The bath cools quickly, but I lie in it until my skin feels too tight for my skeleton. Then, with great reluctance, I climb out.
Depression can’t come in, I think, drawing a glass half-full in the condensation on the mirror. I’m already covering a multitude of colours on the mental health spectrum. Depression can’t come in.
The lines of my drawing drip and blend together. I can see myself in the glass. ‘You’re not missing much,’ I tell my reflection, then I slap a preppy-pink blush back into my cheeks. ‘You’re fine.’
I braid my hair over my shoulder, pull on the robe that’s hung on the back of the door, and step out into the hall, whistling while I walk, because everybody knows whistling induces an unshakeable delirium. I should probably stop watching Disney movies.
I’m caught between the kitchen and the hall when a noise stops me dead in my tracks.
‘Hello. Anyone home?’
My heart splutters to a standstill, and I slam my back up against the doorjamb.
The pot-bellied gremlin known as panic claws its way up my throat and clogs my airways. The cold air of the kitchen licks at the damp stretches of skin that my robe is too short to cover, but it doesn’t cool me. Fire burns through my blood as the fear takes hold.
I can’t see him because we own a fridge the size of Saturn and it’s blocking my line of sight, but I can hear his heavy feet padding against the laminate.
Fuck. I can’t feel my legs.
‘I’m looking for Norah.’
He’s here to rob me.
‘Norah Dean?’
I’m going to die.
My heart pounds against my ribcage; my knees curl in. I need help, I need help. I need stability because the floor is moving and I’m going to collapse, and then my robe will flop open, and then I’ll lose my towel, and then . . . oh God . . .
‘Yo.’ A shadow moves to my left. ‘Are you Norah?’
Can’t. Talk. Need. Oxygen.
‘I’m from Helping Hands. I’ve got a delivery for a Miss Norah Dean. That you?’
Helping Hands. I know them.
The tension in my neck recedes just enough so I can lift my head and look at the boy in my kitchen. A scrawny twig of a thing with a shaved head and ripped jeans. Just above the rips, about an inch below his side pocket, there are three skull patches, stitched on in no particular pattern, which bugs me way more than it should. He’s chewing gum like a cow chewing grass and looking at me with a poised brow.
‘Nice place you got here,’ he says. ‘Big.’
It’s not six o’clock. If it were, I would have been ready for him.
‘Hey. You okay?’ He extends an arm in my direction, and I avoid it as if it were a bullet. I have this thing about being touched. Unless it’s Mom or Dr Reeves, I can’t handle it.
‘What are you doing in my house?’ Teeth clenched, I glare at his outstretched hand. He drops it back by his side.
‘I’m. Here. From. Helping. Hands,’ he says slowly. ‘I have a delivery for Norah Dean.’
‘Yeah, I got that. What I want to know is why you’re inside my house.’
‘Knock-and-no-answer procedure. I’m just following the rules.’ A grin stretches across his lips.
‘What rule says it’s okay for you to break in to someone’s house?’
‘I didn’t break in. I had a key.’ He pulls a clipboard out from under his arm.
‘What?’ He’s lying.
‘A key. You know, one of those little metal things that open locks?’ He plucks a pen from behind his ear and holds it out to me. ‘I need you to sign.’
‘How do you have a key?’
‘You gotta hand one over when you sign up for the service. Like I said, knock-and-no-answer procedure. If you knock and the client doesn’t answer, you go inside to make sure they haven’t kicked the bucket or fallen off a ladder and knocked themselves unconscious. Died. It’s all in the terms and conditions.’ This guy has a real way with words. Mom’s never mentioned this key thing to me before. Understandably, I guess. Still, looks like I’m going to be deadbolting the door from here on.
Helping Hands Guy is getting impatient. He shakes his pen at me for a fourth time. I can’t touch it. It’s chewed and marked with fingerprints. The thing needs its own Caution: Contaminated sticker. Not that I can sign his paperwork yet anyway. I glance at the clock above the oven. It’s just past 5.45. When people change plans, times, locations, it turns my brain into the aftermath of an egg that’s been dropped ten thousand feet. He’s early. I’m not ready. Not prepared. The need to defend myself is overwhelming.
‘I would have been ready for you at six,’ I tell him.
‘I’ll make a mental note of that.’ He retracts the pen, uses it to scratch his scalp before tapping it on the paper. ‘Sign, please.’ I swear I see little luminous green blobs of bacteria peppering the sheet.
‘I think I have a pen,’ I reply, hugging my torso as I scour the kitchen for a stray Bic. There’s a Sharpie stuck to the notepad on the fridge. It will have to do.