A Beginner's Guide to the American West ✓

chapter twenty-two

t w e n t y - t w o

*

The pounding of my head wakes me up, a thick throbbing in my skull as though my brain's too big. I can't bear the thought of moving but I really have to pee, so I roll out of bed and try not to collapse beneath the weight of my headache. I don't dare turn on the lights, which I know will be sickeningly blinding, so I sit to pee and I rest my forehead on the cold wall.

When I return to the bedroom, squinting to make my way back to my bed, I catch sight of the arrogantly bright red numbers on the alarm clock. When the light stops shifting, I can just about make out that it's ten past five in the morning. Thank fuck I have three more hours before we need to meet in the lobby. Three hours to make myself feel more human.

My backpack is upended on the floor by my bed and I blindly fumble through the mess spilling out of it until I find a packet of paracetamol. The crinkling of the blister pack is an attack on my eardrums and I feel like I need to throw up, but also as though the force of throwing up would probably burst my eyeballs and increase the pressure in my head.

I have never drunk as much as I drank last night and I can feel it, and I can remember every single moment of yesterday. Snippets of conversations sear through my mind like flaming arrows, innocuous memories burning my brain as I think about playing card games and drinking vodka and texting George and hugging Arjun. It's all there in painful clarity, as though my hangover comes with extra sensory perception.

I honestly feel like I'm going to die. My head hurts that much. Next to me, barely ten inches between us across the narrow gap between our beds, Arjun is splayed out on top of his duvet in his boxers. He looks perfectly peaceful, and I imagine he'll wake up feeling fine. He can handle his drink; apparently I can't. I'm not used to vodka.

All I can do is lie as still as possible with my eyes closed, clutching my cold water bottle to my forehead. I desperately need to fall asleep again, to let my body heal itself while unconscious, before this pain actually kills me. Maybe alcohol is stronger over here. Maybe I'm just weaker.

*

The second time I wake up, there's the briefest moment of respite when I think I feel ok, before my brain remembers its agony and pain and nausea rear their ugly heads. It's seven fifty and we have to be downstairs in ten minutes, and I still feel like death warmed up. Arjun isn't next to me anymore, but I can't lift my head to look for him.

"Morning," he says when he comes out of the bathroom in a tiny towel tied low on his hips, a sight I can't even appreciate when I feel so shit. I barely grunt in response and he comes to sit on the end of his bed.

"How're you feeling?" he asks as he roots through his bag for clean underwear.

"Dead." My voice is hoarse and scratchy and my mouth feels bone dry and full of cotton wool and my stomach is roiling. "How are you not dead?"

"I guess I got lucky," he says. "Felt like utter shit when I woke up a couple of hours ago but I took some ibuprofen and had some water and a biscuit and that seems to have done the trick."

Once he's half dressed, having found underwear and tight shorts, he leans over me and puts a hand on my shoulder and gently shakes. He moves his hand to my cheek in such an intimate gesture that I'd be floored if I wasn't in bed. "Hey, you gonna be ok?"

"I'm dying."

"That better not be true," he says. "The healthcare system here is atrocious. Can you save your death until we're back in England?"

I grunt again.

"Need a hand?"

"I'm ok," I say. It's a lie, but I need him to move away so I can get up without him noticing my cursed morning glory.