Gifted

Chapter Thirty-two

Mina

I wake up with a blinding headache. My head is splitting open, cracking open beneath my fingers. I hear running footsteps and realize I've been screaming. Frantic hands pull mine away from my head and try to soothe me. Lauren and Diana. I can hear their own coughs, their labored breathing.

Something is extremely wrong.

My stomach heaves and I roll right over and throw up over the edge of the bed. Lauren's quick hands place a trashcan beneath my head just in time. Choking, I force myself to sit up, and moan as the world tilts dizzingly around me. I feel Diana's cool hands on my cheeks, my forehead, checking my temperature. I hear her murmuring quietly to Lauren, pausing to cough hard twice.

"Mom? Dad?" I hear Jake say from the doorway. His voice sounds weak.

"Son, how are you feeling?" Lauren says, his voice fairly steady now. "Are you--?" His voice is lost in a sudden fit of coughing.

"M'ok," Jake says, his breathing rather heavy. He isn't ok. None of us are.

Somehow, I stagger to my feet and stand there in my underclothes, swaying unsteadily. This is all totally new to me. I've never been sick before, not even a cold. Certainly not this dizzy, nauseous, head-splitting state I'm in now. I lurch for the bathroom as my stomach rebels again and heave into the toilet until nothing comes up, then collapse on the cold tile, pressing my burning cheek to its lovely coolness. Diana comes in and flushes the toilet for me. She lifts me into her arms and carries me back to my bed, laying me down on it like I'm four years old again, not seventeen. So our physical strength doesn't seem to be affected.

The muscle-cramps begin around noon. Terrible, burning cramps that make me grit my teeth and groan against the pain. Sweat beads on my forehead and trickles down my face as I twist and turn on the bed, trying to get comfortable. Hot bands of pressure are wrapping my limbs, my torso, my head, pressing in and in, until I think I'll pop like a balloon. Muscle-cramps don't do this, do they?

Diana and Lauren flit back and forth between our rooms. I hear moans coming from Jake's room as well. Liza lies on her bed, her hands like claws on the bedspread, fingers digging into the mattress. Her forehead is drenched in sweat, eyes scrunched up, and a steady stream of cuss words issuing from her mouth.

Is our Last Birthday coming early? I've heard what it's like. It feels like you're being burned alive. It has something to do with metabolic reactions and other cellular processes, but no one knows anything more than that, or why it hurts so much.

The cramps last for six hours, then something worse happens. Hot tongues begin to spread out from the center of my chest, like a terrible case of heartburn. Hotter and tighter the pain grows, until I'm almost screaming again. The tongues of fire spread out from my chest in waves, each more painful than the last. Liza breaks down in tears somewhere around the thirty-minute mark of this new torture. I hear Jake cursing from his room, so it can't be a picnic for him either.

The process seems to be affecting Diana and Lauren as well, though they bear it better than we do. Their faces have become grim masks of pain, and you can see each shudder as it works through their bodies. Sweat beads their faces and their faces grow paler by the minute. Diana even says a word under her breath that I've never heard her use before.

Sometime later, maybe hours later, the scorching pain begins to fade, the cramps fade away. Finally it stops entirely. It is now almost midnight. I have been bedridden for the entire day. For a while, all I can do is listen to Liza's quiet sobs, my own relieved breathing.

What has happened? What has this done to us? I stretch out a hand and will it into the shape of a bear's paw. Well, that hasn't changed, fortunately. As much as I gripe about my weird ability, I would really miss it.