“What? I’m sorry. I don’t understand what that has to do with math.”
“Exactly. Perhaps you haven’t been working hard enough. Maybe you got too many A’s and not enough F’s. Everyone in this class knows that a mongoose doesn’t mate with a chicken.”
I looked around at the class. All the desks were occupied with…chickens. They all looked at me with beady red eyes and sharp yellow beaks, laughing their fool chicken heads off.
Oh god, I was being mocked by a roomful of chickens who knew how to do math better than I did. “But they’re all chickens. Of course, they would know the answer.”
“That’s right, and you’re not a chicken.”
“But I could be a chicken. I could study more, work harder.”
“I’m afraid not. Do you know what happens to you in this class if you get the problem wrong? If you don’t measure up?”
“No, sir.”
“It’s the stewpot. We don’t tolerate stupid chickens in here.”
“But…but I’m not a chicken.”
“No? Then you’re just plain stupid.”
“No!” I cried. “I’ll try harder. I’ll be as good as I can.”
“I’ll be the perfect chicken,” I murmured, tossing and turning, kicking at the bed sheets. A pillow sailed across the room and struck me right in the head, drawing me out of that fitful dream.
“Aubree. You’re having the chicken dream again. If you don’t shut up, I’m going to yank out all your feathers,” Ashley grumbled. My roommate Ashley Cook and I were opposites. I was an uptight stats major and she was an artsy landscape architecture major. She was wild. I was sedate. But somehow we clicked.
Before I could respond to her half-serious threat, my cell phone chimed. I sat up in bed, now fully awake, my heart pounding. A call at this time of night was never good…wait…two a.m….it was technically morning. I fumbled around for the light and stumbled out of bed.
“Aubree. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” I said rummaging through my Einstein tote in frustration.
“Oh, just turn it upside down.” Ashley huffed. Her golden blonde hair fell forward in a loose braid as she got out of bed, grabbed it out of my hands, and upended my neatly packed bag onto my bed. She snatched my cell from the jumble and handed it to me. “I swear, Aubree, you’d spend all night huntin’for it.”
“I knew exactly where it was, miz pushy. You didn’t have to make a mess out of my bag. Albert hates that.”
An indignant sniff was her reply. “Albert can kiss my ass along with your chicken professor. Besides, you love putting all your humpty-dumpty stuff back together again. Admit it.” She yawned and settled herself on the edge of the bed once again, legs crossed, her expression wry.
“Hello.” My voice was scratchy from sleep.
“Aubree Walker?” The man’s voice was deep, brushed with a soft Southern drawl.
“Yes,”
“This is Sheriff Mike Dalton.”
I frowned. I knew that name. “From Suttontowne?”
His voice was brusque, but there was regret threaded through it. “Yes. I’m calling to inform you that your aunt has been injured. She’s in the hospital.”
My hand flew to my mouth, my heart jumping into my throat. “Oh, god. What happened?” My Aunt Lottie was my only living relative. The past and the present merged and I was back against the wall, waiting for my mother to wake up from an eternal nap. If it hadn’t been for my Aunt Lottie, who had welcomed me into her home and her life with open arms, I would have been alone.
“The best that we can tell, she fell down the stairs.”
I bit my lip until I tasted blood, fighting furiously to hold back the tears that gathered in my eyes and constricted into a solid lump in my throat. “How bad is she?”
“She’s been unconscious since I found her when I was doing my rounds. But the good news is there are no broken bones.”
“That’s a relief. I can be there in two hours. Do you know when visiting hours are?”
“Just a moment.”
I heard muffled voices and then he came back on the line. “Eight a.m.”