I’ve started to sweat again, but at least it’s not like before. Whatever’s going on with me, it isn’t food poisoning, and it’s not completely out of my system. I’ll have to give in at some point, but I want to stay awake a little longer. I want to enjoy the way they’re all responding. The way everything they’re doing and saying revolves around me, and the way they don’t know I’m conscious enough to know it.
“This can’t happen again,” I think I hear Brianne say when it seems like they’ve been working in silence for a long time.
“Do I put a trash bin next to her side of the bed?”
“I’m talking about what happened at Judge Campbell’s, Cherish.”
My eyes actually open completely now.
My head is muddled and I’m probably borderline delirious, but that feels like a strange and disjointed segue.
“It’s done,” Brianne says, in a tone that—from my post-puke stupor—is nothing like I’ve ever heard from her. “Am I making myself clear?”
She means Kelly. By “what happened at Judge Campbell’s,” she means whatever Kelly and Cherish were doing that drove Tariq poolside, not whatever came after that resulted in Tariq’s black eye and Kelly’s destruction of property. She’s telling her daughter that she’s not allowed to see Kelly anymore, which makes perfect sense—except for the timing of it. I just assumed that’s what she and Mr. Whitman wanted with Cherish when we got home last night . . . so why is she saying it now?
“Cherish. Am I clear?”
“Yes.”
No whining, no hissy fit. No pleading or declaring her mother unfair. Cherish agrees with shocking calm, even if her voice betrays a hint of apprehension, or worry. Which is impressive for a one-word reply.
“Good. Give me Farrah’s toothbrush.”
My eyes have fallen shut again, and I can’t do anything about it. They’re heavy like an iron curtain, so I only manage to ribbon my eyebrows at the second confusing segue.
But there’s no question I’m delirious. I know because the same rainy windshield effect that was happening in the shower is happening now, even behind my eyelids.
There’s a good chance I’ve been falling in and out of sleep, hearing snippets of conversation and thinking they’re immediately following other pieces, when really I’ve missed the connective tissue in between. There’s no way for me to know without asking the two people I’m eavesdropping on, and I couldn’t if I tried.
I’ll ask Cherish tomorrow. Assuming tomorrow comes.
I hear my toothbrush clatter against the inside of the small waste bin under the sink.
“There should be new ones in the top right drawer.” Brianne waits through the sound of a deep wood drawer sliding open. “The very furthest right drawer, Cherish,” and then—when I think she’s exasperated again, the way she was when they were bathing me—I hear her laugh.
“What?” her daughter whines. “Stop laughing at me, Mommy.”
“I’m not, baby,” she manages, though her twinkling laugh continues until there’s a golden swarm of locusts amassing above the bed. A moment later, the sound of her kissing her daughter, probably against the temple, like she so often does, with Cherish nestled under her shoulder. “You’re just adorable.”
“Why?” And I can tell she’s smiling. “Because I don’t know where things are in my own bathroom?”
In reply, Brianne lets her head fall back—I know she does—and the swarm hovering over my head expands.
Of course that’s how she responds to evidence that Cherish is ridiculously spoiled. It’s not like it happened by accident.
Reindeer playdates don’t just happen.
Reindeer, with furry antlers, might still draw blood.
I furrow my brow, unsure what I was thinking just before that.
I’m so tired. The back of my neck feels clammy and uncomfortable against the pillowcase, and there’s an itchy, throbbing discomfort inside my head that’s localized exclusively on the left side. Worse, there’s a rumble in my gut, and it’s followed by a series of pops and small-scale explosions.
I know what’s coming.
I could test my vocal cords, see if I’ve built up enough energy to make them hear me.
It’d take even less stamina to roll to the side and cast my impending vomit on the floor beside the bed, since Cherish hasn’t placed the bin like she suggested.
What isn’t easy is getting to her side of the bed.
Making my own momentum so that by the time the wave comes, rushing up my throat and out of my mouth in a torrent of orange, my head is on my best friend’s pillow.
VIII
Days pass. I’m mostly unconscious, fever dreams swimming to the surface and mingling with outside stimuli so that what’s probably the bathroom faucet becomes the waterfall in my pool, and what’s probably just Jerry Whitman’s normal speaking voice becomes aggressive growls from who knows where. They get mingled with whimpering that sounds like it’s coming from Cherish, and sometimes I moan, trying to console her, only to wake myself just enough to know she’s not around.
The sickness has officially exhausted its intrigue by the time I come to and find Brianne gently wiping my forehead with the softest hand towel. It’s cool and damp, and there’s a radiant glow around her because the sun is pouring into the bedroom. It might be morning or midday; it’s impossible to tell now that it’s basically summer.
I prepare for a struggle, but when I try to speak, my voice has miraculously returned, and it scrapes out of my throat with little effort.
“How long was I out?” I ask.
“Two days. I’m afraid you girls missed the last couple days of school,” Brianne tells me with a smile. “If you were gonna skip the end of the year, I wish you could’ve at least enjoyed it.”
“Are my parents coming?” Now that I can speak and control my eyes, it feels a little dramatic to ask for my mom and dad like I’m expecting my last rites. I can even sit upright, which I find out when I pull myself up on my elbows and then against the headboard.
“Do you want me to call them?” she asks, still tracing my face with the refreshing towel. “I didn’t want to worry them, when we’re taking good care of you.”
It sounds like she means she hasn’t told them I’ve been sick at all, but in the bathroom, she told Cherish she’d call them the morning after I first threw up. Except I can’t be sure what I heard, or when, or whether it was real or imagined. Every memory I have after driving home from Judge Campbell’s place is fuzzy and subject to reconsideration.