Life Unaware (Entangled Teen) (19 page)

“What is it?” Nolan asked.

“I forgot my pills back in class.”

He frowned. “Do you want me to go get them?”

“Yeah, I’m sure you barging into my homeroom would go over
real
well.” I made a face.

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll do it.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t want you doing anything for me ever again, okay? You’ve done enough.” Before he could respond, I turned around and jogged the rest of the way to the girls’ bathroom, hesitating outside the door. My heart pushed up my throat, suffocating me.
Please, Amber. Please don’t be here.

I shoved the door and barged inside. Before the door could swing shut, Nolan skirted in after me.

The bathroom was quiet except for the steady drip from one of the rusted faucets. Amber was nowhere to be seen. My muscles unraveled with relief. “She’s not here,” I murmured.

“So what do we do now?” he asked.

I whirled on him. “Why don’t you get it? There’s no
we
.
You
can go fuck yourself for all I care.”

A giggle wafted from under a stall door. “Yeah.” Amber’s voice echoed off the ceramic tile, only there was something not quite right about it—something I couldn’t put my finger on. “Go fuck yourself. Both of you.” She erupted in a fit of laughter.

I froze. Fear gripped hold of me with icy fingers. Something was definitely not right. Slowly, I turned in the direction of the stall doors. “Amber?” She didn’t answer, so I leaned over and peered beneath the stalls. Amber’s long legs were splayed on the floor inside the handicap stall. “Amber, I know you’re there. Why don’t you come out and talk to me?”

She snorted. “Why the hell would I want to do that? You and your boyfriend didn’t get enough footage to completely destroy me?”

Nolan stepped around me and approached the closed stall, pressing a hand against it, testing to see if it was locked. It didn’t budge. “Regan had nothing to do with the video. If you want to blame someone, blame me, but at least come out so we can talk.”

“F-f-fuck you,” she said with a slur in her voice. “We have nothing to talk about. Soon you’ll have everything you want.”

A tremor shivered down my spine. “
Please,
Amber, come out. You’re really freaking me out.”

A soft thud answered me. A second later the metal lock of the stall door rattled together. Nolan jerked back as the entire door began to shake.

“What the—” I stepped forward as Nolan crouched down to peer beneath the stall.

“Fuck. Not again.” He whipped his head around and looked at me with wide eyes. “She’s seizing.”

“She’s what?” I couldn’t make sense of his words. The door continued to rattle. My first thought was we were having an earthquake—but that didn’t make sense because nothing else was moving.

Nolan waved me away. “Get back.”

Startled, I stumbled backward.

He reached beneath the stall and grabbed Amber’s ankles. He slid her out from under the stall; her skirt hiked up around her waist as he did, exposing her black lace underwear. She didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were clenched shut, her teeth bared. Her entire body was rigid and vibrating, like a plucked guitar string.

He let go of her legs and shuffled beside her head. He slapped her cheek lightly. “Amber? Can you hear me? Did you take something? I need to know what you took.”

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.
The words looped through my head in a never-ending stream. I wanted to go to her, but fear kept me rooted in place. I could almost convince myself as long as I didn’t go to her, didn’t
touch
her, this wasn’t really happening and somehow I’d fallen inside a nightmare.

Nolan turned to me. “She’s not responding. Call 911.”

He might as well have spoken Latin. When the pieces of his request finally fell into place, I fumbled through my pockets before remembering I’d left my phone behind. I whimpered, “I don’t have a phone.”

He pulled an iPhone out of his blazer pocket. After dialing, his hand trembled slightly when he lifted the phone to his face. “I’m in the second-floor bathroom of Saint Mary’s high school. I’m with a student I believe overdosed on something. She’s having a seizure.” He paused, listening. “I have no idea.” His eyes flickered to mine. “Regan, see if you can find a pill bottle so we can figure out what she took.”

I nodded dumbly and approached Amber’s shaking body.

“I don’t think she’s changing color,” Nolan spoke into the phone. “She’s still breathing, but her lips look a little blue.” He touched Amber’s neck and frowned. “Her heart is beating really fast. You guys better get here quick.”

I smoothed Amber’s skirt down and slipped my fingers inside the pockets to find them empty. Her body twitched beneath my hands. I jerked them away. She made a choking sound and I closed my eyes. Despite going to a Catholic high school and having an ultraconservative mother, I’d never been overly spiritual. Still, I took a moment to mutter a quick prayer for Amber—that she would make it out of this alive.

“Find anything?” Nolan asked.

I opened my eyes and shook my head.

He sighed. “Nothing,” he repeated into the phone. He nodded. “Good. Tell them to come to the second floor. We’re in the girls’ bathroom.”

Amber’s sweat-soaked hair clung to her forehead. Nolan pushed it back. “Keep looking,” he told me.

I nodded and dropped to my knees to peer beneath the stall. Except for the black mold staining the grout around the base of the toilet, nothing stood out. I sat up. “Maybe she didn’t take anything,” I said hopefully. “Maybe she’s epileptic or something?”

“I don’t think so.” He leaned forward. “Amber, can you hear me? Help is on the way. You’re going to be fine, but we really need to know what you took and how much?”

She made a strangled gurgle and swung her trembling arm up to her chest, curling her hand beneath her chin. That was when I saw it—the white cap of a pill bottle protruding from her grasp.

“She has something.” I crawled to Amber’s side and grabbed her hand, but it remained locked beneath her chin. With the spasms still coursing through her, I’d never be able to move her arm.

One by one, I pried her fingers from the pill bottle until I wrenched it loose from her grip. It was empty. I only hoped there weren’t many to begin with. I read the label. “Bupropion,” I told Nolan. “That’s what she took.”

He repeated the information to the dispatcher.

A chill washed over me. I leaned against the locked stall door as the energy drained from my body. “
Why,
Amber?” I whispered as I closed my fist tight around the bottle. A memory surfaced as if in answer. I remembered lying on my bed a little over a week ago, glancing at my own bottle of pills and thinking how easy it would be to end the pain—to end it all.

I grabbed Amber’s hand and squeezed as a sob pushed up my throat. “Please don’t die, Amber.
Please.
If you make it through this, things will be different—you’ll see. They’ll get better.”

When I looked up, men in blue uniforms surrounded us. They wrenched my former friend from my grasp and placed her on a stretcher. The moment she was rolled out of the room, time began moving in funny intervals, as if someone kept playing with the fast-forward and play buttons on the remote control of my life.

The principal appeared in front of me, talking, but I couldn’t hear a word she said. I closed my eyes, and when I reopened them my mom was there, talking. Everyone was talking—Nolan, a police officer, several teachers, and later a doctor, even though I had no recollection of going to the hospital.

Every so often I picked up a few words from the whispers murmured around me.
Shock. Trauma. Rest.
These words were uttered repeatedly until they swam inside my head and carried me into a sea of unconsciousness.

In my dreams, I saw a body dumped onto a stretcher. A hand fell over the side and a pill bottle slipped from its fingers. Dozens of pink oval pills spilled across the floor. The sound of them hitting the tile echoed off the walls like thunder.

“She’s gone,” somebody said.

A white sheet was draped across her body. Before her face was covered, I found myself approaching the stretcher for one last look. Even though the eyes were drained of life, there was no mistaking that the color was not the dark brown of Amber’s almond eyes, but the pale blue of my own.

A scream gurgled inside my throat but refused to break free.

It could have been me.

Chapter Twenty-One

I sat up with a gasp, shattering the dream into fragments. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands until I was sure I was awake and wouldn’t succumb to another nightmare. When I finally opened my eyes, I found myself in a hospital bed with a thin, stiff sheet covering my body. I ripped it off to discover I still wore my school uniform. Sunlight filtered through the dusty blinds of a window to my right, creating lines like prison bars on the floor.

“It’s okay, honey,” Dad said. I whirled around to find him sitting in a chair beside my bed. He wore his oral surgeon scrubs and balanced a coffee cup between his knees. He set it on a nearby counter and stood. “Just sit back. You were in shock, so the doctor gave you something to relax. You’ve been sleeping for several hours.”

Shock.

Hospital.

My heart surged against my ribs. Were they going to commit me? Force me into a bathrobe and lock me in a ward where shoes were stripped of their laces and pencils were replaced with crayons? “I-I don’t want to stay. I want to go home.”

Dad held up his hands. “You don’t have to stay here. We’re going to take you home as soon as the doctor sees you’re up and gives us the all clear.”

I nodded and raked my fingers through my tangled hair, trying to make sense of everything that had happened. There’d been a video…I went looking for Amber…Nolan followed and…
oh God.

I dropped my hands and snapped my head up. “Amber.”

Dad nodded. “So far, so good. It’s too early to tell if she’s suffered any internal damage, but she’s alive, and she wouldn’t be if you hadn’t found her, honey. You saved her life.”

I wasn’t so sure. Would she have taken those pills if I hadn’t recorded her conversation with Christy? And what about Jordan? Would she have swallowed the bleach if I’d stopped Amber from laughing at her? Hot tears welled in my eyes. I’d wanted to change, but all I’d succeeded in doing was causing more hurt.

“Hey now.” Dad pulled several tissues from a nearby box and handed them to me. “Everything is going to be fine. You’ll see.”

I made a face before dabbing my eyes with the tissue. “You don’t get it.
Nothing
will ever be fine again.”

Before he could argue, my mother rushed into the room. Her suit was disheveled and several strands of hair had fallen loose from her French twist. “Oh, Regan.”

I cringed and pressed my back to the pillows. Knowing my mother, she’d probably heard the entire story by now—everything from my private messages posted on the lockers to the video played at school. I held my breath and waited for the lecture—to be told what a disappointment I was, how she expected more out of me, and how badly I might have hurt her chances for reelection when the media found out.

Mom dropped her purse on the ground. She approached me, her lips pale from being pressed so tightly together. She grabbed me by the shoulders.

I swallowed hard. Here it came.

“Regan, I—” She snapped her jaw shut as if changing her mind and, instead, pulled me against her chest.

The fierceness of her embrace startled me. I tried to pull away, but Mom only tightened her grip. “My baby,” she whispered against the top of my head while stroking the ends of my hair. The warmth of her enveloped me, as did her Chanel No. 5—the same jasmine and rose perfume she’d worn since I was a kid. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d held me like this. Her arms holding me tight flooded me with memories of life when it had yet to become so
complicated.

The tears I’d fought so desperately to hold on to finally broke free and spilled down my cheeks. “Mom.” A lump wedged inside my throat. “I’m so sorry.”

“Shhh,” she whispered against the top of my head. “I’m the one who’s sorry, Regan. The school showed me the video. I had no idea what you were going through. I put too much pressure on you. I struggled so hard to get where I am today. I just thought if you succeeded now, life would be so much easier for you than it was for me. I was wrong.” She sucked in a ragged breath. “Can you ever forgive me?”

Forgive
her
? Surely the drugs were screwing with my ears. “
I’m
the one who messed everything up. And because I did, everyone at school hates me. And Amber…” I choked back a sob.

“Shhh,” she repeated. “We’re not going to worry about any of that right now—one day at a time. The important thing is Amber’s alive and you’re okay.”

But I wasn’t okay. In a matter of weeks my entire life had slipped out from under me, and I bore the scars from my fall. The things I’d done and the things I’d seen would haunt me forever. I knew this because every time I closed my eyes I saw Jordan’s lifeless feet on the television screen in homeroom and Amber’s thrashing body on the bathroom floor.

I knew Mom only wanted to make me feel better—to give me a glimmer of hope where there was none. She shouldn’t have bothered. At seventeen, I was old enough to know better—to know the truth.

Some things would
never
be okay.

A knock on my bedroom door made me close my book. “Regan?” Mom cracked the door open and smiled. “How’s it going?” She looked strange in jeans and a Harvard sweatshirt. Her several-years-old tennis shoes didn’t have a speck of dirt on them. I guess she’d never had much use for them before. She hadn’t taken a single vacation day since winning her first election a decade ago. When she’d told me in the hospital she’d taken two weeks off to spend with me, I thought she’d go crazy. Surprisingly enough, she appeared more relaxed than I’d ever seen her.

I set my book aside and sat up against my pillows. “I’m good.”
Just like I was when you checked a half hour ago,
I mentally added. Still, I didn’t mind the frequent check-ins. They were distractions from the dark memories that waited for me when books, internet, and television weren’t enough to keep me occupied.

She smiled the same overly enthusiastic grin she usually reserved for campaign fund-raisers. “Great. So I guess that means you’re feeling up for a visitor?”

I jerked upright. “It’s not—”

“No.”

I relaxed. This week, Nolan had shown up at the house twice. Both times I’d hidden in my room and begged my parents to send him away. The second time, Nolan waited for more than an hour before he finally gave up and went home. I knew because I kept checking out the window to see if his car was still in the circular driveway. I had no idea what he could possibly have said to my parents in that amount of time, but I also didn’t care. After lying to me like he had—
using
me—I couldn’t care less if I never saw him again. “Who is it?” I asked.

“Me,” Payton answered, flinging the door open wide. She carried a bulging backpack, which she dropped on the floor with a loud thud. “And I brought a week’s worth of homework. Isn’t that exciting?” She grinned.

Mom grabbed the backpack and lugged it to my desk. “Thank you, Payton. Regan can’t afford to let her grades slip—” She caught herself, biting off the rest of the sentence while shaking her head. “You know what? Why don’t we worry about homework tomorrow? We could catch a movie tonight. Hey…maybe Payton would like to join us? It could be a girls’ night. What do you think, Payton?”

“Er…” She gave me a sideways glance. “Sure?”

“Excellent.” Mom walked to the door. “I’ll go check out some showtimes. Be right back.”

As soon as she left, Payton turned to me. “Who the hell was that and what has she done with your mother?”

I shrugged. “Don’t question it. Alien, demonic possession, or whatever, it’s a vast improvement.”

“I’ll say.” Payton jumped onto my bed. “So when are you coming back to school? I have to eat lunch with my brother. It totally sucks.”

My throat went tight at the mention of him. I shook my head. “Any word on Amber?”

Payton sighed. “She’s alive, that’s about all I know. I tried to visit her at the hospital but she was moved to the mental ward once she stabilized. I went to visit her there, too, but she’s refusing all visits except for family.” She shrugged. “So like I said, at school it’s just been me. I really miss you.”

I fell back against my pillow. “You’re the only one.”

“That’s not true.” She rolled over on her stomach and gave me a meaningful look.

I scowled at her. “I don’t want to talk about
him
. Besides, I’m not really sure about the whole school thing. The thought of going back and facing everyone…” I shuddered. “I just don’t know when I’ll be ready—or if I ever will.”

“So you’re just going to quit school?”

“Not exactly. Mom and I talked about hiring a tutor for the rest of the year.”

“That would be a real shame.” Payton plucked a piece of lint from my comforter.

“Why?”

She looked up at me. “Things are different now. Since the whole video-Amber thing. We had this assembly with these speakers who talked about tolerance and stuff.” She rolled her eyes. “That part was lame, they were like
forty
or something. What do they really know about what it’s like in high school now? Anyway, when they finished, Nolan got up and talked about your project. He said the video of you that didn’t get shown was supposed to be phase one, and now he’d like the entire school to help with phase two.” She shrugged. “I don’t know, it was like he connected with the entire gymnasium or something. Everyone got really excited.”

I sat up. “Why the hell would they let Nolan do anything after the whole video incident?”

She looked up at me. “Look, I’m not defending him or anything. I’m still really pissed he broke into my room and took our private messages off my computer. But Blake admitted to the principal that Nolan backed out of the project when you started getting bullied. That pissed Blake off so she went behind his back to continue the project, even going as far as stealing the video you took of Amber and Christy off of Nolan’s camera.”

The part about Blake didn’t surprise me. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out she couldn’t stand me, and now that I knew why, I couldn’t say I blamed her. Hell, I’d done my own fair share of lying and deceiving to get what I wanted. The part that hurt most about Nolan was that because of his lies, I couldn’t be sure he’d ever really cared about me. Maybe all of it had been an act to get the information he wanted. I picked up my book and pretended to read the back cover. “Can we talk about something else?”

“The Snowflake Ball is tomorrow. I don’t have a date, and if you don’t, I thought we could go together,” she said hopefully.

I set the book down and made a face. “You’re joking, right?”

“Aw. Come on. It could be really fun. We’ll get our glam on, dance with a few hotties…
Please, Regan.”

“I’m sorry.” I drew my legs to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. “I don’t really feel much like celebrating anything right now. Besides, there’s no way I’d be allowed to attend, with me being out of school and all.”

“That’s not true.” Payton scooted closer to me. “I asked Principal McDill and she said she’d love for you to come. If you don’t believe me, we’ll stay long enough for a song or two, and if you hate it, we’ll leave. I promise.”

“No.” I thought about Amber spending the dance in a psych ward. “I really don’t think that would be a good idea.”

She flopped against my mattress. “You can’t spend the rest of your life hiding out in your room.”

“I’m not hiding.”

“Yeah?” She arched an eyebrow. “Then prove it. Come to the dance with me.”

“Why the hell would I do that? Everyone hates me.”

“That’s not true.” She crawled beside me. “I think a lot of people think you’re pretty amazing. After all, not many people would have the strength to make a video apology for the entire school to watch like you did. That took real balls.”

“Wait a sec.” I jerked back. “How do you know about my video? It never got played.”

“Um…” Payton looked at the floor. “That’s not entirely true.”

“What?”

She twisted her hands inside her sleeves. “I told you about that assembly, right? Nolan played your video—the one you worked on together—before he told the school about your project.”

“It’s not
our
project,” I said, throwing my hands in the air. “I don’t know the first thing about it. And who the hell gave him the right to show that video to an assembly anyway?”

Payton shrugged. “He thought you’d be cool with it.”

I curled my fingers into my blanket. “I am definitely
not
cool with it. After the last video disaster, I’m done trying to fix anything. Every time the spotlight gets turned on me something goes horribly wrong. I just want to fade away in peace.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Fade away?”

“That’s not what I meant.” Exhaustion crept over me. I leaned forward and raked my fingers through my hair. “I just want to lie low until this whole thing blows over. The less attention I draw to myself, the better.”

My mom walked in before Payton could argue. She stared at the iPad in her hands. “That new romantic comedy is showing at seven. Or there’s that action flick with Bruce Willis at seven thirty.” She sighed happily. “And you
know
how I feel about Bruce.” She lowered the iPad when we didn’t respond. “Okay, what’s the matter?”

Payton folded her arms across her chest. “I was
trying
to convince Regan to go to the dance with me tomorrow.”

“That sounds like a wonderful idea.” Mom cocked her head. “You never leave the house except to go—” She bit the words off midsentence, not that I needed her to finish. The only time I’d left the house since ending up in the hospital was to visit my therapist. “So what’s the problem?”

“The problem,” I told her, “is I have no desire to go. I’m just not ready to face the people at school yet.”

Mom and Payton exchanged defeated looks. “All right, honey,” Mom said. “Nobody is going to force you to do anything. But maybe take the night to think about it before immediately refusing. We could go dress shopping in the morning and get our nails done. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

I had to admit, it kinda did sound fun. The most girl time I’d spent with my mom over the last year was when we took a weekend to tour Columbia University. Still, there was no way I was going to the dance. “No, it wouldn’t.”