"So, what do you think your dad is saying right now?" Suzie asked, sounding bored.
"My guess?" I shrugged, opening my eyes to see she'd flopped onto her back so that she stared up at the ceiling. "Probably nothing I want to see."
"Ew. In the kitchen?" She shuddered.
"Seriously? Get your mind out of the gutter. They are my parents."
She smiled. "How do you think they got you here?"
"Okay, really, really..." I shook my head. "Just stop. He's probably just hugging her and letting her cry or whatever. Then, when she's calm, they'll talk."
"That was kind of cool."
"Oh? Right, because I enjoyed watching my mother break down over me," I said. "I'm glad you enjoyed the show."
"That's not what I mean."
"No?" I raised one eyebrow in question.
She looked up at me and sighed. For a second, she seemed torn between having something to say and not wanting to say it. Then, as though she was choreographing a new routine for beginner dancers in slow motion, she slid her legs off the bed one at a time, stood, and began to pace.
I jumped from the chair to my bed without saying a word, finally feeling like I was home. Following her with my eyes was hypnotic. After all the drugs and tests, would it be rude to close my eyes? It wouldn't be the first time I fell asleep during one of our conversations, but obviously Suzie didn't like it. I doubted I was in the right shape of mind to deal with the verbal backlash.
"My parents would never care that much."
"That's not true." I'd seen her parents, spent time vacationing with them, and spent too many nights sleeping over during the years to believe anything else. If I was dating someone for two years, my dad wouldn't be setting an early curfew, he'd be telling me to be safe and leaving condoms everywhere.
"My parents notice me when somebody's around to notice them." She paused to look at me, and then kept pacing. "The way your mom was just now? I bet she wishes nobody had been there to see her."
"No, you're probably right about that."
"My mom would treat that as an Oscar performance and expect accolades."
"What?" I shook my head and rose to rest my weight on my elbows. "No, Suzie—"
"Last year, right before we started hanging out again, I fell from the top of the pyramid during practice and sprained my wrist. The nurse wouldn't let me go home or take anything for pain until someone signed me out, so I called my Dad."
"So? He came, right?"
She laughed. "Not exactly. He was in the middle of a sale." She rolled her eyes and shook her head, scoffing. "So he called my Mom to come and get me."
"So then what's the big deal?"
She shrugged and stared down at the floor by the wall next to my desk. "It took her an extra half hour to come for me because she had to let her pedicure dry."
Okay, so her dad was working, and her mom knew a sprained wrist wasn't life-threatening. I still didn't understand. My parents loved me and probably would have reacted the same way. Maybe not the pedicure part, but I knew Mrs. Whithall. She was like, Mrs. Clean, and putting shoes on a fresh pedicure? Messy. It didn't equate to her parents not caring, though.
"So, she gets to school and signs me out to take me home but tells Mrs. Stick-up-her-ass that she'll give me something after I see a doctor." She laughed, the sound hollow. "When we got outside, she turned to me and said that the next time I feel like hurting myself to gain her attention, it better be life or death seriousness, or I shouldn't call her away from her afternoon shows."
"Everyone has a bad day." Was that even logical?
"Really?" Suzie stopped pacing and turned to hold my gaze, her hands on her hips. "After she said that, she left me on the sidewalk to walk home while she went to get her hair done. I was in so much pain, I walked to the doctor and had an x-ray done. I wound up with a hairline fracture and a break, and I had to call Deryk so that I could see the hand specialist I was rushed to in order to have it set. He even paid the thirty-five bucks to get a cast done."
"O-kay. She was having a really bad day?" Both my eyebrows shot up and I grimaced. I just couldn't picture Mr. and Mrs. Whithall the way Suzie described. They were her parents.
"A bad day is forgetting your keys in your car. A really bad day is your house burning down. When I got home, I was yelled at for being late for supper, and then questioned about what happened to my hand." She let out a long breath as though she'd been holding it in for as long as that experience had lain dormant within her memories.
I leaned back against my pillows, shocked. "What did you tell them? About your hand?"
"That I punched a girl for lying when she told me my parents loved me."
My mouth dropped. "No way."
"No, actually, I told them the truth." She rolled her eyes, but the half-smile didn't fade, like she was imagining the fantasy over and over. "I was too medicated to lie."
"I'm sorry, Suze. I had no clue about any of that."
I wish I had, though. Maybe I wouldn't have let her stop being friends with me so easily. Could I have changed things for her if I'd fought to remain friends during that year? Even if it had only been a once-a-week hello, I bet she hadn't had anyone, aside from Deryk, to talk to, and that just... sucked. Plus, who told their boyfriend things like that? Not that soon in a relationship, though he must've guessed something after having to pay for her cast.
"Anyway, my point is that I enjoy seeing how much your parents give a damn," she said. "I don't think either of them left the hospital or slept while you were there. Your mom wouldn't even let the nurse's help clean up after you puked all over the place like, a bazillion times. She was all like, "That's my daughter, and if anyone helps her, it'll be me."" She raised her hands to make finger quotes and rolled her eyes, but then grimaced. "It was kinda gross, come to think of it. I could never be a nurse or a doc—"
"When was I throwing up?" I rolled to my side, propping my head on my hand, and squinted.
"Ugh, you don't remember?"
"I wouldn't ask if I did."
Suzie held my gaze for a moment and then shrugged, looking away. "You were sick almost the entire first day. They couldn't even x-ray you until the second day because you were so bad. I didn't stick around for that part. I mean, I love you, but ew. I came back, and Brenan stayed when I left," she said with a grin, and then frowned. "At least until your boys told him to get gone."
"What? Who booted Brenan out?"
"All of them at first. Then they switched up guard duty until you were released." Her eyes trailed back to the wall beside my desk and her brow furrowed. "Gabe, Mike, and Raffy. You know, they're big enough to make their own football team, right? They could go pro and call the team the Langers or something. They're what? Six-two?"
"Five."
"Huh?"
"Gabe and Mike are both six-five. Raffy is six-two."
Suzie blinked at me, pausing as though frozen in place. "You measured them?"
"No, there's one of those stickers on the front doorframe at Tucker's. I just noticed when we were all working one day." I shook my head, unwilling to admit I'd watched every day until I'd been given the chance to find out. "Back to your story. Why did they kick Brenan out?"
"Hell if I know. Brenan told them you were dating now." She stopped, bending to crouch on one knee, and reached between the wall and the desk.
"He did?"
She grunted and reached further into the crack, her cheek pressed against the drawer of the desk and her other arm raised above her head for balance. "Aren't you?" She jerked her hand back and smiled, nearly falling to her butt on the floor. "Aha! Got it!"
"What?" I leaned forward and expected her to hold up a dust mite in the air. Instead she held up a book, one that I hadn't seen for a long time and had forgotten existed. "My journal?" I scooted to the edge of my bed and snatched it from her hands before she could read it. "Wow. This is really old."
"Old and useless." She snatched it back and leafed through the pages. "You only made a couple entries. "I love my family and friends and Scruffy"" She looked up and grinned. "Really? Oh, and then there's, "I love...""
She stopped reading and her teasing smile faded. I reached for the journal and she tried to stop me, but I was too quick. Snatching it out of her fingers, I turned the pages to find the one that had made her freeze, and then paused. I shuffled them more slowly—everything was blank—and then turned the pages faster. It was like half the pages burst to life with entries the quicker I flipped through, then disappeared if I tried to slow down enough to read the passages.
Weird.
How would I ever be able to read it if I couldn't slow down?
"You okay?"
"Huh?" I looked up at Suzie in surprise, forgetting she was here. "Right." Shaking my head, I started flipping the pages again, one-by-one, squinting. "Sorry."
I turned to the first page and read what Suzie had quoted. Then, with slow, uncertain movements, I turned to the second page, and realized why I had set the journal aside. It wasn't that I didn't have anything to say; I just couldn't stand the reminder the words on the page served. Three random words strung together that held the meaning of everything in my world then, now, always.
I love David.
Nothing I'd said before or since had been truer.
Shutting the book, I threw it into the drawer beside my bed and looked back to Suzie, raising my chin as if to say, "I dare you to mention this." It hurt, but I couldn't bear to throw it away. Someday, once the pain faded, those three words would remind me of a happy time.
"So." Suzie grinned and sat down, leaning back in the chair, changing the subject in an obvious attempt to lighten the mood that had settled over the room. "About your party?"
"Our party?"
"That's the one." She raised her finger in the air and nodded, a smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth. "Think it'll be cancelled?"
"Probably not." I sat back down, suddenly tired. "Even if my dad agreed with my mom, they already rented the space and worked it out with Gabe and Mike so that Tucker's would cater it."
"I doubt your mom cares about the money," she said, rolling her eyes. "She seemed pretty adamant about cancelling it."
"True." I nodded. "But my dad cares about what they spend."
As though his ears had been burning, my father knocked once before stepping into the room. He looked ragged, even more tired than he had when I'd seen him talking to the doctor. He looked around the room, and then at us, sighing as he leaned against the doorframe.
"How's Mom?"
"She's fragile, but calm." He folded his arms across his chest. "I talked her into taking a nap."
"What about the party?" Suzie asked, too eager to wait. "Did you manage to talk her into that, too?"
"Sort of."
"What do you mean, Dad? Isn't it kind of a yes or no?"
"Yes and no." He stood straight. "I've talked her into the party—"
"Yes!" Suzie squealed and brought her fist in to her side with victory.
"If I can provide her with a risk assessment before Saturday."
"A what and a who?"
I ignored Suzie's question and asked, "Can you do that by Saturday? Doesn't it take weeks to something like that?"
My dad worked in insurance and knew underwriters and risk managers. Their job is to determine the exposure of a risk before insuring it and to figure out how to minimize the exposure by reducing hazards. It was a long process and had too many steps involved to accomplish in less than a week, especially on a commercial property.
"Sure, it would take too long if we were to do it from scratch."
"But?" I raised my eyebrows, biting my tongue as I told my nerves it wasn't a done deal.
"But," he said, leaning forward and then back again. "It probably has property insurance if a bank has an insurable interest and liability insurance to receive a permit to operate as a public service."
"Meaning?" Suzie looked between us, a half-smile forming as though she was scared to hope, but then couldn't help it.
My dad looked at me and I waited a moment before nodding for him to continue, just to bug Suzie by making her wait a few seconds longer than necessary.
He looked to Suzie and said, "It means that it would have had an assessment done to obtain insurance."
I grinned. "So, we can have the party?"
"Sure. I just need an engineer to check it out and a contractor to tell your mom it was built with decent building material, and it will be fine."
"Can you get someone to tell mom that nothing is ever risk-free?" I rolled my eyes, and then, as an afterthought, added, "And also that I'm going to school tomorrow?"
"We'll see." He turned to leave.
"And work."
Pausing, he turned his head and smiled. "Not happening, but nice try."
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know." Rubbing his chin, he cast his eyes upward, and then narrowed his gaze on me. "Maybe because a sign fell on you and you wound up in the hospital?" He shook his head as though he still couldn't believe what had happened. "Mike's already gotten someone to cover your shift."
"Dad!" I groaned, but he ignored me, closing the door behind him as he left the room.
I looked to Suzie, but she shrugged.
"I'm with them on that one. Sorry." She picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. "You should rest. You look like ass."
"But you haven't even told me about you and Deryk yet!"
"Uh, yeah. That." Looking down, she kicked the carpet with her toes. "Nothing happened."
"What?" I blinked, sure that I had heard her wrong.
"We were sabotaged."
"Huh? How?" Had her father found out? I thought she said he didn't care?
Licking her lips, she raised her chin and stared forward, unblinking, at my closet. "My period came early."
Falling onto my back, I couldn't hold my laughter in, though I knew it was the last thing she wanted to hear. "I'm sorry." I tried to sober my expression and failed. I hid my smile behind my hand. "That, uh... That really sucks."
"It's not funny." She shifted her eyes to me and glared.
I shook my head and pursed my lips, the laughter bubbling over. I thought I had bad luck.
Suzie stomped to my bedroom door, pausing with her hand on the handle to look back and say, "By the way, your dad totally had the doctor give you a pregnancy test when you started puking again."
My laughter died, and she smiled.
"Just saying." She shrugged one last time and turned, her long blonde hair flying over her shoulder, and then walked out the door.