Sophie senses my urgency and trots briskly back to Azalea Cove. There’s no sign of Mike. He’s on his way to the restaurant and has money to make.
Mom is pulling a lentil casserole out of the oven when we get home. “Just in time,” she says. “How is Sophie doing?”
“Much better. She enjoyed our walk.” I’m glad Mom decided to cook tonight. It’s been a while since she made us a home-cooked meal. I was worried she’d want to go out again. Possibly for Italian.
I hang Sophie’s leash up and head to the bathroom to wash my hands for dinner. My phone vibrates. I pull it out of my pocket and set it on my dresser, the screen facing down. If it’s Alex, I don’t want to know. If it’s not Alex, I don’t want to know that either.
Mom is sitting at the table, twisting a wine glass by its stem. She has been drinking an awful lot of wine lately. Not that I catch her all the time, but I’ve seen far too many empty bottles in the recycling bin since Craig was arrested.
“How was your day?” she asks me.
“Fine. How was yours?” She’s already fixed my plate: a sweet potato and yellow lentil casserole with warm flat bread on the side. It smells spicy.
“Good. Tell me if you like this meal. It’s an Ethiopian recipe I found online.”
“It’s yummy,” I say, trying a bite.
Mom stares at the curtains. She’s not touching her food. “Don’t you like it?” I ask, between shoveling spoonfuls into my mouth.
She sighs. “I’ve been thinking how much sadness there is in this house. Maybe we should move.”
My spoon falls from my hand with a heavy clang. “Why? There’s sadness everywhere, Mom. Sad things happen to us.”
She smiles. “It does seem like we’re cursed, doesn’t it? First your dad, then Iris. And now the problems with Craig. Not to mention your seizures.”
“My seizures aren’t a curse. They’re just something I live with. Like my black hair.”
Mom’s smile never breaks, but it grows brittle. “But you shouldn’t have to live with them, dear. You deserve to be happy.”
I want to growl but settle for pushing my plate away. She can’t just wish away my seizures. She’s always seen them as something that reflects on her personal failure as a mother. That obviously I won’t ever be happy because I have epilepsy.
“And I deserve to be happy,” Mom continues, draining her wine glass. “I think a new start in a new place would make me happy. My grandmother always used to say you should follow your bliss.”
Mom’s grandmother was from Greece, and she also used to say, “I will drink your blood!” when she thought someone had wronged her. She was a little crazy. Whether my mom and I deserve happiness or not, I don’t think running away is going to help us find it.
Besides, moving would be like abandoning Iris’s memory. This is where we grew up. There won’t be any memories of her at a new house.
Maybe that’s what Mom wants, though. She doesn’t want to be haunted by images of Iris’s abuse at Craig’s hands. But leaving the house behind would just feel like pretending it didn’t happen. And we have plenty of good memories that should cancel out the bad ones.
I wonder if you can exorcise a house of bad memories. But keep the good ones. We hardly ever use this dining room, usually eating in the kitchen or on the go. But we celebrate birthdays and entertain guests at this table. Mom always had two cakes for me and Iris: chocolate for Iris, carrot cake with cream cheese frosting for me.
This year I think I will want red velvet. But I still want to celebrate here. So I can still share my birthday with Iris. In our home.
Mom sighs. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t want to move or because her wine glass is empty.
“I’m not talking about moving out of the school district. Just a new neighborhood. You’ll still be able to graduate with your friends.”
“It’s not that,” I say. “Iris lived here.”
Mom looks at me, and for a split second I see pain in her eyes. And then the icy glare is back. She looks so much like Iris I would laugh if I didn’t hurt so much for her. “But she doesn’t live here now,” she says softly. “And since she never will again, why should we bury ourselves in this house? We need to move on. We need to move.”
I shake my head. I can’t believe Mom is serious about this. “All the time and effort you’ve put into our house. Your garden is your pride and joy.”
“I can always grow a new garden.” She shrugs as she finally gets up from the table. She takes her plate and mine and stacks them on top of one another, then picks up her empty glass. “I suppose I can wait until you leave for college in a few years. But I can’t stay in this house much longer, Andria. The memories hurt too much.”
CHAPTER 23
Two Days
I am superstitious this morning as I get dressed. Two days until my doctor’s appointment, where she will sign the paper that allows me to take my driver’s test. Two days left for something terrible to happen. I wear my lucky striped Wicked Witch of the West socks with my red Chuck Taylor’s. I remember to take my medicine. I remember not to drink any coffee, even though I’ve been up all night worrying about Alex. The sleep I did get was ruined with nightmares about Iris.
I take the bus to school, leaving Mom asleep in her bed so I don’t have to argue with her about moving again. I meet Natalie at the bus stop closest to Jittery Joe’s. She offers me a sip from her cup. There is cinnamon-scented steam escaping out the top. Mmm. “No, thank you,” I say, smiling wistfully.
“So, what time is your appointment?” she asks me as the bus pulls up.
“Nine. I’ll probably check into algebra afterward.”
“You’ll get to sleep late,” she says. “Lucky. You should talk your mom into just taking you straight to the DMV after the doctor gives you the paperwork. You could have your license before the weekend!”
She’s jinxing me, I just know it. I hope she doesn’t notice my shudder.
“And then we have to decide what we’re doing this weekend. Don’t worry about Trista. She knows you’d like to do something closer to home than Six Flags. So what about midnight miniature golf?”
I smile. Athens has an indoor glow-in-the-dark course, with late-night hours. “That sounds like fun.”
“Yay!” Natalie grins, happy to see me excited about something for once. “Should we invite the boys?” She nods toward Alex’s truck as it passes us by.
“No,” I say, too quickly for it to sound polite.
Natalie’s grin slips. “Oh, I thought . . . I was hoping . . .”
That we’d all be matched up with the band members, just like Pink Ladies and the T-Birds? I shrug. “No.”
She doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride to school. She stares out the window at the busy morning traffic, and her coffee grows cold.
And now I feel terrible.
As we descend the steps onto our campus, I finally relent. Natalie is a romantic. She’s hoping Caleb will turn out not to be such a jerk after all, and that Alex and I can save each other from whatever demons she imagines we suffer from. And Trista and Hank will end up being the next Beyoncé and Jay Z.
“Okay,” I tell her. “If you think the boys won’t mind celebrating my freakish achievement.”
She pushes me fondly. “You are a freak. You worry about the weirdest things.”
Trista and Hank are busy trying to occupy the same space on a bench in the courtyard. Even the teacher on morning duty out here ignores them. They don’t bother to pull apart as we approach.
“Who wants to go to Moonlight Madness this Saturday?” Natalie asks.
Caleb shrugs. I want to stab him in the neck.
Trista withdraws her tongue from Hank’s mouth. “Is it time to celebrate?” she asks. “Finally? Hell yes, girl!”
“Hell yes!” Hank echoes. “Wait, what are we celebrating?”
“Andria is getting her license!”
And my stomach folds in on itself, like a tiny black ho
le. She is jinxing me, ruining everything. Something terrible is going to happen. Just like last time. Suddenly I feel cold and hot at the same time.
“Are you all right?” Alex asks, as he appears within my narrowing field of vision. He puts his hands on my arms. “You’ve just gone white as a ghost.”
Gravity swallows me, and I am falling, falling, even though strong arms are holding me. And I can’t escape this feeling that everything is ruined.
“Andria. Look at me and breathe.”
Blue eyes. I focus on the eyes that hold my gaze, and I try to think about breathing. Why is it so hard?
“Andria!” Alex’s fingers dig into my arms.
“Is she having a seizure?” I hear Trista ask.
No. Nonononono. God, no.
“That’s right. Breathe with me.” His blue eyes float in front of me. Beautiful blue. “Breathe.”
His voice is low and steady, calming me. I feel my chest rise and my lungs fill with air.
Finally. I realize my heart has been thumping wildly this whole time, because now it’s beginning to slow back to normal. My breathing is hard and fast too, but I don’t want it to slow down. I can’t slow it down. I want to keep the oxygen flooding my lungs. I feel desperate. Starving for air.
Alex’s hands are cupping my face now. He stares at me with those angel eyes, and I think oh, he’s going to kiss me. “Sweetheart, you have to breathe with me. You can do this.”
Why won’t he kiss me?
“You’re going to be fine. Breathe with me. Slower.”
But when I try to breathe slower, my chest trembles and I get frightened all over again.
Hypoxia is what caused me to have seizures when I was born. The thought of having a seizure here in front of everyone, in front of Alex, sends me into a new spell of panic. I’m going to seize. I’ve jinxed myself, and now I’m going to have a seizure.
Alex’s hands are still holding my head, gently. “Come on. Breathe with me. Let me do the work for you. Inhale. Exhale. We’ll do it together.”
I pray to God and all the munchkins in Oz that I don’t seize. That my limbs don’t flail and my eyes don’t roll back in my head. That I don’t drool or pee on myself.
“Andria.” His blue eyes are all I see. And I try really, really hard to concentrate. And I take one slow breath. His eyes widen, and he smiles at me. “Good.”
I breathe with him again, and am suddenly aware of the cold sweat dripping down the back of my shirt. Ick. The rest of our immediate environment comes back into focus. The group of people that have probably been standing here all this time. The school nurse running over to us with Caleb.
“Bring her inside!” she says after taking one look at me.
Alex swings me up in his arms and follows the nurse back to her office. I feel gross now, and drained. Not as sleepy as I get when I do have a seizure, but I feel a similar sense of disorientation. I have to feel my way back into my body and the world around it.
He sets me down in the nurse’s office on her faux leather couch. I’ve lain on this couch many times.
She brings me a cold wet washcloth so I can clean my face. “I’ll take it from here, Alex,” she says. “You and your friends need to get to class.”
I want him to stay, but I also want him to leave. If I’m going to die of embarrassment, I’d rather do it without any more of an audience. “It’s okay, I’ll be fine,” I say, holding the washcloth over my eyes so I can’t look at his face.
“Okay.” I hear the door open and shut. And then silence.
I should have told him thank you.
“Andria, do you want to call your mother?” the nurse asks.
I pull the cloth down from my face. “No, I think I’ll be fine. It wasn’t a seizure.”
“Tell me what happened.”
I describe the feeling of not being able to get enough air, the narrowing of my vision, the racing of my heart.
The nurse frowns. “Sounds like a panic attack. Has it ever happened before?”
I shake my head. “I’m not sure what I was panicking about.”
“You’re under a lot of stress, honey. With your stepdad in the news. And the loss of your sister is still pretty fresh. Did you ever talk to your mom about seeing a therapist?”
“No.” I wonder how much the staff here discusses students. Has she been talking about me with Verla? “I’m fine, really. Maybe I just got a little overheated. Or dehydrated.”
She doesn’t say anything else. I hand her the washcloth, and she writes out a pass for me. I realize that all of my teachers must know that I’m the sexual predator’s stepdaughter and they must all assume that I’ve been abused. That I’m damaged physically and emotionally. That I’m probably on the edge of sanity.
Dear God, my friends must think the same thing too.
I feel sick again. Wobbly. Shaky.
Oh no. My vision darkens and my ears start ringing and there’s an awful metallic taste in my mouth.
Goddammit, no. I’ve jinxed myself after all. I tense up, knowing what’s about to happen next.
“I think I want to call my mother after all.”
At least I think that’s what I say. The words might not actually make it out of my mouth, for the next thing I know I’ve slid from the sofa to the floor, and my head hurts.
“Andria!” The nurse is shaking me gently. “Are you all right?”
She helps me back up to the sofa. I blink at her, my whole body sore. I’m frightened at what’s happening to me. I feel out of control. My body has betrayed me again. “I want to go home,” I whisper, hoping the nurse can’t hear my voice cracking.
“Your mother is coming,” she says. “She’s on her way now.”
She is going to be even more overprotective after this, and I will never get my driver’s license. I’m too tired to be angry anymore. Too tired to cry, even though I can feel the tears leaking out. Six months wasted.
Dammit.
“That was a pretty nasty seizure, Andria. It lasted almost five minutes. I know how you hate the Diastat, but I was worried I’d have to give it to you.”
“No, there should be an order in my chart for Ativan. Mom said she talked to the doctor about it.” I’d rather have a shot in my arm than a cold gel shoved up my butt.
“You’re right,” she says, flipping through the pages in the folder she’s holding. “Good thing we didn’t need it, though.”
I lie down, my head on the arm of the sofa, until my neck begins to hurt. And even then I don’t move.
I hate my life.
I must have drifted off because now my mom is here, signing me out and picking up my book bag. “Andria? Let’s go, honey.”
I sit up, stiff and wild-eyed. I don’t know how long I’ve been sleeping. I feel only a little bit light-headed as I stand up and follow her out of the nurse’s office. We leave school, and I have to blink for a moment in the bright afternoon sun.
“What time is it?” I ask.
“After two. I’ve called your doctor and he said we should go to the ER and have you looked at.”
“No, please. I feel better already.”
“Andria, you scared the hell out of that nurse. She says she’s never seen a seizure last that long.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.” Her voice rises, just enough, and I know I won’t get any further arguing.
I get into the car, defeated. I’m silent as she drives across town to Athens Memorial. She pulls into the ER entrance. “I can walk just fine,” I say. “Go ahead and find a parking space.”
She finally relents, and at least I don’t have to get into a wheelchair to be taken inside. She signs me in, and the triage nurse takes my vitals. He’s a nice older guy with a white moustache.
“Will you tell me what happened?” Mom asks, once we’re taken to an exam room.
I climb up on the exam table and sigh. “I think it might have been a panic attack.”
She frowns. “That’s what the nurse
said.”
“I couldn’t breathe.” My legs swing off the side of the table. I make circles with my left then with my right foot. “And then I could, but I couldn’t stop breathing fast. And then . . .” I hold up my hands. “And then I woke up on the floor and the nurse was threatening to give me Diastat.”
“What was happening before that? Did something upset you?”
I shrug and concentrate on the foot circles.
“Honey, talk to me.”
“We were talking about me getting my license. And going to Moonlight Madness to celebrate.”
“And that upset you?”
I shrug again. “I think I just got overheated. Or maybe I didn’t eat enough breakfast this morning.”
The doctor comes in before Mom can say anything else, and I have to explain my symptoms one more time. He looks in my eyes, my ears, my throat. He listens to my chest and presses against my belly.
“In the computer it says you have a history of seizures, Andria. What medicines are you currently taking?”
“Lamictal and Phenobarbital.”
He’s looking in the computer to confirm this. “Any recent dosage change?”
“Her last checkup,” Mom says. “Six months ago.”
“Let’s run a few tests and see if her medicine levels are still therapeutic. I’ll also check to see if she’s anemic. She looks a little pale.”
“We don’t eat a lot of red meat,” Mom says.
The doctor types something into his computer and leaves.
Within a few minutes, a nurse comes in to draw blood. I’ve gotten used to needles over the years, but I still turn my head when she sticks me. “Do I get ice cream after this?” I ask Mom, wincing only a little. The nurse does a good job.
Mom rolls her eyes. “No ice cream.”
I pull my phone out of my purse, and scroll through the numerous texts from Natalie and Trista. The text I’m looking for is not there. I put my phone back away.
But as we wait for the doctor to return with my lab results, I grow bored. I try lying back on the exam table, but it’s uncomfortable and there’s no pillow.
Mom has brought her tablet and is looking up healthy recipes on Pinterest. I pull my phone back out. Trista’s last text asks,