#also the first like two sentences are directly from the book. its just arnie instead of the officer there

[normally-paranormal]

A slightly less tragic ending

-----

It was Sunday, January twenty-first, that I started to come back a little. My left leg was in a cast up in its old familiar position again amid all the pulleys and weights. There was someone sitting next to me, and it took me a moment to realize it was Arnie.

He looked like hell made-over. His lip was busted, his left eye was partially hidden underneath a deep, purpling bruise, and his skin had broken out into reddened, uneven patches of acne, brought about by stress or too many cokes or reliable old teenage hormones. To my eyes, it was the best he'd ever looked. There was a moment, as bleary-eyed and light-headed as I was, that I thought I had to be dreaming. And then he turned to look at me.

Seeing me awake must've shocked him. Arnie all but leapt out of his seat, his eyes wide and his hands hovering as if he didn't quite know what to do with them. He finally seemed to settle on trying to knock some of his hair out of his face, a gesture so familiar that it made my chest ache as he struggled to find something to say. "Dennis," he finally managed, his voice hoarse, still not quite the old Arnie, but there was enough of something earnest in it that I didn't hear LeBay, either. "Hey, man. ..It's been crazy, huh?"

I laughed. I couldn't help it, even if it made everything in my body squeeze and ache and burn. Arnie looked at me like he didn't quite know what to make of that. "Crazy doesn't even begin to cover it. What happened to you?" I asked, squinting as I peered up at him. "You look like you're the one who got hit by a car."

There was a hesitation, and then a shy, nervous sort of smile came over his face. It lasted for only a second before he broke into a laugh, too- and, God, that alone made it all worth it. The doc could come and tell me that I'd never walk again, that my leg was going to be amputated at the hip this time tomorrow, that all I had ahead of me was another decade of painful physical therapy, and I wouldn't have done a thing different. It was a laugh that sounded like Arnie, the way I knew him. Call me sentimental, or a big fucking crybaby, or whatever brand of queer you want to, but I'd never heard a sound that was so much like waking up from a bad dream.

"I.. kinda did," Arnie answered. His smile fell away, but the life in his eyes was still there. That was all I could focus on. "It was.. LeBay. One minute, my mom and I were driving along, and the next, he was just... he was there. In the car with us."

"Wasn't inside you?" I said it, then grimaced. Arnie seemed to shrug off the awkward phrasing as well as anyone could.

"No." He let out a shaky breath, then shrugged. "Whatever you and Leigh did, Dennis, it was like he couldn't touch me anymore. Couldn't get in my head. He was trying to get ahold of the wheel, and he.. did. We had a head-on with a Chrysler."

"Jesus." I frowned at him, shifting against the pillows piled behind me. God, I was so tired of hospital beds I could puke. "How's Regina?"

"Recovering." He matched my frown. "I think."

There was a dip in his voice that made me worried. It'd been so long since I'd seen the real Arnie that I was suddenly terrified to realize that I couldn't quite tell the difference between a regular lowered pitch in his throat and LeBay's ugly growl pushing through. I couldn't read if Arnie had changed in some way or if it wasn't him at all. Arnie must've caught something in my face, because he shied away from me, and finally sat back down in the chair at my bedside. He reached up to swipe his hair out of his face again, the new, short haircut maybe not doing it for him. Arnie sighed. "I really screwed it all up, didn't I, Dennis? I mean, I.." His breath caught. "My mom thinks I've lost my fucking mind. She won't even look at me! Leigh- I- I don't even know what to say to her. And my dad.."

His voice cracked. I pushed out a soft breath. "Arnie.."

"That fucker!" He burst. Arnie's fists were clenched on top of his thighs, digging into the fabric of his jeans until his knuckles had gone white. "I don't know if he's gone, they didn't find shit at the wreck, but I swear to God, Dennis, I'm gonna pull him out of his fucking grave and make him fucking CHOKE! That son of a--"

"Arnie!" I barked, feeling like my heart was trying to seize in my chest. If LeBay wasn't gone--

I didn't get to finish the thought. Arnie choked, the tension bleeding from his body as he broke into a mortified sob, and forgive me, but that was just as much of a relief as his smile had been. He was angry. He had every right to be. But it was just that- just anger. Just something Arnie felt, deep and true, that belonged to him. I tried to breathe, and my voice was hoarse when I tried again. "Arnie, I- I'm so sorry, man. About your dad. I tried to.."

I'd tried to warn him. The sight of Michael Cunningham's body passed through my mind again and I had to repress a shudder. Scrubbing angrily at his good eye with one hand, Arnie shook his head. "It's not your fault. None of this is. I.." He dropped his hand, sighed again. When he looked at me, he looked scared. "..We're still friends, aren't we? After all of this?"

"Yeah, man. Yeah, of course we are." My mouth felt dry. And I'm not ashamed to admit it, I started crying then, too. I'd missed him like hell. Arnie nodded, looking relieved.

"Thank you, Dennis," he said, his voice quiet. He leaned over to give me a light punch in the shoulder. "You really saved my ass."

"Yeah, I'm a real Han Solo type," I told him. He smiled, faintly. I wondered when the hell I was going to get out of here so we could watch a game at home again. We hadn't talked about Leigh yet, but I was sure that was going to come, and even more so that it'd work itself out. I loved her, but she'd been Arnie's girl first, and Arnie and I had been claiming Libertyville as our own since long before she'd come around. Right then, I believed I'd be happy with just about any choice she made.

Arnie was alive. He was himself, if a little worse for wear. We also hadn't talked about Christine yet, but the last I'd seen of her, she'd been as good as gone. It struck me then that if LeBay had been with Arnie, if he'd caused that wreck, then he'd abandoned the Fury. He couldn't have been in both places at once. I didn't have it in me to feel any sympathy for her.

"Hey," I said after a quiet moment, smiling tiredly when Arnie met my gaze. I nodded down towards my leg. "Sign my cast for me?"