September Rain Bk 2, Savor The Days Series (37 page)

After the first bag of chips, I was
tempted to start on the second, but opted to share a small tray of
cookies with Avery instead. After the movie was over, we decided to
see what else was on and ended up watching a cooking show. The chef
was starting swordfish.

Avery hopped up and drew back the
curtains after her third check of the parking lot yielded nothing.
We settled back in, remembering that everything takes time. Anemic
Psychos were just taking the stage when we left. There were a lot
of people at the club and Jake wouldn’t want to leave until he’d
talked to and signed stuff for everybody. Then, there was always
the chance of getting drawn into something with some of the other
guys from the other bands on the tour.

By the time the swordfish was served,
I was stuffed with junk food. I popped a piece of gum and watched
Avery channel surf, wishing I wouldn’t have followed out her so
easily. I should have stayed behind with Jake. It didn’t matter
where I was, or how assertive I intended to be. I was still the one
waiting.

Time seemed to drag. The window was
cracked open and there wasn’t a sound from outside.

“I’m going to sleep.” Avery announced
and my heart sank. “Don’t wake me up when they get here.” She
plopped down on the other bed and rolled to face the closet,
adding, “I’m pissed.”

When I looked out the window, the moon
was high. There was also a white passenger van parking a few doors
down. People piled out, but I didn’t see Jake. Or
Angelica.

I turned back to tell
Avery.

“I don’t give a shit.” She covered her
head with a pillow.

After a quick look in the mirror and a
quick brush of my hair, I opened my door. There were several people
out in the lot. Max saw me right away and started towards me. I met
him halfway.

“Hey girl,” he said, “Jake’s not with
us.” He slumped down to speak in my ear. “He came back a while ago
then left again.”

My stomach dropped. “When is he coming
back?”

“Uh, he’s doing something—said he’d
talk to you about it when he’s done.”

I nodded my head, feeling
disappointment flood my eyes. “Where’s your newest
member?”

“Over there.” I followed Max’s pointed
finger to a small dark car that was pulling up beside the van and
watched Angelica get out and walk toward Andrew who was standing
with a mix of guys and girls, all smoking and talking. So she was
present and accounted for.

I couldn’t remember Jake mentioning
anything about leaving me alone. That morning he’d said we’d bunk
up again. Then, he was upset with me and wouldn’t talk until he
calmed down. I left him at the club and now he was openly avoiding
me. I wanted to close my eyes and let the pain wash over me.
Instead, I opened them wide to keep the emotion from falling down
my cheeks.

Max still saw how upset I was and gave
me a big, warm hug. “You’re good,” he grinned. “He’s just not ready
to talk yet.”

I wanted to know why Jake ditched me,
but couldn’t bring myself to ask. If it was something bad, I didn’t
think I could take it. Besides, I’d never asked Max for anything
like that before. Then, I was distracted by a girl standing behind
him, one who’d gotten out of the van at the same time he had. She
was waiting over by the door, and then she was half way to us with
a hand on one hip. She cleared her throat, reminding Max that he
had better things to do.

Max turned and told her, “Hold on.”
Back to me he said, “I promise it’ll be okay.” He planted a kiss on
my cheek, and one of my forehead, and then a third on my other
cheek. I was almost smiling when he pulled away. “You’re his girl.
He might be pissed, but he’s still gonna take care of
you.”

I nodded, disappointed, but also
comforted as Max walked away.

The night was muggy as I stood in the
lot long after everyone was gone. Sweat was building on my neck and
back, watching other people pass by. They were living their lives
and I felt like mine had stopped. Jake was mad and gone and it was
work to take a step in any direction without him.

Eventually, I decided I should get
back to my room. But on the way, I couldn’t help but notice how
extremely loud the lights in the parking lot had become. How
unusually bright they suddenly seemed compared to just a moment
before. Suddenly lights burst and flickered across my vision,
blinding me with their bright and leaving me in the dark. The
muscles in my neck and back seized in hulking knots that drew my
shoulders up. My stomach constricted in a violent crush that took
my legs out from under me. Avery’s called out. I pictured her in
the doorway of our room, imagined her lips moving, forming my name.
Her voice was drowned by the extraordinary buzzing noise that
burrowed into my ears.

Lights flashed, bringing me back to
the parking lot. My knees were on the coarse asphalt. The night was
so, so bright, like staring at the sun, or the end of the
matchstick that lit the fuse of a migraine.

It was another migraine sweeping in,
making me want to wail. Every cell in my body went into overdrive,
preparing for the onslaught. Yes, I was hurting and I could barely
see, but this was nothing. It was only beginning.

My temples started to throb, the
pressure building and drawing inward, deep into my brain. My blood
cells were skyscrapers inside my undersized head, trying to force
their enormity through my insufficient corpuscles. They ripped
everything in their path, tearing me fiber by fiber. I braced my
hands over my head. How was I supposed to stay together? How was I
supposed to survive? To breathe, when it hurt so badly?

All I could do was let Avery take me
into the motel room. My legs didn’t want to work. I couldn’t see or
hear anything beyond the ripping in my head, the rush of blood and
the absolute hell it brought to the veins in my forehead, eyes, my
neck and shoulders. My throat had closed. My mouth watered from the
horrid pain. There was only one place I could go. Only one thing I
could do to combat the migraine. I needed my pills and I had to lie
down.

My vision cleared long
enough to see Avery’s lips moving. I think she was saying
something. Then,
BOOM
! The room exploded with noise. Blaring lights from the lamp
on the dresser. The piercing confusion of lights from the parking
lot. The TV set: I swear, people could hear it from a hundred miles
away.

Avery dropped me on the bed. Her
deafening whisper blared that she was afraid to move me. She knew
it would get worse if I didn’t keep still. Although, I couldn’t
imagine I could possibly feel anything more than I did in that
moment. But that is one thing about pain: you can never imagine
anything worse until you feel it. Then, it’s a whole new level of
torture you never knew existed.

There was nothing that I could do
except lay still in a dark, quiet room.

Avery shut off the blaring TV and the
click was so loud, I think my eardrums burst. She rubbed my
forehead trying to soothe me but even the slightest touch of her
painted fingers just prickled in my skin and made me
scream.

I cried, “Bathroom.” I had to be on a
hard surface. Carpets made noise. Beds were worse. The thicker the
fiber, the more noise it made. I had to be in the bathroom. When I
puked I had to be near the toilet.

Avery helped me from the bed and into
the bathroom, somehow managing to touch me as little as possible.
The biting pain of my headache made me crumple onto the tile and
beg to be left alone. Quiet was my only solace. Darkness, my only
friend.

“Light.” The painful sound of my voice
was like a chainsaw to the brain and needles to the eyeballs. It
made me want to pull my teeth out for counter-pressure.

Avery turned off the horrible buzzing
light and left the room, closing the door tight behind her. I knew
she felt bad. She’d told me once that she wished she could trade
places with me. As much as I hated to suffer those headaches, I
would never ever wish it on another human being, but just then, I
wanted to reach out to her, to beg her to take it away.

After some focused concentration, I
managed to calm myself enough to deal quietly with the dread that
seeped into my bones, corrupting every fiber of my body. I had no
control over this pain; how bad it got or how long it lasted. I
simply wished for the mercy of an axe. The explosive throbs felt as
if grenades were going off inside my skull. The pieces of them
ricocheting around my head, banging one spot and then another, but
I somehow stayed intact. The reverb bounced in waves through my
bones, into my jaw, down my shoulders, through my spine, and into
my back. My teeth hurt, the soft skin of my mouth ached like my
cells were crashing into each other. It would have been much more
tolerable to just die.

The sounds outside my chamber tapered
off, but the horrible buzz of the lights in the parking lot were
still on loudspeaker. I tried to take solace in knowing that the
sun would come up and the slicing buzz would eventually shut
off.

The door to my tomb slowly swung open.
Avery tip-toed in her socks over the tile—the noise was fingernails
on a chalkboard—and set my pills on the floor near my mouth. Next
to that, she set a glass of water, then tip-toed back out,
carefully shutting the door behind her.

What was I going to do? Jake was
coming. Part of me hoped he’d take pity on me and forget the whole
anger-thing. But another part of me worried: how was I supposed to
go out to California with him? What if the pain didn’t go away
before we had to leave tomorrow? What would happen if I got one of
my migraines out there? What if I was alone when it happened? Who
would help me, then?

Beyond the thin walls, I
heard Avery moving. A soft
tap
on the clock radio and the low hum of Guns ’N’
Roses, “Don’t Cry” was playing. She knew that music always soothed
my senses like a balm. I embraced this small mercy.
Click-click
from the
door as it locked, a slide of the window and grating rings of the
curtain rod as she closed the curtains. The music helped soften the
sharp sounds, spreading its’ white-noise over me.

Having a migraine is like
suddenly gaining super-sensitive hearing. A most horrifically
uncool superpower. A gift straight out of hell; a cursed present
straight from the devil himself. I once explained it to Avery, and
she was like, “But that sounds awesome.” It was
not
. It hurt to hear people
chattering five or six blocks away, hearing a fly crawl across the
wall, or a light bulb burning. The fly may as well be playing
castanets into a loudspeaker. His wings may as well be flapping
into an amplifier set at decibels meant to destroy eardrums. It
hurts like nothing in the world. And it had been my curse as long
as I could remember.

The sound inside the room—my breath on
the tile, the whistling blood in my ears, and temples, my horrible
heartbeat—if only I could stop all of it. Find a way to press that
button to halt the automatic breath, or mute my heart.

It took some time, but I managed to
taper my breathing to a shallow pull. When it still bothered me, I
reached slowly up for a towel hanging on the rack. The motion
brought my migraine to a new level, but once I got the terrycloth
under me to muffle the reverb of my breath on the tile, I could
concentrate on the hum of the music coming through the
door.

I let the tears seep out. It hurt to
cry so I couldn’t actually throw a fit like the pain demanded, but
letting the saltwater drip down relieved some pressure. I just had
to tell myself that I was not hearing anything. No one can hear
tears.

After some time, maybe a month or only
a few minutes, I managed to bury myself in the haze of music enough
to relax.

I imagined I was inside my closet back
at the Fosters trailer. I was listening to my music and curling
into a ball. My arms tightened around my raised knees. I hugged
them to me, forcing myself to get smaller and smaller. I tucked in
and shrank. I got so tiny, that the pain couldn’t find me, and
slipped into fitful sleep.

40

—Angel

Mister Brandon is leaning in and
mumbling.

While he blathers, I am wishing, for
the millionth time, that an artery had burst—a peaceful and massive
brain hemorrhage—and I never would have woken up that
night.

But then, I note the smooth of his
murmuring and know that my layer’s actually trying to get my
attention. He’s probably been for a while because he tempers his
tone when he’s frustrated. The more upset he looks, the more
relaxed he sounds and right now he sounds like he’s fighting
sleep.

I should probably care about what he’s
saying, but I just don’t. My eyes are blinded to the room I’m in:
as if my mind is still there on that dark bathroom floor and my
body is miles away, stretched beyond the abyss of time and space. I
am here and there. Divided and singular. Two different entities: a
bird and the wind—soaring together, yet remaining separate. The
memory is a whirlwind breaking across my feathers, making me
falter, making me remember that I never had wings. I was never
free.

My fall concluded with an
earth-shattering smack. I’m already dead, skimming over my autopsy
photos, scanning the wounded memories from that box inside my
head.