But when I got to the other side, the boy had his forehead pressed to his knees, curled into a physical ball about as much as someone who wasn’t a contortionist could be.
Was he okay?
I should leave him alone.
I really should. I’d been lucky not to have gotten busted the day he’d shared aloe vera with me or the other times we’d waved at each other. Leaving them alone was the one thing his dad had asked of me, and the last thing I wanted to do was get kicked out ahead of time and—
The kid made a sound that sounded like pure distress.
Shit.
I took two steps away from the door, two steps closer to the main house, and called out, hesitating and ready to hide around the back of the building if the game warden truck started coming down the driveway. “Hi. You okay?”
Nothing was exactly the response I got.
He didn’t look up or move.
I took another two steps and tried again. “Amos?”
“Fine,” the kid choked out, so raggedly I barely understood him. It sounded like there were tears in his voice. Oh no.
I sidled a little closer. “Usually when someone asks me if I’m okay and I say I’m fine, I’m not fine at all,” I said, hoping he understood I didn’t want to be annoying, but… well… he was curled up in a ball and didn’t sound right.
Been there, done that, but hopefully for very different reasons.
He didn’t move. I wasn’t even positive he was breathing.
“You’re kind of scaring me,” I told him honestly, watching him as fear rose inside of me.
He was breathing. Too loudly, I realized when I took another two steps closer.
He grunted, long and low, and it took him over a minute to finally reply in a voice I still barely understood. “I’m good. Waiting for my dad.”
My uncle had said he was “good” when he’d had kidney stones and had tears streaming down his face while he sat on his recliner, ignoring our pleas to go to the doctor.
My cousin had once said he was “good” when he’d jumped out a moving truck—don’t ask—and had whatever bone consisted of his shin sticking out of his leg as he bawled in pain.
What I should do was mind my own business, turn around, and go inside the garage apartment. I knew that. This stay here was already on a rocky road, even if Mr. Rhodes had been decent and helped me with my dead battery—I still hadn’t gotten the corrosion off, now that I remembered. I needed to do it on my next day off.
Unfortunately, I had never in my life been able to ignore someone in need. Someone in pain. Mostly because I’d had people who hadn’t ignored me when I’d felt those ways.
Instead of following my gut, I took yet another two steps to the teenager who had gone behind his dad’s back and given me the opportunity to stay here in the first place. It’d been a crazy, sneaky thing to do… but I admired him for it, especially if he’d done it to buy a guitar. “Did you eat something bad?”
I was pretty sure he tried to shrug, but he tensed up so violently and grunted so loudly, I wasn’t positive.
“Do you want me to get you something?” I asked, eyeing him closely, alarm still bubbling inside of me at the noises he was making. He had another big, black T-shirt on, dark jeans, and worn, white Vans. None of that was alarming though. Just the shade of his skin was.
“Took Pepto,” he gasped before I swear on my life he whimpered and clutched his stomach closer.
Oh, fuck it. I cut the distance and stopped right in front of him. I’d had the stomach flu more than a few times in my life, and that shit was something, but this… this didn’t seem right. He was scaring me now. “Did you vomit?”
I barely heard his “no.” I didn’t believe him.
“Did you have diarrhea?”
His head jerked, but he didn’t say anything.
“Everybody gets diarrhea.”
Okay, what stranger—especially a teenage boy—wanted to talk about diarrhea with someone they had literally met less than a month ago?
Maybe just me.
“You know, I got food poisoning from a sandwich I bought at a gas station in Utah a month ago, and I had to spend an extra night in Moab because I couldn’t stop using the bathroom. I swear I lost ten pounds that night alone—”
The kid made a choking sound that I couldn’t tell whether it was a laugh or a groan of pain, but he sounded a little quieter as he muttered, “I don’t.” He made the savage, painful sound again.
Apprehension gripped the back of my neck as the kid hunched over even more a moment before he started panting through his mouth.