Between the Stacks

Chapter 28

When I woke up, I had the vague, uneasy sense that the previous day had been a dream.

The accident. The cat-themed room. Wesley, in my bed.

Sometimes I had nightmares so real that I thought they actually happened. I would wake up, my heart pounding through my pajamas, and I would think about how I would adjust to my new life. In some nightmares, my parents would be dead after a horrible accident - in others, I had a math test I had forgotten about. I preferred the math test ones, to say the least.

Still, I hated those first few moments when the panic and the fear were real.

And then reality would set in: it wasn't real, I was fine, I didn't need to frantically study trigonometry. The worry would gradually bleed away. In a way, that moment would make up for the terror of the nightmare. The instant relief felt like removing a splinter.

But that morning, the splinter remained.

I let myself cry for a minute or two. The metal-on-metal shriek, the jolt as my seatbelt pushed me against my seat - I remembered them too clearly. In the moment I had held it together because I knew Wesley needed the support. Now, alone in my creepy room, I could let go.

Eventually my eyes started to burn from the tears. I dabbed my eyes on the sheets and worked up the willpower to slide out of bed. I figured the barely-slept-and-still-kind-of-sobby look wasn't great, so I decided to take a shower. My phone said it was seven in the morning; it had only been an hour since Wesley had left, but I'd slept soundly ever since the moment he closed the adjoining door between us. As riotous as my emotions were, my exhausted body won the battle of sleep.

Turning the light on in the bathroom revealed the horror show within. The image of a giant, fluffy, white kitten was printed on the shower curtain; porcelain figurines hovered precariously on a shelf; even the toilet paper was cat-themed, with tiny black-and-white paws.

I had to give credit to the bed-and-breakfast owners. They liked a vibe, and they ran with it.

I shucked off my dirty clothes and stepped into the shower. The temperature was blistering and the water pressure took off the top layer of my skin. It was perfect.

By the time I dried off with a towel that was strangely free from any feline decoration, I had devised my plan of attack. I didn't want to pay for a taxi to Toronto, and no one else I knew had a car, so I did the only thing I could think of: I called my parents.

"ARE YOU ALIVE?" Mom screamed through the phone when I told her the news. Even though the fact that I was calling should have answered her question, she apparently still needed more proof.

I gave her and Dad the address of the bed and breakfast, and asked them to come in about two hours. That would let Wesley sleep in, and we would still have plenty of time to make it to the conference.

As soon as I hung up, I wondered if I had made a mistake. Mom and Dad barely survived Alex's death - I don't think they could deal with losing me. I should have just paid the money for the cab.

But it was too late for that. My parents would probably already be putting gas into the station wagon and buying Timbits for the drive.

Then, I clued into the worst part: my parents would be meeting Wesley.

---

"You must be Wesley," Mom said as she enveloped him in a hug that was a bit aggressive for a first-time meeting. "Emma talks about you all the time."

"All the time," Dad echoed. He performed a complicated male greeting gesture by shaking Wesley's hand and then slapping him on the back.

"How interesting," Wesley said, eyeing me skeptically.