Growing Up and Other Tall Tales

Chapter 26

Maybe I should have realized sooner that I am slipping. Maybe it was obvious, if I'd cared to look or stopped to think a little more about myself. But I was so focused on getting this right.

Sleep fell to the wayside, along with eating something other than cereal and moving from my desk. In retrospect, my toils were almost manic bordering on something even worse, futility.

All I knew was that I was storming into the café and waving my reaping in front of Aiden who is just outside on his phone. I didn't quite place the look on his face when all I could think about was getting them to him.

"Aiden! Aiden, I actually did all of it!"

I crash into him and am met with wide blue eyes that somehow reflected a mixture of quiet fear and concern back at him. Why would he be worried? I did all of it.

"Lyra?" It was hesitant, careful something that didn't quite fit Aiden, and I had no idea why he would look so taken aback. Didn't he understand that everything was okay now? That I might have a chance at not being an absolute idiot.

"The paper!" I bleat on happily. The world was tilting slightly in front of me and blurring, lines bleeding around the edges, and I couldn't tell what was happening except that I had something to give Aiden, something to prove to myself. "I have — I have..."

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I take her to Mother's.

I mean not before having a minor aneurism when she collapsed onto me, her books falling onto the ground with a dull thud. Zeke sees us from inside the shop and tells me carefully that it happens to her from time to time. She hates the hospital so she sleeps off the weariness when it becomes too much.

That's not right, I think faintly

No one even blinks differently in our direction and I should be concerned by how the taxi driver doesn't even stop to ask why a guy in a suit has an unconscious teenage girl sprawled on his lap. I take her to Mother's because it's closer than her apartment and I am not about to pat her down for her key.

And Mother is considerably and understandably concerned when I show up on her doorstep carrying her.

"Look, she means no harm." I say with a little shrug and still eyeing her dubiously Mother lets us both in

She has always been wary of strangers in her house. She never let any of us bring over friends from school or work. A home is only for family, she'd say, and we need not sully it with strangers. Ironic, we'd say.

I brush Lyra's hair out of her face after I lay her down on Mother's bed.

"What's her name?" she asks, her own black hair collapsing from her bun as she tucks in the blankets around her

"Lyra." I say quietly. "Lyra Donovan."

Fingers still at the edges of the bed spread before with a small chuckle she carries on, "Special?"

I blink, looking up at her, confusedly. "She's a friend."

"I see." She says, distractedly and airily. I frowned at how unconvinced she sounds and am about to open my mouth to argue when—

"She looks a little tired."

I look down at Lyra, the dampened bags under her eyes and the uncombed hair. After the car accident, she has never found it harder to keep up with her math in school. More often than not, she forgets what I do for a living when she calls me in the middle of a meeting to ask about radian conversions.

"And starved and sleep deprived." I say and press the back of my palm against her forehead. "A little warm too."

"I'll—I'll just grab something to cool her down. Maybe something for her to eat." She wipes invisible dust off her dress and stands up from where she was sitting from the bed, next to Lyra. She could never resist fixing a broken, young thing.

I nod gratefully and she rounds the bed to kiss me swiftly on the temple before hurriedly leaving the room.