Page 39 of Left on Read

Hayes pulls the seatbelt across my chest. I chance opening my eyes all the way. I don’t want to miss this, no matter how bad it hurts.

“Thanks,” I whisper. We’re so close that my breath mingles with his. He smiles, and my stomach somersaults again.

Hayes fades away, slipping into the blackness spotting my vision. I hear him shut my door, then open his own. His seatbelt clicks, and the car revs to life. We sit in silence for long moments, and my seat starts to warm up. The heat feels heavenly on the back of my neck.

“Are you still nauseous?” he asks. I can’t see him now, but I probably could if I turned my head a little to the left. I don’t. The seat warmers are actually helping, and I don’t want to ruin it.

“A little,” I admit, even though my stomach is behaving as if I were still suspended in the air in that tin-can capsule. “Don’t worry though. I won’t throw up in your car.”

I won’t. I have remarkable control, even in what’s basically an emergency. I might throw up in the bushes outside my house, but I will not throw up in this ridiculously expensive car.

“I wasn’t worried about that. I just don’t want you to throw up at all.” He shifts into drive and slowly maneuvers out of the minefield of a parking lot.

“I probably won’t,” I mumble. “I rarely do. Most times I think I’d feel better if I actually threw up.” Gravel crunches under the tires, and I can both hear and feel when we get back to the pavement.

My eyes are closed again, but I can mentally define the path we’re taking. A left out of the fairgrounds, stay straight at the light past the school, take a right then another right. All the while, Hayes stays silent. He’s even turned off the stereo, so we’re just listening to the hum of the engine.

He takes the last left turn that should lead to my neighborhood, if I’ve been keeping up right. I pry one eye open just a bit. The left one, it’s not so bad. He parks in front of my house in the spot where my car usually goes.

Everyone else is home, and I suspect it will take about five seconds for Dad to realize there’s a strange car in the driveway and come out and investigate.

“Stay there,” Hayes says. He’s already jumping out of the driver’s side and walking around to mine. I open my other eye as he opens the door.

I unbuckle myself, which feels like a feat of strength, given my current level of hand-eye coordination. Not sure I’ll make it into the house without my depth perception … but when I step down, Hayes is there. He catches my arm, leading me by the elbow like he was before.

Just as I suspected, Dad is standing at the door by the time we get to the porch stairs. Time seems to pick up speed from there. I’ve reached the exhaustion stage, where my migraine has officially sucked all the life out of me. Dad calls for Mom, and they all three start talking over my head.

I slump down onto the couch as soon as I reach the living room. I’m so grateful this couch is exactly three steps from the door.

“Hold on, honey,” Mom whispers, brushing stray hair off my forehead. “I’ll get your medicine and your ice pack.”

“I think I need the cocktail.” I groan. Sometimes my migraine meds are enough. Other times, like this one, I need my migraine meds and nausea meds and pain meds. The whole cocktail.

Mom comes back. I swallow a handful of pills with a sip of tepid water. One ice pack goes behind my neck, the other weighted eye mask slips over my face. For one blissful second, there’s nothing but silence and heavy, cold darkness and a relief so strong italmost hurts. Then people are talking behind me, at the door. Mom and Dad and Hayes. I should probably be more concerned about that, but I just don’t have it in me right now.

Something settles over my limbs—the weight of exhaustion and all that relief. I blink once behind the eye mask. Then twice. Just trying to stay awake because Hayes is still here, and I’m on the living room couch and everything hurts, and I have homework so I can’t possibly fall asleep at 7:30 p.m. and I—

OfficialEndeavourHigh:Seniors: @PrincipalHinshaw i’m in your walls

My keys aren’t on the hook. They’re always on the hook because if I don’t put them on the hook, I lose them. I’m already rattled today because Mom had to wake me up for school, and she hasn’t had to do that since I was, like, ten. And I was on the couch and couldn’t really remember why.

Pretty sure I had a migraine, judging by the lingering nausea and exhaustion and the weighted ice pack that had slid down my face at some point during the night. But my memory issofuzzy. Side effect of the migraine meds. All I really remember is Mom giving me enough Benadryl to sedate a horse.

“What are you looking for?” Mom asks, sneaking up behind me as I crouch in the doorway where everyone leaves their shoes.

“My keys. They’re not on the hook.” My backpack was in a weird place too. Not where I always leave it on the hall tree.

“I hope you didn’t leave them at school.”

“I couldn’t have—” I start to mutter under my breath before I realize I’m talking to no one. She’s gone.

I couldn’t have left them at school because I couldn’t have driven home without them.

Oh. There’s one millisecond of peaceful blankness in my brain, and then it all comes rushing back in pieces. In still images and hasty jump cuts. I was at the fair. I didn’t have my meds, and I let it get so bad. Esha pulled me off the floor. Hayes drove me home.

But where the fuck are my keys?

I tear my backpack apart, looking and feeling around for my overfilled key fob. This is why I hate those meds. Why I don’t ever take them all at once. Why I should’ve turned around and walked out of the fair the second I felt that first stab of pain.