The Significance of Orange Juice

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

                I groaned and turned over in my bed, trying to work out why it felt like someone had used my head as a football. There was an unintelligible groan from the other side of the room and I shot up to see who was in my room.

                As I moved, the room swayed sickeningly and my stomach twisted. Okay, so moving is a bad idea, I thought to myself as I fell back into my mattress. Taking a deep breath, I sat up again, though I made sure to move slower this time. What the hell had happened last night?

                I squinted against the glaring light and cursed myself for not shutting the curtains last night. I must have been really sick to fall asleep with the curtains open; ever since I was little I’ve needed total darkness to sleep in.

                I blinked against the blinding sunlight and hauled myself out of the bed to shut the curtains. I wrapped my fist around a handful of red cloth and jerked it so that the sun was blocked from the room. I stumbled back to the bed, but before I could get back under the covers to sleep my headache off, I paused and turned around to face the window again. I could have sworn that my curtains were green. In fact, this didn’t look at my room at all. I glanced around the room and took a shaky breath. In the place of my drawings and sketches, there were pictures of scantily clad women posing provocatively on the hoods of expensive cars. Where my clothes were dumped in an organised mess on the floor, I could clearly see the dark brown carpet apart from a pile of cloths in the corner. And the quilt on the bed was a light brown instead of my age old Snoopy cover.

                I perched myself on the edge of the strange bed. I’d woken up in a room I didn’t recognise with a pounding headache and a churning stomach. My chest heaved and the room spun slowly around me as I struggled to contain my breathing. It was starting to look like I was going to have a panic attack, when an unidentifiable lump on the floor groaned.

                I screamed and jumped in surprise. Unfortunately, my already lacking balance was non-existent what with my headache, so instead of landing on the bed like a normal person, I fell to the floor and lay there with my cheek pressed against the carpet.

                “Izz?”

                I sat up and looked around slowly to prevent the sudden rush of nausea. The mass of clothes stirred and sat up. “Livvy?” I questioned cautiously.

                With a grumble, Olivia stood up from under the clothes and brushed a stray sock off her head. Relief flooded through me and I slumped against the bed. Thank god.

                I opened my eyes as realisation struck me. “Liv, I don’t want to alarm you, but I think we’ve been kidnapped by ninjas.” I said in a hushed whisper.

Olivia let out a hoarse laugh and I frowned at her. This was a serious situation! We were in a strange room – having possibly been drugged – and she was laughing?

Olivia clutched her head. “Please don’t make me laugh. I think my head might fall off.”

I pouted. It had been a good theory and she’d just shot it down. “Where are we then?”

                The million pound question, though it had been a close call between that and “what happened last night?” Liv peered around the room, rubbing her forehead with one hand.

                “I think that we’re in my brother’s room.”

                What on earth? Why the hell were we in Harry’s room when Olivia’s room was just down the hallway? And why couldn’t I remember anything? I closed my eyes and tried to walk through my day. I’d gotten up, had breakfast with my parents, got my results and gone home to draw a picture. Then Olivia arrived and…