagined the whole relationship.

The bullying escalated. Lisa’s locker was vandalized. Her camera was “accidentally” broken during gym class. She ate lunch in the bathroom to avoid the cafeteria.

She told her mother nothing. Elaine had enough to worry about bills, double shifts, the constant threat of eviction. Lisa learned to make herself small, to move through the school like a ghost.

And then came the day of the accident.

...----------------...

It was a Tuesday. Overcast. The kind of day that smelled like rain but never delivered.

Lisa was walking home from school, keeping to the edge of the sidewalk, her head down. She heard footsteps behind her fast, purposeful and then Derek was there, grabbing her arm, spinning her around.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.

She tried to pull away. “Let go of me.”

Mandy appeared at his side, her phone out, filming. “She’s so dramatic,” Mandy said, laughing.

“I said let go.” Lisa’s voice was shaking.

Derek tightened his grip. “You think you can just ignore me? After everything I did for you?”

“You did nothing for me.”

His face hardened. “You’re nothing. You know that, right? You’re a charity case. The only reason anyone even looks at you is because I let them.”

Lisa stopped struggling. She looked at him—really looked—and for the first time, she felt something colder than fear. She saw him for what he was: a petty, cruel boy who needed someone smaller to step on.

“You’re pathetic,” she said quietly.

Something snapped in Derek’s expression. He shoved her.

She stumbled backward, her feet catching on the curb. The street rushed up to meet her, and then the headlights, and then—

...----------------...

The impact was a white explosion of pain. She heard screaming—her own, maybe. The world tilted, spun, went dark.

And then nothing.

...----------------...

Lila woke with a gasp, her hands clutching the hospital sheets, her heart hammering against her ribs.

The room was dark. Elaine was asleep in the chair beside her, exhausted from the vigil.

Lila lay still, letting her breathing slow, letting the borrowed memories settle back into their place.

They pushed her, she thought, her mind cold and clear. They pushed her, and they filmed it, and they left her to die.

She looked at her hands Lisa’s hands and made a quiet promise.