Zoey 101: You Must Of Had A Broken Heart ☑

Chapter 13

I looked at myself in the mirror and mindlessly wiped the remaining dried blood from around the bandages before I opened the bathroom door. I stepped into the hall to retrieve the broom and mop from the hall closet when George rounded the corner. He stopped and his eyes widened. But his shocked expression quickly dissolved.

“Bump your head?” he asked casually.

“That’s what I get for walking while reading,” I droned, knowing he would convince himself of anything except for the truth.

“You should put some ice on it,” he recommended.

“Mmm,” I agreed and walked back into the bathroom to complete my task.

After my chores were completed, I returned to my room to find a bag of ice waiting for me on my desk.

I gently put the bag of ice on the lump and watched Dilan and Mary chase after George in the backyard through my window – sworn to silence in my hell.

I awoke in a panic around midnight. I stayed pressed to my pillow, my eyes fervently searching the room. I was breathing heavily; my shirt was damp with sweat. I tried to detach myself from the nightmare that had awoken me. It was hard to push away the urgency of the dream that had me pinned beneath the water, drowning. I took in a deep breath, confirming that I was still alive as the air passed easily through my lungs. They weren’t burning for oxygen as they had been in my dream. I had a hard time falling asleep after that. Sleep finally found me just before the sun rose.

I was awoken by a hard knock on the door. “Are you going to sleep all day?” the voice barked from the other side.

“I’m up,” I mustered in a rasp, hoping she wouldn’t come in. I looked at the digital clock next to my bed that read 8:30. I knew I had to take a shower before nine o’clock or do without. I slowly sat up with the throbbing pain, a reminder of my living nightmare. I needed to find a way to ice it again so the lump would be gone by the time I went to school tomorrow. I knew there was nothing I could do about the dark purple bruise. Thankfully the area around the cut wasn’t bruised. Lola’s new hairstyle was going to come in handy with covering up most of it.

I gathered my clothes together and slipped into the bathroom without being seen. Washing my hair was more painful than I anticipated. I hadn’t realized how sore the back of my head was from her iron grip of my hair. I felt blood scabbed over where some of the hair had been forcefully removed. I was so focused on the contusion that the back of my head didn’t register until now. I gingerly used my fingertips to rub the shampoo into the front of my hair, but it still felt like a form of torture. I turned off the water before the knock and proceeded to dry off and get dressed. After gently drying my hair with a towel, I discovered that brushing my hair was worse than washing it. Tears filled my eyes with each stroke of the brush. There was no way I was going to be able to blow it dry. Reluctantly, I made the decision not to wash my hair the next day despite how atrocious I knew it would look after sleeping on it. I wasn’t willing to go through the pain again.

“Does she know about this afternoon?” I heard Abby ask George from the kitchen as I sat at my desk engrossed in my Trigonometry homework.

“Yeah, I told her yesterday,” he replied. “She’s going to the library and will be back for dinner.”

“And you believe she’s going to the library?” she asked doubtingly.

“Why wouldn’t she?” he questioned.

I didn’t hear a response from Abby.

“I’ll be back around one,” she finally said. Then the back door opened and closed.