Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
But the next dream doesn’t come.
I pick up another, and the same thing happens. A third book, and now my head feels thick, like the words are sticking to the inside of my skull.
I’ve been battling myself for a whole hour before I realize that sticky feeling inside my brain is actually a headache. Maybe it really is time to do something about these things.
“Mom?” I call as I open the door of my room and go to hers. It’s empty.
Downstairs too.
I grab a glass of cold water and two pain tablets and shuffle back up the stairs where I realize that, in addition to a bunch of texts from Mo and Amber, I have a message from Mom saying she’ll be working late over the next few days.
“Whole house to myself. Woo-hoo,” I say flatly, because I’m probably the lone teenager who would give anything for my parents to be home. I’d pick either of them over getting to throw a raging party or not do chores or sleep in till midday.
I go to bed early, but it’s a restless sleep.
Soon, I’m jerking awake, tripping over the side of the bed to reach my waste basket, and then again in my rush to the bathroom.
I throw up everything I’ve eaten into the toilet bowl, flush, then stay there on the floor of the bathroom.
The coolness of the tiles against my right temple is sweet relief.
Okay, so maybe this is more than a headache. It’s like every pain I’ve felt before in my life has condensed into one or two pulse points.
I try to reach for my phone, but I realize I left it in my bedroom.
My head feels like something detonated in there. It is a dull throbbing pain in the front of my head and behind my eyes that refuses to stop, no matter how much I plead with it to.
When I feel a little less nauseous, I rinse my mouth and shuffle back into my room. Just the slit of moonlight bleeding in over my bed feels aggressively bright.
I curl up on my side as I fall back into bed.
I can’t really sleep because my head hurts so much, but I’m also not fully conscious.
“Mom?” I croak out again, knowing what her text said but hoping that somehow she’s come back early or changed her mind. Some type of maternal sixth sense that brought her home to take care of me. But the only sound is the hammering in my brain.
And when I wake up, I know that hours have passed, but I have no sense of how many. I must be missing school.
There’s a pounding sound that gets louder and louder. Except—wait. For the first time, the noise is coming from outside me. The front door.
I groan, wanting the sound to stop.
It’s only the hope that maybe it’s my mom coming home that gets me up, blanket dragging behind me, shuffling to the front door.
I wince at the sunlight when it opens.
“Hey.”
It’s Marcus. At my front door. Of my house.
“I was just driving by. It’s kind of stupid, actually, but I…You okay, Cartwright? You don’t look so good.”
“It’s just a migraine.” My voice is a dry whisper, and my mouth feels like cotton wool.
Marcus frowns. “It doesn’t look like it’s just anything.” He sounds almost disapproving. And concerned. “Do you…do you need anything?”
I feel too gross to speak, so I nod. He reaches forward and gently brushes his thumb over my still-wet cheek.
I start crying for real.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he says softly. “Just tell me what you need, and I’ll do it.”
And so what happens is that Marcus Riddick leads me back up the stairs and into my room. My waste basket still smells like the nasty contents of my stomach. In fact, I’m pretty sure it still contains the nasty contents of my stomach, but Marcus acts like he doesn’t notice.
He disappears for minutes-long stretches, coming back with something new each time.
A cool washcloth for my head. A glass of water from the kitchen.
Somehow, he figures out when I took my last pain meds, and he gives me two new tablets.
Different than the first ones I took. “I think it’s fine,” he says, reading something off his phone as he holds them out to me.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s fine. It should actually help, taking them together. ”
Later, he opens my window and a touch of cold air comes in.
The acrid smell recedes.
I feel marginally more human.
Right around the moment the thought of food no longer revolts me, something smells like burnt toast. But it’s a bowl of noodles he sets down in my lap after he’s helped me sit up. “Something smells burnt,” I tell him.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says.
“You burned toast?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says again. “It’s the fever talking.”
“I don’t have a fever.”
There’s a featherlight grin on his face.
He takes my bowl away when I finish eating, and as I’m falling asleep I ask the question I’m afraid of: “You’re leaving?”
“Do you want me to?” he asks.
“No.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”
I know the minute I’m feeling better because a few things happen in quick succession. I remember that Marcus is here. I remember that he is not bad on the eyes, that he called me beautiful. I remember that he has seen my puke.
So I jump out of bed and race for my dresser. I’m hurriedly filling in my eyebrows when I hear him speak.
“Are you serious right now, Cartwright?” he asks from the doorway. “You’re dying and you’re putting on makeup?”
“I’m not dying,” I say, and my voice comes out hoarse. I clear my throat. “I’m not dying. I just look hideous.”
He sighs and sinks into the desk chair beside my bed while I hastily finish my brows. I meet his eyes in the mirror as I dab on some lip balm.
“You look good,” he says, almost under his breath, holding my gaze through the glass.
My face burns. “Please, you know you say that to all the girls,” I joke.
He breaks our eye contact. “What girls do you think there are?”
“Huh?”
“I don’t really pay attention either way, but what do…people…think?”
“That you’re a hot soccer player and you can have any girl you want?”
“See, this is what I mean when I say gossip, popularity, all of that shit doesn’t matter. There’s no truth to it. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I definitely haven’t been celibate since I moved to Sterlingwood…”
I make a face. “Marcus, there’s really no need to tell me how much sex you’re having.”
He rubs his jaw. “I just mean that there’s not, like, a string of girls.”
Why are you telling me this? I want to ask.
Instead, I infer, a little bit breathless, “There’s a girl?”
He stares at me. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ve been trying to get over someone all year.”
For a reason I don’t understand, my chest gives one quick, slight ache.
No, I do understand. It’s because it’s sweet, so unlike everything that comes to mind when I think of Marcus Riddick.
How has he turned out to be so different than who I always thought he was?
I wonder what kind of girl gets to be the recipient of Marcus’s attention, his affection.
I wonder why my lungs sting from something that can’t be jealousy but feels a little like it.
“Is she from your old school?”
“Hmm? She’s…yeah, before.”
“Oh,” I say. Give him a smile. “She’s lucky.”
Marcus surprises me by standing then. “I should get going. Before your mom gets home.” Somehow it is evening again. I spent nearly twenty-four hours in bed.
“How did you…why did you come over? You said you were driving past?”
The strangest thing. Marcus Riddick blushes. “We didn’t dream all weekend,” he says. “Not that we have to dream every day, but then you weren’t at school and I…I started to wonder if something had happened.”
“Well, thank you,” I say. “I feel so much better. I always…I miss my dad a lot when I don’t feel well.
He always took care of me when I was sick.
I got my appendix taken out a few years ago and it literally felt like a weeklong pizza party.
My mom doesn’t…She’s not…Well, as you can tell, she’s the mayor.
” It’s such a stupid comment, but somehow, I think he might understand.
“Yeah,” he says.
He pushes his hand through his hair. “It’s not a problem,” he says, taking a step back and sounding weirdly formal. “Let me know if you need anything else. And you should really see your doctor.”
“I will this week,” I say.
He nods, turns around, and shuts the door of my room. A few seconds later, I hear the front door close. When I peek out the window, I see his truck backing out of our driveway.
I exhale and sit on my bed.
Marcus Riddick was just in my house. For hours. Making me noodles and cleaning up my pukey trash can.
What. The. Fuck.
When the world becomes weirdly wobbly, I figure it’s just more of the same topsy-turvy nonsense of the last day. But then my dresser disappears, my box of books from Dad.
Everything starts to vanish.
And that’s how I know I’m entering another dream.