‘Are you okay?’
Mental slap. I clear my throat, decide against trying to pigeonhole him.
‘It’s nice to meet you, Luke.’
‘It’s nice to meet you too . . .’ He pauses. Nothing happens again for the longest time, until I realize I’ve missed the most basic of social cues. Talking to boys is much harder than it looks on TV.
‘Norah,’ I bark when it finally hits me. ‘My name is Norah.’
‘Well, Norah, I’m here to assure you that I don’t play the drums.’
Say something redeeming.
‘Pity. I hope it’s okay that I do. Really loud. Mostly on Sunday mornings.’
‘You do?’
‘No.’ I smile. I don’t know if he’s smiling back, but I’m kind of hoping he is.
‘You’re funny.’
‘It’s both a blessing and a curse.’ I definitely hear him scoff a laugh.
‘So, I guess I’ll see you around, Neighbour.’
‘I’m sure you will,’ I lie. He leaves, and I slither back into the safety of my house.
‘Whoa.’ I exhale.
Something warm fizzes like seltzer in my stomach as I watch him through the window, drifting down my driveway.
The grocery-bag debacle and an overabundance of human contact has straight up sucked out all my energy. It takes a lot of battery power to keep your mind and muscles on high alert like that, so I drag my burnt-out body to bed. I collapse on my mattress, and, like a cotton cloud, it swallows me.
The hours roll on by as I watch soap opera reruns. I don’t sleep. Oh no. That would be way too simple.
Instead my brain turns to porridge. My eyes mindlessly follow the characters moving around the TV screen, even after they’ve lost definition and morphed into brightly coloured blobs.
The moon crashes back to earth, and the sun assails the sky.
I’m watching threads of bright yellow light forcing their way through the cracks in my curtains when my phone rings. Through gritty eyes I see Mom’s ID flashing on the screen. It’s 6.00 a.m.
‘Norah, honey?’ Mom’s voice, soft and sweet, comes over the other end of the phone. I’m barely conscious, but my brain, always firing on full, catches the faint wail of a foghorn buried beneath the sound of calm.
Something is wrong. This is the same tone she used when I came home from my first day in second grade and she told me Thumper, my poor pet rabbit, had succumbed to a stroke.
‘Mom, what’s wrong?’
‘Did you get any sleep?’ Small talk. That’s it. All the signs point to tragedy.
‘No. You?’
‘Some.’
I count out the following fifteen seconds of silence in my head.
‘Mom. Is something wrong?’
‘Don’t freak out,’ she says, and my heart charges. Like someone just zapped a million volts through my body, I sit upright. My free hand grips my sheets. A vocal tic rolls up my chest, pushed by pressure, until it flops from my mouth and I moan like Frankenstein’s monster.
‘Hey. Come on,’ Mom says, her tinkling-bell tone now reinforced with sheets of steel. ‘Take some deep breaths or you’re going to pass out.’
‘Tell me what’s happened.’
‘Remember perspective? You’re talking to me right now so it can’t be that bad, right?’ she says.
‘Mom.’
‘Everything is okay, baby, I promise.’
‘Mom!’
‘There was a small collision.’
My mind morphs into those giant, foamy waves you see in disaster movies smashing hard against rocks.
‘Norah, listen to me.’
I can’t.
She’s saying things, but I can only hear the sound of squealing brakes and crunching metal. ‘Are you—’ I cut her off while she’s mid-rant about some dick driver who ran a red light and ploughed straight into the side of her ancient Ford Capri. ‘Are you okay?’
I stumble out of bed. Like I’m trapped in the middle of a tornado, spinning, trying to find a glass of water, trying to find a paper bag, trying to find my bearings, which I’m pretty sure are whizzing around my room independently of my body.
‘A little scratched up. But the doctors are taking great care of me.’
‘You’re in hospital?’
That’s bad. Hospitals are for sick people. This is bad.
My brain shuts down; my muscles stop working. My legs crumble beneath me, and my knees slam into the floor.
‘Norah. Norah, what was that bang? Talk to me.’
I crawl along the carpet, all breathless and sweating like the chick trying to escape a psycho in a horror movie. I squeeze myself into the small space between my bed and dresser where I turtle up, put my head in my lap, and try to space my breathing. My fingers find an old, flaking scab on my knee and pick it until it bleeds. I need the sting to bring me back, force me to relax, but it doesn’t.
‘Sweetie, listen to me. I’m fine. I. Am. Fine.’
I cannot compute ‘I’m fine’. Hospitals are for sick people.
‘Mom,’ I say through bursts of sobs. Tears roll over my lips. I get splash-back every time I blow out a breath.
‘Have I ever lied to you?’ she asks.
I don’t answer. She’s trying to overthrow the anxiety with facts.