18. Chapter 18
eighteen
“I’m not sure which is more unbelievable,” Annie mused that night, swirling her straw through her Crash Bandicoot, “the whole donkey fursona thing or Lex waking up before six A.M. of her own free will and choice.”
“Hey!” Lex protested, abandoning her D.K. Ol’ Fashioned to glare at Annie. “I get up at odd hours all the time.”
“Not because you choose to,” Hattie chimed in.
Lex scowled for a second more before her expression relaxed. “Okay, fine. Not by my own choice. But that just goes to show you how much I love you, right?” She batted her eyelashes in my direction.
I blushed at the attention. “With how grumpy you were, loved wasn’t the strongest emotion I felt at the time.”
A chorus of snickers rose up from the other three women.
“Okay, well,” Lex argued, raising her voice to be heard over the table of college students nearby, “how would you feel if you found out your sister had fallen and busted her ankle yet told her neighbor—your coworker —before you?”
Kris sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. “She’s got ya there, Dekker.”
“Add in her infamous sunny demeanor in the mornings, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster,” Hattie added.
“Not helpful,” I said to Kris at the exact same time Lex said it to Hattie.
Annie chuckled into her drink. “I love a good sibling squabble, so long as it isn’t mine.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hattie waved her off. “Has he kissed you yet?”
I recoiled, taken aback by the random question. Though, in retrospect, this was Hattie. I shouldn’t have been surprised.
“What?” I squeaked. “No, of course not. Why would he?”
“You gave him some of my lasagna, didn’t you?”
“Well yeah, but—”
“Whoa, Hattie made you lasagna?” Lex butted in, her jaw hanging open. “I’d take a fur suit delivery any day if lasagna’s on the line.”
Annie and Kris, who hadn’t yet had the transcendental experience of tasting Hattie’s cooking, eyed Lex like she’d suggested we go outside and throw spoons at pigeons.
“You’re kidding, right?” Kris asked, her black bob swaying the two yellow bows pinned in it as she looked to us for sanity support. “She’s kidding, right?”
Lex shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the strangest dress-up I’ve done.”
She and Hattie exchanged knowing glances so quickly I nearly thought I’d imagined it. A digital melody sang out from one of the arcade games, indicating someone had just made it on the scoreboard. A ruckus by the Pac-Man machine all but confirmed that.
Annie stared at Lex for a few seconds, her brows raised dubiously before turning to me. “How’s your ankle feeling now? You need some ibuprofen?”
Despite my frayed nerves from my confrontation with Gale earlier today, I laughed.
Annie had anything and everything in her purse, it seemed, but especially over-the-counter medicines.
If the apocalypse were to happen tomorrow, I’d want Annie on my team.
The girl was prepared . “It’s a little sore, but I can walk normally now. ”
She nodded, placated for the time being.
Kris, apparently, was not . “Why didn’t you tell us when it happened, Deks? You know we all would’ve been happy to help you with work.”
I focused intently on my Nacho Mama Fries so I wouldn’t have to make eye contact.
I wasn’t sure why I felt guilty, since I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong.
Kind of like the moving discussion a few weeks ago.
“It was my problem to deal with, I guess, and it was really late notice. I didn’t want to bother you with it. ”
Annie sighed, her next words significant enough for her to abandon her straw’s trek around her glass. “Dekker, I’m only going to say this once, so listen up.”
I gulped. There were some people you never messed with if you knew what was good for you: nurses, morticians, and librarians.
Satisfied I was paying attention, Annie continued over the buzz of the restaurant. “When Lex needed help with getting us fitted for our bridesmaid dresses, who stepped up?”
I shifted in my seat, the vinyl cushion squeaking under my jeans. “I did?”
“Yes. You did. You had an insanely busy day, yet you carved out time and coordinated with us to make sure we all made it.” Annie sat back and crossed her arms, the black leather of her jacket shiny in the light.
“And when Hattie needed help picking up a donkey suit for some forsaken reason, who helped her?”
“I did.” My voice was barely more than a whisper. “But you all would’ve done the same if you could’ve.”
Annie clapped her hands together, the explosive whap! making me and Kris jump and drawing the attention of most of the college coeds. “That’s exactly my point! Dude, if you truly believe we would do the same, why won’t you trust us enough to ask and give us the chance to?”
“We’d love to show you how much we care about you more often, but it’s hard to when you don’t let us help you,” Kris joined in now. “We can’t be there for you if you never let us know where you are.”
I frowned. They felt like I was depriving them of chances to show their love?
Was I?
“I got myself into this mess, though,” I argued, my voice weak even to my own ears. “It wasn’t your fault I hurt myself, so why bother you with my own natural consequences?”
“Well, depending on how you look at it, it could be my fault you got hurt,” Hattie pointed out. She pushed her gold spectacles higher up her nose. “You wouldn’t have been on those stairs in the first place if I hadn’t asked for your help.”
“Dekker” —Lex set her elbows on the table and leaned in to be heard better over the other patrons from her seat at the end of our table— “do you really think that you asking for help or advice or who-knows-what-else is a bother to us?”
I only shrugged in reply.
Kris’ eyebrows pulled together. Her lips formed a pout that contrasted sharply with her bright yellow dress and hairbows. “It kind of hurts that you would think that about us. We’re not that horrible.”
“No, that’s not it,” I rushed to assure her. “It’s just that—”
I cut off as the weight of her words sank in. It kind of hurts that you would think that about us. That wasn’t what I thought at all.
Right?
Something shifted in my head, rotating like a kaleidoscope until a myriad of colors burst into life and cast everything in a new light. Something finally clicked .
By being so convinced I annoyed them, I’d inadvertently cast them as the villains.
The cruel townspeople ready to throw the beggar out.
They’d never done anything to make me doubt their friendship, yet my own insecurities had projected my fears onto them until I believed it was reality.
Irrefutable truth. No benefit of the doubt.
Just judge, jury, and executioner toward people I loved.
I’d been so afraid of being left behind that I’d pushed them away before they could get the chance to leave me. Anything to make it hurt less when they finally came to their senses. But if I never let them in enough to care, what reason would they have to stay?
“You’re right,” I finally admitted. For the second time today, tears pressed tiny needles into the back of my eyes. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.”
Kris smiled softly and rested her hand on mine. “We know you didn’t. Just… you don’t have to go through things alone, you know.”
I snorted, the memories of Max carrying me and helping me in the bakery coming to mind. “I’m learning that. The hard way, evidently.”
“The way we all tend to learn things,” Hattie added with a smirk.
“I’ll toast to that,” Lex agreed. She tapped her glass against Hattie’s, which set off a round of cheers among the whole group.
The rest of girls’ night passed in a happy blur of food and laughter. I soaked it in, content to observe in the background until something Kris mentioned on our way out of the restaurant caught my attention.
“Wait, what did you say about your sister?” I prodded, positive I’d misheard her.
“Oh” —Kris held the door for a couple entering Ready Player Two— “she just got diagnosed with ADHD.”
So I had heard correctly. But that still couldn’t be right.
I’d met Kris’ sister at Kris’ birthday party.
We’d hit it off pretty well, actually, especially when talking about The Great British Bake-Off.
Not once during the night had she ever seemed like the picture of hyperactivity that came to mind when ADHD was mentioned.
My disbelief must have shown on my face, since Kris laughed. “I know, I was surprised, too. But apparently it looks super different in adult women than young boys, and since young boys have been the main research demographic for basically ever, most people are just as clueless as I was.”
I pulled my jacket tighter against the wind as we made our way down the sidewalk. Hattie and Lex chatted between themselves further ahead of us, with Annie hovering between the two pairs while Kris and I brought up the rear.
“How did she know she had it, then?” I asked.
“She didn’t, at first.” Kris wrinkled her nose at an obscenely loud hotrod that zoomed past. “It wasn’t until she went to the doctor for memory problems that she finally figured out what was going on.
Now she says a lot about her life suddenly makes sense.
And since starting her meds, she says it’s like this thick fog in her brain is finally gone. ”
My stride faltered, my voice scarcely squeaking past my throat at the eerily spot-on description of my own thoughts. “Brain fog?”
“Oh yeah. Apparently her head constantly felt like a radio with ten different stations playing at the same time. Constantly. Trying to think was like grabbing at fog most of the time. And she just assumed that was what everyone experienced.”
“Isn’t it?” This time I came to a complete stop. That was exactly what my brain felt like. Some days were worse than others, but the constant noise never changed. Never. “Isn’t that what everyone feels like?”
Kris slowed and cast me a dubious look. Like the answer was obvious. “No?”
I blinked. Did some people not think that way?
Really? They just had one train of thought at all times?
No spaghetti bowl of train tracks crisscrossing at all times—five of the trains bellowing, three behind schedule, and one flying completely off the rails?
The very concept seemed utterly bizarre. Bizarre and… peaceful.
“What about her life suddenly makes sense?” I asked, reluctantly resuming my pace. “What else made her realize she had ADHD?”
“Let’s see.” Kris dug her keys out of her purse.
“She mentioned how she’d kind of freeze when she needed to be doing something she didn’t enjoy.
Not like she just chose not to do it because she didn’t want to, but she physically couldn’t make herself do it.
Like she hit an invisible wall whenever she tried, unless there was a deadline staring her in the face. ”
I swallowed hard as the managerial aspects of owning my bakery came to mind.
Her sister’s experience felt hauntingly familiar.
I didn’t know how long I’d put off filing taxes, trying to stay on top of and create a budget—even just putting the schedule together for the coming week—until the stress of the imminent deadline finally spurred me into action, but it must’ve been hours and hours.
It wasn’t that I simply didn’t want to do those tasks.
I couldn’t until the deadline breathing down my neck overrode whatever had been stopping me.
And it had been miserable .
“She also takes rejection harder than most people, like you do.” Kris’ eyes widened. “Not saying that that automatically means you have ADHD or anything. Lots of people have rejection sensitivity.”
But what were the odds that they had it and the brain fog and the paralysis, but didn’t have ADHD?
I nodded, pretending I wasn’t three feet underwater with these developments.
My brain was pure static, electricity arcing from synapse to synapse yet producing nothing coherent.
There could be tons of explanations for why I struggled with the exact same things Kris’ sister did, right?
And yet, if it happened to be the same thing, then that meant it had a name.
And with a name came a game plan. Understanding .
The knowledge that maybe I was a zebra instead of a weird horse, trying and failing to thrive in a world I wasn’t made for. With methods I wasn’t made for.
“And she’s all better now?” My voice sounded a mile away, my mouth possessed as it moved of its own accord.
We came to a stop beside Kris’ minivan. Lex waited by my car, bidding goodbye to Hattie, and Annie had already made it to her sedan.
Kris unlocked her van and shrugged. “Yes and no. The medicine helps and everything, but it’s not like she’s magically cured.
But now that she knows what she has, she’s learning ways to cope with it.
” A fond smile spread across her face. “Like keeping her fruits and veggies in the fridge door so she can’t forget about them in their drawers. ”
My jaw dropped. Why hadn’t I thought of that? The amount of slimy lettuce alone I’d save that way could feed a whole army of rabbits. And that’s not even taking the shriveled carrots and moldy fruit into account.
Kris fixed me with a curious look, her head angling to the side. “Do you want me to give you her number? She could explain all of this way better than I can.”
“Oh, no, that’s fine.” I cast a quick glance around the otherwise deserted parking lot. “I was just curious.”
And now I had a lot of googling to do.