Breaking The Ice [bxb]

Chapter Twenty-Six [Eli]

I can't feel my body. And I feel too much of it at the same time.

My phone screen lights up with a new incoming message and the time marks 8:02 AM, but I have been awake for over an hour. I don't think I moved during that time.

It's a Monday, but it's also spring break, so no school. Elliott should have left for work already, but I can still hear him shuffling around outside my bedroom. I hear footsteps moving away and wait for the sound of the front door opening and closing, but there's nothing. Then I hear footsteps approaching my door.

Elliott knocks.

He waits a few seconds without a reply, then knocks again. If I ignore him, will he assume I'm sleeping and just go away?

He knocks a third time and opens the door half an inch to ask under his breath, "You awake in there?"

If I don't answer, he will leave.

He pushes the door a couple of inches open. "Eli? Thought you were meeting the guys at the rink this morning."

"Mh."

He lets the door open completely and squints through the dim lightening at me. "Are you okay?"

"Just don't feel too good."

Even standing against the light from outside my bedroom, I think I can see him frown. "Are you good to come to work later?"

"Mhm. Just a headache." 

"Okay," he replies slowly. "Call if you need anything."

He closes my bedroom door on his way out and, this time, I hear the front door open and close. The sound of my dad's old Honda starting lets me know he's finally gone.

Barely five minutes go by before I hear a knock on the front door. There's a long stretch of silence, then the door bell rings.

Owen and I were supposed to walk together to the rink.

My phone starts vibrating on the nightstand with an incoming call. I hide my face in my pillow, waiting for it to stop.

I told Elliott I had a headache to get him to go away, but now I think I am starting to feel a real pressure closing in around my skull.

The phone goes off again as Owen makes a new try to reach me. I shouldn't ignore him. We're supposed to meet Dean, Connor, James and Trey at the rink. Planning friendly practices during the break with the guys seemed like a great idea before the break, when I had to force myself out of bed every morning to get to school anyway. But now that I don't have the motivation of obligation, I can't get my body to move.

I know that's in my head. I could move if I tried. It's the trying that's tripping me up.

I'll have to get up to get to my shift at The Lodge at eleven, but that's later. For now, Owen stopped trying and I guess he decided to get going without me.

There's a short pause — five minutes, ten, fifteen, I don't know  — before someone else tries to call me. I lift my head from the pillow just in time to see Dean's name on the screen before he ends the call. His second try doesn't come until at least a few minutes later. And it's the last one.

I want to stay in bed, but I know I can't.

Slowly, bit by bit, limb by limb, I get up. The urge to immediately crawl back into bed is deafening, blinding and mind-numbing.

This is a feeling I gave into once. For one summer. After they died.

But even then I eventually had to get up, pack my shit and come back home. And now I have to go to work.