RUSTY FALLS asleep at six-thirty that night after I manage to get half a cup of chicken broth into her. It’s literally the earliest I’ve ever seen her fall asleep, but the poor kid is really down for the count. She’s got a fever of 102. She’s thrown up twice since I got her home. If she’s not on the mend tomorrow, we’re going to the doctor.
My mom gets home after Rusty’s already asleep, but she comes in the door with her arms full of shopping bags: chicken soup, crackers, soda, and the biggest piece of ginger root I’ve seen in my entire life.
“Feed a fever, starve a cold,” she says knowingly as she puts the bags on the table.
“That doesn’t sound very scientific,” I tease her, grabbing a bag and putting cans of chicken soup away in the pantry. My mom laughs.
“Double-blind studies have got nothing on folk remedies,” she says. “I’ve told you the story about my father, right? When he was seven, he got—”
“Mumps, measles, and scarlet fever all at once, and the doctors told his mother he was going to die, but she gave him willow bark and chicken soup and he made it through?”
“I guess I have,” she says.
“Thanks for the remedies,” I say.
RUSTY’S FEELING BETTER the next morning. Not all the way, but her fever drops to 100. She only pukes once, and then I take the day off work and we spend it snuggling on the couch, watching animated Disney movies: 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book, Robin Hood, Mulan. She’s never had much use for princesses who don’t save themselves. I respect that.
I make her chicken soup with crackers and keep her water cup filled. My mom is in and out, packing to leave tomorrow for her conference. She’s leading a panel on the various ways to measure gravitational forces of neutron stars, or something. I’m pretty sure I have that wrong.
And I spend the day texting Charlie: updates on Rusty, updates on the plot of whatever movie we’re watching at the moment. At one point, she confesses that she had a crush on the animated Robin Hood, even though he’s a fox. I remind her of that fact. She just says yeah, he is, and I laugh.
I’m disappointed about yesterday. She was all I thought about, all day long, at least until I got the call from Rusty’s school nurse.
The kiss in the attic. The make out session in the driveway, pushed up against Caleb’s truck, like we were teenagers.
Hell, I feel like a teenager right now, like I’m the first person to ever discover kissing.
I text Charlie again: I think Rusty’s on the mend.
That night, I start to feel nauseous.
THE FIRST THING I do Wednesday morning is vomit. It’s 4 a.m. when I wake up, because Levi’s there to pick my mom up and take her to the airport in Roanoke. I barely make it to the bathroom, and then I kneel on the tile floor in my pajamas, lean against the bathtub, and catch my breath.
Fuck.
Suitcases go down the hallway. Low voices. I stand, splash my face off, brush my teeth quickly even though that makes me nauseous, then head downstairs to grab a glass of water.
“Oh, no,” my mom says when she sees me. Levi nods once but takes a step back.
I grab water. Levi takes my mom’s suitcases and puts them in his truck. I try a couple of sips, and they seem to stay down. Jesus, it’s cold in here.
“Don’t hug me,” my mom says. “Feel better. Get lots of rest, there’s plenty of chicken soup in the pantry and don’t forget to stay hydrated. Call Charlie or your brothers if you need anything, and you should really give the ginger a try, it always helps me…”
I nod along. Mom reaches out and squeezes my arm once, then feels my forehead and nods.
“Go,” I tell her. “Before I get you sick too.”
She blows me a kiss, and then she’s out. I get back in bed.
RUSTY, of course, is fine. Somehow, I get myself out of bed, take her temperature, pour her some cereal. I’m deeply grateful that she’s old enough to get ready for school on her own with little more than supervision, and I watch from the front window as she gets on the school bus.
Then I text Seth that I’m not coming in today and get straight back into bed.
THERE’S someone outside the front door.
No. Something. The house is dead quiet around me, the windows dimmed, like there’s a storm outside. Everything is exactly where I left it yesterday except, for some reason, the old couches are back in the living room, two ugly plaid monstrosities that don’t even match each other, let alone anything else in the room.
And the shoes. My father’s shoes are by the door, and something is outside, and it should be daylight right now but it’s not.
I have to push a couch against the door. The thing outside moves, rustles, and suddenly I know it’s some kind of enormous bird, feathers and talons and a beak so I bend down in front of one of the ugly couches and start pushing, fear spiking through my heart because I’m the last one here and I don’t know what happened but I cannot let this thing into the house.
I get the couch in front of the door and now it’s beating against the wood, scraping, clawing. I’m soaked through with sweat, ready to push the second couch, trying to see this thing through the tiny window on the front door.
Then it calls to me, and its voice is human.
“Daniel,” it says. “Daniel?”
And the door opens like the couch isn’t even there.
“Daniel!”
I wake up thrashing, shoving blankets away from my face, half sit up on one elbow.
“Jesus, dude,” says Seth’s voice. He’s standing in my bedroom doorway, one hand still on the knob, and I flop back down onto my bed.
It’s cold. Wet. I touch my chest and my shirt is soaked. My whole body tingles. Moving feels like a Herculean effort.
“Hey,” I croak out as he crosses the room. “What’s… is it Wednesday?”
“Wednesday morning,” he confirms. “About ninety minutes ago, you texted me ‘I’m dying’ and then didn’t answer my calls or texts, so I came over.”
I make myself sit up in my bed. My stomach doesn’t like it, but I take a deep breath and maintain control. I grab my phone from my nightstand and look at it.
After I’m dying, there’s a text to Seth that I apparently fell asleep before I could send: I got whatever Rusty had, I’m staying home today.
I show Seth. He nods.
“That would have helped,” he says, then sighs, pushing one hand through his hair, exactly the way Eli does. I swear, sometimes I think they’re twins.
“Sorry,” I say.
“Come on,” he says. “You need to go shower while I at least change your sheets. You think you can keep anything down?”
I shake my head.
“I’ll bring you some ginger ale,” he says, and points at my bedroom door. “Go.”
THE SHOWER IS TERRIBLE. Standing takes too much effort, so halfway through it I sit down in the bathtub for a few minutes and just let the water run over me. It feels like needles against my skin, but it also feels sort of good, so I deal with it.
Afterwards, I put on a fresh t-shirt and pajama pants. Seth has re-made my bed, and I think I hear the washing machine going downstairs. On my nightstand is my phone charger, which I normally keep on my desk.
Seth is an okay nurse. Who knew?
“Figured you’d need it if you wanted to watch movies in bed,” he says, poking his head back through the door. “That shit’ll drain your battery with the quickness.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“You look terrible,” he says, sympathetically, from the doorway. “Get some rest.”
I just nod and crawl back into bed.
