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Of all the things that Maddie Brooks hated, being sick was near the top of the list. She loathed the wooziness that sickness brought along, like an unwelcome friend at a party. The times when she was actually ill were few and far between, but nevertheless, it annoyed her to her wit's end just to feel this way.
To make matters even worse, she hadn't been feeling quite right at all this week. Or last week, come to think of it. Maybe that was the problem: she hadn't thought of it.
Sitting down on the couch, the brown-haired girl glanced around her tiny apartment and tried to ease her aching mind and cartwheeling stomach.
Was it something she had eaten? No, any food poisoning would have gone away by now.
Did she catch a bug from one of her little siblings after her trip home the weekend before? No, none of the kids were sick and Millie, the eight-year-old, had actually rambled on and on about her ordeal at the doctor's office. They had just gotten their back-to-school vaccinations.
What in the world could it have been, then?
Pushing herself off the couch after realizing that lying down wouldn't solve anything, Maddie navigated her way through her home in search of a thermometer. As she waited to find out her temperature, the girl of only nineteen let her mind roam. Naturally, it seized the opportunity to jump to the worst case scenario.
This time, it was that she had caught some odd Ebola-like disease from one of the oranges she had bought from the Farmer's Market two weeks ago. She was terminal and, most likely, only had three more days to live.
By the time the thermometer beeped, Maddie's pulse was racing. Think of all the people that she had to say goodbye to! Her mother, her father, her little sisters, the rest of her family, her dry cleaner, the bus driver, the strange man next door who liked to water his plants in the nude...
Okay, maybe not him. He always gave her the weirdest tidbits of advice (such as "The one who cries the hardest wins the argument," and "Never trust someone who puts the milk in before the cereal,"), but Maddie couldn't imagine dying before saying goodbye to her family.
Funny, she thought while glancing at the normal temperature displayed on the tiny stick in her hand, the thermometer must be broken. Well, too late to get a new one.
Maddie had pulled her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans and dialed her mother's number. She returned to her favorite place in the world (her sofa) and waited for the woman to answer.
