The Way This Feels

Chapter 17: Needle

The house is eerily dark from the heavy rain clouds. All the doors closed, the lights off, shadows seem to elongate and creep around every corner. This is how I feel on the inside, like a dark house with too many closed doors. I can barely think, I can't even see clearly. Despite my mom hovering nervously just behind me, my legs carry me straight to my room where I lay on my bed, flat on my back.

I stare unseeingly at the ceiling, eggshell paint blue gray in the storm darkened afternoon. My face is now radiating heat from the burn, I can almost feel it if I hold my hands over my cheeks. 

I lay very still for a long time. My limbs are too heavy. I don't feel good at all, like my insides have been burned by the sun as well as my face. Minutes, or maybe hours later, I couldn't tell you; my mom enters my room and sits gingerly at the edge of my bed.

"What happened?" She asks gently. Her voice seems to be echoing around my room, the sound warping and garbling off the plaster walls until it's unrecognizable.

"Will?" My name permeates the din.

"Huh?"

"What happened today?" 

"Uh..." To be honest, I'm not exactly sure. I prop myself up on my elbows, the burning increases with the movement and I wince. "Nothing." I say.

She doesn't believe me. I don't blame her. "Will, you're acting strange. What's wrong? Is it that boy? Are you not sleeping?"

Not sleeping? No, I'm pretty sure I'm at least sleeping. I have the dreams to prove it.

"Uh... I think I might be sun sick?" The phrase comes out as a question. She doesn't seem to believe this either.

"Sun sick? I think the symptoms would be worse than this." She tells me.

"Oh."

She comes over and touches my forehead, and pulls it away quickly. "You're burning up!"

"No, that's just from the sunburn." I tell her vaguely leaning painfully onto my back again, the skin against the blankets prickling. I hear her leave the room, I shut my eyes and take deep breaths.

Ugh. I feel so awful, almost like being sick. 

Actually... my eyes fly open. I do feel sick. The realization is so shocking, I sit straight up just as my mom is reentering the room.

"I think I'm sick." I tell her confusedly.

"Yeah," She says faintly. She gets to work putting aloe on the burns which is a huge relief until my skin immediately heats the gel. She makes me tea, gives me some medicine and water, and gets me set up in bed.

"I want you to rest."

There's no reason to argue. In fact, I'm still lost in such a terrible brain fog, being sick can only really help me. Propped up in bed with nothing important to focus on, there'll be no need to bother pretending like I still exist in the present moment. I'll get a break from dealing with the girls, I can forget everything about that interaction with Micah. I get to just be sick. 

Unfortunately it's not that easy. I thought the grief dreams were bad, but grief fever dreams are the worst in the whole world. I nearly fall out of bed yelling my head off that same evening, and my mom runs into the room. I'm straight up sobbing when she gets there, and I can't even tell her what happened in the dream because it made no sense. I remember Violet's hands holding mine as she pulled me along, an image of Echo and his pretty hair sparkling in the light, and Micah's eyes looking sad as he stared at my tea overflowing in the sink.