Brain Storm (A Taylor Morrison Novel Book 1) (3 page)

“Move,” I whispered softly. “Move, move, move.” I was practically chanting, hearing my voice tighten in frustration as I repeated the word time and again and still, not a shudder, not a quiver. Nothing. It just sat there, mocking me and my stupidity.
 

I jerked up, slamming the edge of the table with open palms, frustrated beyond belief and caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror, hanging across from me on the wall. It stopped me in my tracks. My hair was sticking out all over my head, the towel I had wrapped it in earlier having fallen off. My eyes were big with a wild look that was definitely disconcerting and there was little, if any, color in my face. I looked crazy, which was only appropriate because what I was doing definitely fell into the ‘crazy’ category. All of which wouldn’t have been so bad, except my experiment had failed and there was a real possibility that I had slipped over the edge and actually
was
crazy.
 

Nothing else could explain it. Something was wrong with me. I knew it deep down, had suspected it for a while, but I’d been trying my absolute best to avoid facing it. This morning had changed all that. I couldn’t deny it any longer, but I couldn’t explain it either. This spoon experiment certainly hadn’t helped any. I’d been at it for hours, still had no answers, and to top it all off, now I had one vicious headache.

Exhausted, I laid my head on the table, the cool smooth surface soothing against my cheek, and let out a deep breath that sounded dangerously close to a moan. I closed my eyes, confused and sad. What was happening to me? And why?
 

ONE

THE POUNDING ON the door brought me up in a panic. I must have fallen asleep or passed out. I don’t know which. I jerked up, way too fast, made myself totally dizzy and nearly fell off the chair. Completely disoriented, I braced my hands on each side of the table, trying to get my balance, while my mind whirled trying to remember where I was and what had happened. My eyes finally stopped spinning around in my head and catching sight of the spoons, it all came roaring back to me.
 

Good grief. The dining room looked like a spoon cemetery. I had no idea of how long I’d been out, but at least my headache was down to a dull throbbing. The banging noise certainly wasn’t helping though and I eased myself up and started shuffling toward the door. I felt like I had to be 100 years old. Everything was stiff and sore, which is what I deserved for sleeping on the table, of all things. I braced one hand on my back as I leaned against the door, trying to see through the peephole. I had a fleeting thought that maybe Denzel had found me, but the reality was far worse.

“Who is it?” I asked, stalling. My voice sounded raspy and was barely above a croak. I cleared my throat and repeated myself with much better results. I knew perfectly well who it was. I could clearly see her through the peephole. The threat of Denzel was nothing compared to the reality of Trinity when she was on a tear. She’s my best friend, sometimes employer, and along with her grandmother, the closest thing to family I have. She’s also one of the most respected and feared attorneys in town. They didn’t call her ”The Pit-bull” for nothing. She could eat you up and spit you out without so much as a blink of an eye. And she had come for me.
 

“Open the door!” It was her lawyer voice she was using now. The one that said she wasn’t going to stand for anymore nonsense and to get the door open. Now. I had no idea how long she had been out there, but from the sound of her voice, it had been long enough. This was the last thing I needed, but I didn’t have a choice. She wasn’t going away. I opened the door just as she was gearing up for another round of pounding, stopping her arm in mid-recoil. She looked at me and froze, her eyes going big. Within seconds, she went from furious to laughing like a hyena, right there in the hallway in front of my door. I would have wondered what the joke was, except she was managing to point at me during her fit of laughter.

“Good Trinity. Really nice. At least come inside and do this. I do have neighbors.”
 

“Oh my gosh, Taylor, have you seen yourself?” She staggered into the condo and leaned against the wall trying to catch her breath.
 

I wandered over to the mirror in the foyer and looked to see what was so funny. I’d seen myself earlier and I couldn’t imagine I looked much different now. I was wrong. My eyes had gone from wild and crazed to glazed-over with bags big enough to pack most of the contents of my closet into them. Stress had tightened my lips and jaw together and the remains of my headache had me squinting through little slits to see myself. I looked like death. Trinity was obviously amused at my hair which was still standing on end all over my head except now, the right side was pressed flat against the side of my face. It must have happened when I was in a coma on the table. As if this wasn’t enough, I had a bright cherry red circle on my cheek where I had been lying on the table. Lovely. Just lovely. I turned back to Trinity, which was all she needed to dissolve in another fit of laughter. She was trying to say something.

“Yo…. you… your hair,” she stammered out, pointing again.

“What about it?” I tried to give the impression that there was nothing out of the ordinary, which only stoked the fires for Trinity, who was now doubled over with her hands braced on her knees. She had long ago dropped her purse on the floor along with her briefcase in an effort, I suppose, not to collapse onto the floor. As I watched her trying to get some air into her lungs between guffaws, I found myself smiling in spite of the day I’d had and the cloud hanging over my head. I was amazed to feel my nerves start to unwind and things start to come back into perspective. It’s hard to take yourself seriously when your best friend is about to require medical assistance from laughing so hard. Perhaps this wasn’t the end of the world as I knew it. I glanced again in the mirror and this time was able to see the some of the humor in the situation. I normally was fairly well groomed. In fact, I couldn’t recall a time I had ever looked like this, even straight out from surgery, when everyone looks awful and your hair is a mess from those stunningly attractive head caps they put on you. Nope, this was definitely a first.
 

I noticed that Trinity had worked her way down to mostly sniffling among a few remaining snorts of laughter. If the opposing council could see her now, propped against the wall, with tears running down her face, they won’t be so afraid of her.
 

“I’m sorry, Taylor,” she managed to choke out, as she pushed herself off from the wall and wiped at her face. “It’s really not that bad. I think it’s just that when you missed our lunch date and I couldn’t reach you, I was really worried. I canceled my last appointment because I thought you were dead or something and I was scared and angry and then you opened the door and looked like… well, I don’t know what, but nothing good.”

She stopped to pick up her bags and headed toward the kitchen, talking over her shoulder at me as I followed. “I guess I was so relieved to know you were all ….” Her voice faded out as the spied my handy work in the dining room. “Taylor, what is going on?” she demanded, all traces of humor gone. She pinned me with her lawyer, make them talk, glare. The change was so fast, all I could do was blink at her. “First you stand me up for lunch and then you don’t answer your phone. I rush over here thinking something horrible has happened and you don’t answer the door and I stand out there pounding on it like some fool. When I am about ready to call the police, you finally show up and you look like you’ve been beaten up with an ugly stick and now here’s your Grandma’s good spoons all over the floor. I repeat,” she spat out the words as she slowly started walking toward me with her hands on her hips and fire in her eye. “What is going on?”

“You phoned?” I asked, more than a little confused.
 

“Yes, I phoned. Both phones and repeatedly. Have you been here all day? Didn’t you hear them?” She strode over to my home phone and snatched it up, listening for dial tone. “There’s nothing wrong with this phone, so what is wrong with you? Why didn’t you answer?”

Good question. I never heard the phones ringing. How was that even possible?

“What time is it?” I asked, preferring to change the subject than think about the ramifications of what she was saying.

“What?” Trinity checked her watch and gave me a questioning look along with the answer. “4:45. In the afternoon, if you haven’t figured that out.” At my blank look, it became obvious, I hadn’t. “Are you telling me, you don’t know what time it is? That you never heard the phone ring? Have you been here all day?”

“No,” I replied. “Just most of the day and before you ask again, there is an explanation. Of sorts.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? There’s either an explanation or there isn’t. Which one is it?” We were in the kitchen now and Trinity threw her stuff on the counter in exasperation and caught sight of my mess in the sink. “I can see you managed time for coffee. Have you eaten anything today?”

Come to think of it, no. Food would probably help get my brain going again. I sort of bobbled my head in answer to her question and opened the refrigerator, searching for the chunk of cheddar I kept on hand for just such emergencies.
 

“Look Trinity. It’s been a weird day and I’m not sure I understand it, but I’m okay. Just a little foggy, probably from my headache,” I started explaining as I grabbed a knife from the block.

“Probably from lack of food,” she corrected me, eyeing the knife in my hand.
 

Gee, it wasn’t like I was going to attack someone with it. Then again, catching a glimpse of my reflection in the toaster, I couldn’t really blame her for thinking I might be a little bonkers. Oh, if she only knew the whole story….

“Let’s make a deal,” I tried again, taking a bite out of the huge slice of cheese I had cut for myself. “I need to go take a shower. Obviously, I also need to do something with my hair and get some food. How about I get cleaned up, you order some dinner in and I’ll tell you the whole sordid tale.”
 

She looked me in the eyes for several seconds. I could tell she was trying to determine my state of mind and if it was safe to let me in the bathroom by myself or not. To help sway her, I tossed the knife in the sink and leaned back against the counter to munch on my cheese, trying my best to look sane. I must have passed the test, because she seemed to deflate a little, her facial muscles relaxing. I knew the signs. She was coming around.

“Sordid?” she questioned.

“Well no, not really. It was a figure of speech. But at the very least it’s bizarre. You love bizarre.”

“I do. I love bizarre.” She was caving. “You promise to tell me the WHOLE story and not leave anything out?”

“I promise,” I called out as I trotted off to the bathroom. “I’ll even tell you about Denzel.”

“Denzel? DENZEL? What?” I smiled to myself as I closed the door to her questions feeling pleased at having escaped the inquisitor and gaining time to compose my thoughts.

And just what is the story?
I asked myself, as I looked in the mirror. I had no idea. The only thing I knew for sure, was that whatever was going on, Trinity would be right there with me. She was a good friend. As the hot spray of the shower hit my sore back and muscles, it was a very comforting thought.

I CAME OUT
of the bathroom feeling like a new woman. My hair had survived its fourth wash of the day and the hot water had helped relieve my headache. Trinity had set the table in the dining room. A quick glance at the table told me we were using the old mismatched flatware from the kitchen, although Grandma’s good silver was conspicuously absent from the floor. I heard the doorbell announcing the arrival of dinner and it was none too soon. I was starving, which I took as a positive sign that I was headed back to my normal self, whatever that might be.
 

“Well, you look better,” Trinity said as she came through the door juggling a pizza box and a couple of take-out salads.
 
Normally I avoided pizza and the morning after guilt like the plague, but tonight the smell coming from that box was enough to make me forego my salad and dig right in.

“So spill.” She hadn’t even let me get the first bite of pizza. Almost there, close enough to see the speckles on the pepperoni. I weighed my options and went ahead and took a big bite, and ended up on the receiving end of a steely eyed glare as I slowly chewed it. I gave her the wait-a-minute finger sign and closed my eyes so I could enjoy that first bite in peace. I chased it down with a big swallow of ice cold Diet Coke. Heaven. Absolute heaven.

I opened my eyes to see her poised with her fork over her salad watching me. Spill, she had said, so spill I did. I told her the whole story, including the magic keys, the flying coffee and Denzel. Then I wrapped up explaining my far-from-scientific brain experiment during which I had failed to move a single spoon. Apart from throwing them across the room. She had listened in silence, quietly munching away on her salad until I got to the flying coffee part, when she shoved it aside and went for the pizza. I understood completely.
 

Dinner finished, we pushed our plates aside. Trinity placed her elbows on the table, propped her chin on her hands and took a deep breath. I braced for impact.

“Okay, let me get this straight. You’ve had this going on for a couple of months now and I’m just now hearing about it?” She was staring me right in the eye.