From Dawn (published)

Five

Saturday
11:30am

Dawn had had a rather difficult time getting to sleep. The annoying sneezing, combined with the headache that wouldn't go away, had kept her awake and miserable for quite a while. When she finally did get to sleep, she slept like the dead.

It was the middle of the day when she next opened her eyes. Her vision blurred and she blinked rapidly. Her brightly lit bedroom came into focus.

She squinted, afraid of the light aggravating her throbbing head, but realized that the headache had receded into a dull ache that was easily ignored. The sneezing seemed to have stopped sometime in the night, too.

The day was looking considerably brighter than she had expected just the night before. Throwing back the covers, she leaped out of bed.

Vertigo nearly brought her to her knees. Staggering sideways, she caught herself on the corner of her dresser.

Thinking that maybe she wasn't one hundred percent better after all, Dawn waited for the episode to pass. Either way, she felt much better than she had the night before, and she had no interest in wasting her day off in her room.

While she was showering, Dawn found a dark bruise on her arm. When she tried to figure out where she would have gotten it, she came up blank. She couldn't remember banging her arm on anything the day before. She would have thought she'd notice hitting herself on something hard enough to leave a bruise like that. Dawn shrugged to herself as she turned off the water.

Wrapping her hair in a towel, she stopped in front of the mirror over the sink. Dawn paused, a little surprised by her own reflection.

Dark circles ringed her eyes and her normally tanned skin looked washed out. Dawn frowned and poked the circle under one eye experimentally. She looked like she had been bedridden with the flu for a week.

She must have been sicker the night before than she'd thought. Shrugging again, she opened the drawer where she kept her cosmetics. She normally didn't wear a lot of the stuff, but she was glad at the moment that she had it around. She was going to need it today, because Dawn had plans.

A little later, she left the bathroom and went in search of some lunch. She was starving again.

Walking into the kitchen, she found her mother stirring something on the stove.

"Morning, mom."

Her mother looked over her shoulder and half smiled, "I do believe it's the afternoon."

"Yeah." She pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sat, "Whatever that is, it smells good."

"I'm almost done. It's stir fried veggies, the way you like them."

"Yum, can't wait."

Dawn spent the next couple of minutes on her phone. She checked in with her social media accounts, and sent a text to Kay that she knew would wake her friend up. Chuckling under her breath, she hit send. Served her right for wanting Dawn to jump in that water the day before.

Her mom set a plate full of steaming veggies in front of her. Taking the seat across from her daughter, she sat her own plate down and went to fill two glasses with water. Dawn was feeling so hungry that she had to remind herself to wait for her mom to sit to begin eating.

For several minutes, the two of them ate in silence. In record time, Dawn's plate was empty. Looking up, she watched as her mom cut a bite off of the chicken she had on her own plate.

Saliva pooled in her mouth. Like that steak the night before, Dawn could smell the piece of meat on her mother's plate. It smelled good.

She must have stared across the table for just a little to long, because her mother looked up. "You feeling ok, sweetie?"

Dawn looked away from the chicken. "Yeah. I must have caught some kind of bug, and I'm not feeling exactly myself yet. But I feel better than I did last night, so I think I'm fine."

"You probably picked up something swimming in that gross river," her mom gave her her patented 'I told you so' look.

"Yeah, maybe," her reply was noncommittal. She didn't want to start that argument over again. And besides, her mom was probably right, not that Dawn would ever admit that out loud.

Thankfully, her mom dropped the subject. They finished their meal, talking easily about the latest town gossip. According to her mother, someone living over on Third Street had just been busted driving drunk with her kids in the car. In a town the size of theirs, no secret stayed hidden for long.

When her mom got up and began to clear the table, she stopped her. "I'll get this, mom. You cooked, I'll clean."

"Thanks. Sounds like a deal," Her mom reached to pat her on the arm. "What did you do here?" The note of concern in her voice was unmistakable.

Dawn looked down to where her mom was gazing.

The bruise that she had found on her arm earlier was bigger. A lot bigger, and much darker. Now it didn't look like she had accidentally bumped herself. It looked like something had hit her arm really hard.

She frowned, "I have no idea. I found it in the shower this morning."

"Really? How could you not know what caused something like that?"

She didn't know what to say. It was strange. And why did the bruise look like it was getting bigger?

Her mom looked at her with a bit of concern. "Please be careful, sweetie."