It’s better than I could have hoped for—making Cherish my new home and being rid of Kelly all on the same night.
Only I don’t get to enjoy it.
I go to sleep big-spooning Cherish and wake up with my guts in a vise. There’s a fire under my skin, and it’s clearly not a sudden development, because the sheets beneath me are soaking wet. At first, I’m worried I lost control of my bladder. I sincerely hope I haven’t capped off a perfect night by pissing my best friend’s bed.
I haven’t. At least I don’t think I have. Sweat is gushing from my pores, and the wetness is everywhere, like an aura, or an outline of my entire body. My bladder could not have held enough contents to do this damage.
My scarf has slipped clean off and is on the pillow above my head, and my hair is wet either from the sweat-drenched pillow or from the sweat flooding from my scalp. Or both.
This is disgusting. Everything is wrong.
Cherish isn’t in my arms anymore. It looks like she rolled away, probably to escape my sweat-scape, and while she hasn’t woken up, she’s on the absolute edge of the bed. I get three seconds into a half-baked plan to somehow change the sheets without waking her, and also without knowing where the Whitmans keep their linens, before the reason I woke up in the first place barges back to center stage.
I’m gonna be sick.
I don’t have time to turn on the bathroom light, and I shouldn’t need to. I know where the toilet is by now—I just don’t know how I miss it. The first wave of vomit bursts out of me like water breaking through a dam, and I hear it splash against the floor.
I moan because my throat keeps pulsating even after the stuff escapes, and I can’t get the curse word out.
Now the bathroom reeks, and the nightmare isn’t over. More is coming, but when I try to get closer to the toilet, to thrust my face into the open bowl this time, my hand serendipitously finds the pool of chunky bile, and I lose what little stability I had. My chin crashes into the porcelain, and I both hear and feel a crunch on impact.
My eyes are squeezed shut but the world lights up.
I hear a splash, so at least some of what comes tearing up my throat next makes it into the toilet.
I give up. Hope this is all a dream.
My face is throbbing in pain, there’s vomit on the floor and in my hand and under my knees now, and my throat feels raw from whatever undigested chunks of food are forcing their way up and out.
Food poisoning. It has to be. From Dad’s conchiglie and meat sauce.
And then I’m back at their house, remembering standing in their sterile bedroom and the packed suitcases I didn’t see.
They lied to me. And I figured them out.
I called them on it. And now I’m sick.
I burp into the toilet, my guts heaving and my throat gagging, but nothing more comes out.
I can’t speak, so I just moan.
My parents didn’t do this on purpose. They ate the same meal I did, and they sent leftovers for Cherish. If anything, they’re curled up around toilet bowls right now, too, one in the master bathroom that’s barely large enough to deserve the name, and the other in the one in the hall. I guess it’ll feel more lived-in now.
But if they had done it on purpose, it would’ve almost been the perfect cover. I’ve been sick to my stomach for weeks. It’d just look like more of my homesick, world-turned-upside-down confusion, and only they’d know it was something else. Only my mother would know.
I can’t escape the fetid smell anyway, so I just lay my head against the cool toilet seat and breathe.
They didn’t do this. I know that because my parents might be liars but they aren’t cruel. They’ve only ever used traditional punishments—grounding me from social gatherings or personal electronics—and those have always been accompanied by long talks. My mother is cunning, but I haven’t ever actually seen her do any of the things I know she’s capable of. Which is why I’ve never told her the truth about what happened in the fourth grade, even though I wanted to. I could never decide whether she’d be proud or feign disapproval—or something worse. Because now I wonder whether she would have told Brianne Whitman the truth during her little character assassination attempt, knowing how much the story means to the Whitmans.
“No,” I finally manage, and it croaks out of my sore throat.
If my parents had given me food poisoning on purpose, they’d want me to learn a lesson, and the only way to know that I had would be to talk to me about it. There’s no such possibility with secrecy.
The blinding light is outside my head now, and the bathroom is bathed in it.
“RahRah!” Cherish discovers me at last. “Oh my gawd, Farrah, wait here!”
As though I’m going anywhere.
Relief swallows me up. My Cherish knows something’s wrong; she’s going to take care of it. Knowing that, I fall asleep right there.
The next time I bat my eyes open, Brianne Whitman is kneeling beside me in what looks like a satin robe. I feel her cool hand against my forehead.
“Run a bath, but keep the shower running, Che,” she directs.
“It’s all right, sweetie.” Jerry Whitman’s somewhere in the room, too. “She’ll be fine.”
Cherish is crying.
I moan, try not to smile, but I can’t help it. They’ll just think I’m delirious. I probably am.
“Honey, I can’t lift her.”
“I’ll get her in the tub, and then you girls get her undressed after.”
“RahRah . . .”
I can hear the tremble in her voice now, and when Jerry Whitman gathers me up, groaning under my deadweight, I try to open my eyes a little to find her.
“Che,” I manage, still fighting back the smile I can feel has tugged my lips higher on one side. It hurts, and my chin is swelling up already, so I sound even more pathetic.
“Cherish, honey, please give your father some space. She’s okay, baby.”
His back must get rained on when he leans in to lower me into the tub as gently as possible. Thank God for fit dads with impressive core control.
“I’m gonna step out,” he says when the water is already swelling over my shins. In a moment, it’ll cover my knees. Luckily I’m only wearing a nightshirt and underwear, so there isn’t much for Cherish and her mom to wriggle me out of.
“Go,” Brianne answers, like he’s been called to war. “We’ll manage from here.”
“Should I send someone up for the mess?” he asks, almost like he’s hesitating.
When his wife answers him, it sounds like she’s made a serious decision, rather than elected not to have her hired help wipe up my stomach bile and half-digested conchiglie in the dead of night.