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*I just watched 'You're Not You' and I'm having heart palpitations, I keep listening to Emmy's song from the ending credits. Here's a kind of sad/ caring chapter. I just realized how close this book is to ending.
Life just kicked the shut out of me and I don't know what I did to deserve it. I was good, but then I wasn't. Like, I got back my boy, my friends, my mom was doing better and then suddenly I noticed how sick I was feeling and how tired I was. It felt like someone took my batteries out or something, like I got unplugged. So here I was in my bedroom with the covers over my head. Stan was here earlier to give me my daily threats, the typical 'I'm gonna tell your mom' and 'Richie is gonna have to know about this'.
I didn't think much of it, I thought I should, for a minute but I kept my mind occupied, until my mom walked in.
"Arrietty, the food's done," she said whilst poking her head in the my door, "want me to bring you your plate?"
I shook my head then decided to talk since she can't see me, "not hungry." I mumbled, I haven't eaten a proper meal recently. I'm not dramatically starving like they make you seem in movies, and I'm not dangerously ill. I had too much meat on my bones to turn into a popsicle stick before my very eyes.
I simply did not want to eat is all, "why not, you sick?" She asked. I could hear her step into my room and felt the bed sip in. She pulled the covers away from my face and felt my forehead with the back of her palm. I watched her furrow her brows at me.
"You don't feel sick, why aren't you eating?" She was starting to come up with crazy ideas, I know it. My mom does this thing where she tries to diagnose you before an actual doctor can. If she sees a spot— chicken pox, you're coughing—pneumonia, you can't breathe— collapses lung.
"Not hungry." I shrugged and looked at the ground.
"Are you really sick again?" Once when I was a newborn I got sick and had a fever, it got so bad that I had a stroke. This happens every time I'm sick, my fevers don't go down until I sit in cold water. Oh, and I get nose bleeds frequently, Well none recently, but when they start it takes them awhile to stop.
"I dunno." She furrowed her brows and left, soon coming back with a thermometer. She opened my mouth and stuck the thermometer under my tongue gently. She worries, I'm glad she worried.
She checked her watch once more and took the thermometer out of my mouth, looking at it, "You have a fever, I'm gonna run to the store and get you some water and Gatorade, I'll call someone to keep an eye on you." She got up and stormed out of my room, keeping the door cracked.
It took her five minutes to come back into my room according to my clock on my nightstand, "he didn't you tell me?"
"Tell you what, mom?" I asked her, I could feel my throat start to feel rough and sore.
