17. Mari
If ever there was a sign the universe was conspiring against me, it was confirmed the morning after our trip to the Rage Room.
I woke up from a fitful night of confusing and stressful dreams. In one, I ran into my brothers, having found out they were back in town, but they didn’t tell me. I yelled at them, literally screamed, saying exactly what was on my mind at that moment. I woke up angry and sad, wondering why my brain fixated on something outside of my control, something I hardly ever thought about.
Lying in bed, I felt the stress of that dream settle heavy in my bones. My body ached like I’d done a booty boot camp and not smashed a bunch of junk. Today was the Fall Festival, and Leo was set to pick me up in two hours to meet the marching band outside town in the field where the Headless Chicken Festival was held. The inside of my eyelids burned, and the bed was so comfortable it was nearly impossible to roll out and into the shower.
I turned on the water and stood, blinking as it warmed up. Shivers racked my body. I don’t know how long I stood there staring, but steam had filled the bathroom when I zoned back in. The hot water felt like needles on my neck, and goose bumps covered me.
After the shower, I zoned out again as my brain debated wearing all black or something more casual and appropriate for a muddy field. A knock on the front door confused me from where I sat on my bed, facing my closet.
The towel was still wrapped around me when I answered.
Leo’s eyes widened, and he cleared his throat before focusing on my face. “You weren’t downstairs. Usually, you’re waiting outside for me.” He stumbled over his words, eyes flicking over me again before he looked pointedly at the ceiling above my head. “I wasn’t sure if I should have come up or waited...”
I could have said several things, but all of them felt like too much work. Instead, I nodded and blinked. It felt so nice to have my eyes closed that it took an extra second to open them again. I turned back and shuffled away. After a heavy pause, I heard him come in and close the door. “Are you okay?”
“Absolutely. Big Day,” I said, trying to rally myself. “Fall Carnival. The whole of Green Valley should be there to hear the Brown Bears perform.”
“Black Bears.”
“That’s what I said.” I stepped into my room and dropped my towel. The cotton felt like sandpaper on my back. I shivered and looked longingly toward my nice, happy, warm bed.
Okay. Clothes. I could do this.
“Are you talking to me? Whoa!” There was a scramble of footsteps and a loud thump before my bedroom door slammed shut. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I will...I’ll just wait in the living room.”
Time zoomed in and out, slowed down, and sped up. There was a sense of urgency that my body was not worried about. I found the clothes I’d picked out the night before—thank you, past Mari—that I’d forgotten I’d laid out. I sat on the bed to pull up my panties and jeans. It took another minute to get my bra situated. The clothes scratched like sandpaper, too stiff and cold.
I lay back on the bed, pulling the comforter to cover my top half. God, it felt so nice.
“Mari? You said you wanted to be there by ten, right?”
“Yes,” I called, and it felt like so much work.
“Okay. We should probably leave soon. Can I help you?”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you.” I sat back up, and the room swam around me.
Leo sighed audibly through the door. I needed to rally. A little coffee and food would help everything. My stomach churned unpleasantly at the thought of Daisy’s, and that’s when I should have realized something was really wrong.
I finally finished getting dressed and found my bag, making my way to the front door.
“Ready,” I declared, feeling rather proud of myself.
Leo tugged on his hair and looked me up and down. “Shoes?”
I looked down at my feet. I sighed and felt my shoulders slump. The idea of lacing up my boots was unbearable. I frowned as my chin trembled.
“Okay. No worries. You sit here.” Leo led me to a chair at the breakfast table. I slumped into the seat.
I extended my legs, and he laced up the boots one at a time. This was the second time he’d taken care of my footwear. He was either a sweetie or had a weird foot thing. I patted his head. No. He was just sweet. “Thank you.”
He’d finished tying my boots and was still crouched, an arm on his knee. His brows were pinched as he frowned up at me. I liked the way he looked at me. Not right now. Right now, he looked like he was trying to do math. But normally. Or when he’d pulled back to look at me during our kiss. That was a look I wanted to frame.
“I think you should consider staying home,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Mari, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re sick.”
I reeled back. Had he heard about my other dreams? The dreams that were stressful in different ways and involved his deep voice, his wandering hands, and my gasps of pleasure. “Am not,” I said.
“You are. You should go back to bed.”
“I can’t. I have to get to the field, help the band set up, and ensure everything goes okay. I absolutely cannot be sick.”
To prove my point, I stood abruptly.
The ground tilted and came up to meet me. His arms were around me before I hit it. “That proves nothing.” I smoothed my hair into a ponytail. “Let’s go. I don’t want to be late.”
Leo worried his bottom lip. I’d kissed those lips. And it was wonderful. Thankfully, I wasn’t thinking about that anymore.
He cleared his throat and tested my ability to stand on my own. Success. Oh, I was holding on to him still.
He looked at me again, debating something. “Leo. I’m fine. Let’s go.”
“Is there anything else you need?” His gaze moved around the barren walls and sparsely furnished apartment.
“Tragic, I know. I’m not home much.”
“This is nice.” He picked up and shook the snow globe sitting on the counter. The only sign of life in this place. In it was a picture of my parents, brothers, and me at Disney World, on one of the few family trips we ever took. We smiled happily with our dorky matching shirts, and me with my gap-toothed grin. It was a perfect memory. Soon after that, Jonas and Noah got too cool for family trips.
I didn’t want to look at that snow globe. I just wanted to get out of here.
On the drive out, I’d tried to sit up as straight as possible. The truth was, the ache in my spine had gotten worse, so that my whole body had a draining fatigue. I was freezing cold, but the air coming out of my nostrils was burning hot. It wasn’t looking good for me, but I just had to get through today, then I had a full day off tomorrow.
I could handle this.
“Or you could just sleep,” Leo suggested.
He shot a look at me. “I had not realized my internal thoughts went external,” I said and clamped my mouth closed to keep my teeth from chattering.
“You’ve been mumbling since I got to your place.” He put the car in park. There was a gravel area for parking, and it was filling up fast. I saw a few students walking with their instruments toward the makeshift stage near the entrance. I couldn’t let them down.
“I can make it through a few hours,” I said.
Leo turned and pressed his fingers to my head and sucked in a breath.
“I shouldn’t have let you leave the house,” he said.
“As if you could stop me,” I mumbled.
“That’s what I thought you would say.” He bent his fingers to press the backs of them against my cheeks.
I fought the overwhelming urge to close my eyes and lean into him.
“You’re on fire,” he whispered.
I pretended to lick a finger and tapped it on my shoulder. I made a sizzling sound.
He groaned a laugh. “Think of it this way, if you have a fever?—”
“I do not?—”
“Which you absolutely do. Do you really want to be around your students? Let alone yelling at them, potentially spewing your spit into their faces.”
My hand froze on the door. He had a point. Dang it. “I hardly spew,” I protested weakly.
I imagined trying to summon the energy to conduct them when I could barely hold my head up. Or walking around the festival, talking with all the residents, shaking hands, spreading whatever this was to the innocent bystanders of Green Valley.
“I had so much I wanted to get done today.” I let my head fall back against the headrest. I wanted to summon the familiar anger that usually motivated me to get moving, but I couldn’t even muster that much.
I closed my eyes and noticed how they burned. In fact, now that I started to acknowledge his point, I allowed the rest of what I’d been blocking in. I felt like absolute garbage.
“They’re going to be so disappointed. They’ve been working so hard.” I curled up into a ball in his passenger seat.
He reached across me to tug a handle, and the seat leaned all the way back. He was so warm and cozy that I wanted him to fold me up like origami and stick me in his pocket. A second later, he was lifting my head and tucking a sweatshirt under me. I shivered. “See. Can’t be a fever. I’m f-f-freezing.” I wrapped my arms tight around myself.
He swore under his breath. “Is there anybody else who can help get them set up?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Don’t think so.” I shivered again. I heard the sounds of him moving around but was having a harder time focusing. This was getting worse rapidly. At what point would I need to be quarantined?
This was the end for me.
“You’re not dying. Just really sick.” He tucked a blanket around me, making sure no part of me was uncovered.
“Oh, that’s nice.” I sighed in relief. “Of course you have an emergency blanket in your car.”
“Everybody should. I won’t be judged by the woman who has more clothes in her car than food in her apartment.”
“Touché.” I yawned, jaw cracking.
“They’re self-sufficient. Maybe they’re fine on their own,” he said.
I shook my head. “They’re like little ducklings. They need their mama duck.”
He chuckled. “What about Devlin? He’s a conductor.”
I imagined the big grumpy man as a mother hen to a bunch of little ducklings.
“That’s true. In fact, he’ll be with the SOOK now,” I said.
“Shit.”
“It’s okay. Just go tell them I’m dying and it’s been an honor to teach them.”
“Not dying.” He sighed. I peeked an eye open to find him staring out the window. He tugged anxiously on his hair. Crowds were gathering and pouring into the entrance. “A lot of people came out for this.”
“People love fried food and questionably safe rides.” Both of those things sounded horrendous, and I regretted mentioning them. If I wasn’t so lost in my own wallowing, I would have felt bad for Leo. He’d only agreed to drive me, but now he’d be stuck going out into the crowds of the people he had been avoiding for weeks to deliver bad news to my students. “I’ll go tell them, and then I’ll come back.” I tried to sit up.
His strong arm braced me, preventing me from moving. “Nice try, Typhoid Mary. It’s fine. I’ll go tell them.”
At least if these were my final moments on earth, I had the feeling of his arms against me.
“You went from ‘I’m not sick’ to ‘dying’ really fast,” he said, a soft tug to his lips. “Just stay here.”
Gravity pulled my lids down. “Maybe I’ll close my eyes just to see what happens.”
“Good idea.” Leo made a sound of distress before taking a steadying breath. “Okay. Okay. I’ll be right back as fast as I can.”
I nodded.
“I’ll leave the keys, but lock the doors after me. I don’t think it’s cold enough that you’ll need the heat. Want me to leave the car running just in case?”
I shook my head. “I’ll start it if I need to.” Sleep was already pulling me under. I could take a few minutes. They would be okay.
“Be right back,” he said. A second later, the car rocked gently, and his door shut.
I had just enough energy to hit the lock on the door before I succumbed.
A few minutes later, I sat straight up. “I’m okay,” I said, realizing a car door shutting had woken me.
Leo winced. “Sorry. I was trying to be quiet. You didn’t even budge the other times I checked on you.”
“How did you get in?”
“Janice had her keys.”
I nodded, processing being conscious. “Were they devastated?” I scrubbed my eyes with my palms. The fever didn’t feel as bad, but it was that sort of temporary halting of symptoms that told me I wasn’t in the clear yet.
“It was fine,” Leo said. “Are you okay? Lie back down.” He gently pressed my shoulder, and I relaxed back against the seat. My eyelids felt sticky and hard to keep open.
I vaguely remembered someone shaking me awake and forcing me to swallow medicine with water. “Did you give me medicine?”
“Yes. You should really reevaluate how willingly you take drugs without asking any clarifying questions.”
“I live on the edge,” I murmured.
My head turned from side to side. We were still in the parking lot, but it was packed now. People coming and going. The festival was in full swing, lights bright and music playing. “Dark already,” I said, confused. I had just barely closed my eyes.
“Yeah. Sorry. It took me longer than I thought. But just relax. I’m going to take you to Janice’s now.”
“What? No, I can’t get her sick.”
“Don’t worry. She got the spare room ready.”
“I’m a burden,” I said and felt a mortifying quiver of my chin.
“Hardly. I don’t—Janice thinks you shouldn’t be alone. I’m willing to bet you don’t have medicine or any sort of sustenance at your house.”
“Is mustard sustenance?”
“No.”
“But you’ll get sick.”
“I toured in a van with four other dudes for years. I have the immune system of a street dog.”
“That’s a weird example. Are they known for having strong immune systems?” I asked.
“How about a kindergarten teacher?”
“Better than a high school band teacher, it seems.”
“Also, after yesterday”—he hesitated—“if I was going to get sick, I would know by now.”
“Ah, yes. When my face attacked yours.” I gasped. “You got me sick.” I tried to punch him, but my wrist just sort of flopped against his arm and fell into his thigh.
His muscles flexed under my hand before I pulled back.
“Nobody has been sick around me,” he said. “You’re the one constantly surrounded by germ-riddled youths.”
“Good album name,” I said, rather proud of myself for the joke, even in a time like this.
“Nice.”
I groaned. “I can’t be sick. There’s no time for this.”
“Funny how the body doesn’t care.”
It didn’t take long until the medicine reprieve faded away, and I didn’t have the energy or the will to fight the point anymore.
The thought of going back to my apartment, lacking all but condiments, to spend my final days held little appeal.
“Take me to my final resting place,” I said and closed my eyes.
“You’re not dying.”