Paroxysm ⇢ [Delirium, Book One]

II

HAZEL

I wake to fourteen missed calls, twelve texts and three Facebook messages. Two texts and one missed call are from Laurel, the rest are all Spencer. I rub at my eyes with the back of my hand and yawn, placing my phone back on the nightstand. I don't check the time, not wanting to know how late for school I probably am. I flick my hand in the direction of my wardrobe, and the doors swing open as a light heat pulses up my arm from my fingertips. I roll onto my side to look at my wardrobe from the comfort of my bed, trying to decide what to wear.

See James, I'm taking your advice, using my abilities to stop them from destroying us all. I spot my favourite pair of black jeans folded at the bottom of the wardrobe and they lift themselves out of the pile and move slowly towards my bed, where they land when I release the invisible hold. A dark green top is making its way over to me as a quiet knock comes at my bedroom door.

"Haze, are you decent?" Spencer asks and my mouth forms a straight line in irritation. I should've known from the overload of communication on my phone that he wouldn't just stop at pestering me via technology.

"Absolutely starkers, actually," I lie, sitting up in my bed. The door swings open to reveal Spencer leaning against the doorframe with one eyebrow raised.

"Doesn't look like it to me," he says, shifting so that he's standing slightly in my room. I imagine the door slamming shut in his face, and it starts to move slowly. He takes that as a cue to step fully into the room before he's locked out. Normally he'd have made some kind of complaint about how rude I always am to him, but he doesn't. 

"What the hell happened last night, Murphy?" He asks, sitting down on the edge of my bed.

I grab hold of a blanket and pull it over my head. I didn't stay awake long enough last night to even try and process what had happened, so I'm coming up blank when I try to think of an excuse now. Spence shuffles up the bed, lifts up the blanket and drapes it over his head too, so that we're both hiding beneath it. The air around me smells of him instantaneously, mildly sweet and like typical teenage boy.

"The Hazel I know doesn't shatter light bulbs and give me the death stare for nothing at all," he says quietly, and I just sigh at him. I don't own any logical thoughts in this moment, and something about being this close to him underneath the blanket is making it hard to think straight. His gaze catches mine for a moment, and I shift back a little.

"This Hazel is losing a bit of her control every day, remember?" I remind him. "I wake every morning to that text keeping me updated on how many days I've gone without losing control. Until last night, we were up to eleven." At the end of sophomore year I'd found a post-it pad on his desk marked with a tally. He'd blushed a little when I turned around to him holding it up to ask what it meant. He'd said it like it was nothing, just a little tally to keep track of how many days we'd avoided Hazel-induced disaster and then he'd he turned back to James whooping his ass at Halo.

There's the sound of a throat being cleared from the doorway and Spence yanks the blanket off of us to reveal my brother stood looking at us with his eyebrows raised and a smirk on his face. He starts chuckling and walks away.

"Go wait in the car Spence, I'll be down in ten," I say with a small smile, a pitiful attempt at convincing him that I'm okay. He hesitates, and I give him a gentle shove of encouragement, which does the trick.

When he shuts the door behind him I close my eyes and try to sort my shit out in about all of three seconds, with pretty abysmal results. I sigh and dress quickly then dash to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I grab my backpack on the way out, hurrying down the drive and jump into the front of Spence's Jeep.