Boy Who Broke In My Window

V-Let's Pretend That Never Happened

My entire body is collapsing and my nerve system is in total shock that I can barely move.
I'm hallucinating and euphoric; not the positive kind though, but the one you get after snorting an excessive dose of cocaine.
The severe throbbing in my head is one I've never endured before; it's driving me bonkers.

My visions too are outright screwed; I thought I'd seen a nurse dangle off of a tree when it really is just a branch swaying to and fro.
Well, obviously I'm not going to be returning home anytime soon.
I can only hope that Jerquis finds me fast, before my crappy luck turns me into a psycho.

Out of the blue, a bizarre sensation invades my stomach. It's aching tremendously like a demon twisting my gut with a fork. Therefore, I'm acquiring more urge to throw up overtime.

Howard is carrying me bridal-style, and it seems as if he's struggling in doing so. He begins to lift me up to alter the position, slinging me onto his back, to do me the fireman-carry instead.

My butt hangs from his shoulder and my head is approximately six feet away from colliding onto the ground, too. Howard, please use your wits and muscles; I have zero faith in you but still don't let me down, literally. I pray to myself. That child is a vessel of bad luck.

Instead of nicely flipping me to rest on his shoulder, he slams me onto his shoulder which knocked the air out of me. I already have the impulse to puke and he certainly worsened it.

A couple moments after he brutally does that, I vomit.
Discharging obnoxious puke all over him; Howard-the man in barf. His reaction to my mouth spilling vomit all over his torso is to promptly drop me.
I splat face flat on the ground, as always. Oh please, this doesn't surprise me; such gentleman.

A crowd begins to gather around us after observing what'd just happened. Some hurry over towards me to try and help me back up; yet I never manage. My eyelids cram together, in which I have no control over, and at that moment in particular I can only realize hands of random feel, shapes and sizes on me.

That remains the last thing I remember from that breezy afternoon before I'd lost all of my consciousness.

---

I hanker for oxygen as I tried to pull myself out of the murky water. I couldn't breathe; it felt as if my lungs were slowly immersing in liquid. I was in utter panic; I never am able to swim, and thus my arms have become unbearably hyper, flipping and moving uncontrollably all over the place to try and resist drowning, as if they have brains of their own.
Moreover, my thighs essentially are monster chopsticks that are in process of bulging out of my hips. My hands are able to reach above the surface yet my head stayed submerged, unfortunately. Air is all that I can think of right now, I need to breathe.

---

That was until everything crumples apart and I realize that it had all been a harmless dream; I ain't drowning.

I gasp for air one final time, taking control over my body, sitting up before what I thought would be the apocalypse-of-Astrid's-life. I immediately suck air out of the first thing my hands are able to get hold of. I feel my lips collide with another but I don't care; air simply feels very placating.

I open my eyes to see a pair of marble blue eyes staring back at me, skin so pale and mouth wide agape. It's Howard staring at me, flabbergasted. I instantly hurdle backwards in shock. Did I just kiss him? Okay Astrid, relax and just deny the facts, you were only trying to steal his air; It's no big deal.

I notice that the excruciating throbbing within my head and numbness has vanished entirely without a trace and now I can move liberally, as usual. My skin retains all feeling again.
I rub my hands against my cold cheeks to warm them up. Everything seems normal, except for my surroundings. I'm nowhere in the carnival and I'm not back home either. Howard is present though, and he'd taken notice of my perplexed expression.

---

"Astrid? Are you already conscious?" He asks sitting beside me on the couch as I sit up straight. He brings his hand to lie over my forehead as if to record my temperature.
"Your fever has gone away." He grins.

"What's going on?" I ask him, scrunching my eyebrows together. He has no shirt on, yet stinks like an eccentric mixture of boy hormones and gasoline. On the other hand, I'm still in his red flannel smelling like masculine men's fragrance.

"You don't remember, do you?" He asks in which I shake my head 'nope'

"You fainted in the carnival. All the bystanders assumed I was your 'friend' so I impelled myself to take responsibility of you, just so I wouldn't seem like a total dipshit in public. I had rung a friend who apparently lives close by and brought you all the way to her place to let you rest, but most importantly because carrying you for half an hour had gelatinized my arms." He implies in exaggeration.

"Who's the friend?" I ask.
"Aubrey"
"Why didn't you try to wake me and ask for my consent?"
"I thought you were dead; though, I figured you weren't when you rose back up like a revenant." He explains with an awkward chuckle. I give him a poker face, which was my what-the-hell face.

"Damn girl. You just woke up and you look like you're ready to assassinate me. HOLY CRAP!" He exclaims pretending to be terrified.

I gag at his statement. "I suddenly wasn't dead, was I?" I ask sarcastically, raising an eyebrow.

"You're never dead to me" He says, gazing through the windows of my soul with his piercing blue eyes.

"Aw. You cheesy bastard." I smack his arm, peeved by the fact that I feel flattered by how endearing he was.

"So I'm unbearably cheesy that you just can't help but want to kiss me? Go on beauty, this bastard doesn't mind at all" He smirks, tilting my head up with the tip of his finger to level with his eyes.

He puckers his lips and inches his face closer to mine, while I awkwardly lean back the closer he gets. I disregarded how inflexible my vertebra is and instantly fell on my back against the sofa surface.

He leans forward, his nose meeting mine. The sound of his inhales soon becomes audible and for a moment, I was captivated with his charisma. Yet I snap back to reality and quickly saved my mouth. I smack my palm against his cheek, shoving him away from me.

"What are you!? My boyfriend!?" I yell at him.
"But you kissed me first, after you woke. So I thought perhaps-"
"I didn't kiss you! I was stealing your oxygen!" I say.

He face-palms with a disconsolate and infuriated look on him, "Forget it then, Astrid." He says, repelling away.

"Oh and a shirt sounds appropriate for you unless you're a model for Hollister!" I holler.

"Whose fault was it to vomit all over the place?" He gags.