“Oh, right.” I sigh, fighting the urge to pull out a chunk or two of my hair. “Sorry. I just feel like something is off about this whole story.”
“I don’t know, Grace. It makes sense to me. Although I do feel like you have the worst luck ever. That tree branch breaking and now the window. It’s weird.”
“It is weird. That’s what I was thinking earlier. I mean, the odds are way skewed. I just don’t know what to think about it.”
“Right now? You don’t have to think about anything that doesn’t involve crawling back into your bed and getting some sleep. Marise would kill me if she saw you up wandering around the room.”
“And what’s up with that?” I demand, even as I let Macy help me to my bed. “She’s, like, the scariest school nurse anywhere.”
“She’s not so bad. She’s just…serious.”
I snag the pencil bag off my desk on my way by. I’ve got a mirror inside, and I want to get a look at the damage. “Yeah, that’s one way to describe her.”
“What kind of soup do you want?” Macy asks as she settles me down into a bed whose sheets seem a lot smoother than when I climbed out of it. Which makes no sense, considering Macy has been across the room the whole time.
“Hey, did you fix this?”
“What?”
“My bed. It was a mess when I got out of it.”
“Oh, yeah. I, uh…” She moves her hand horizontally in a kind of smoothing motion.
“When?” I must be more out of it than I think. I didn’t even see her come over here.
“I did it when you were leaning against the wall. You had your eyes closed for a minute, and I didn’t want to disturb you while you were getting your bearings.”
Again, that doesn’t seem right. I was sure she came directly over to me once she realized I was standing. Then again, I’m the one who’s totally drugged while she’s the one who has all her faculties about her. Besides, what does it matter anyway? It’s not like my bed made itself.
“Well, I appreciate it,” I say as I pull back the covers over me. “So thanks.”
“No worries.” Still, she looks a little white as she reaches for the food tray. “I brought potato, chicken noodle, and corn chowder. I didn’t know what kind of soup you like.”
“Honestly, I’m hungry enough that I’ll eat anything. Pick what you want and give me whatever’s left.”
“Umm, no. You’re the sick one.”
“Exactly. I’m so drugged, it won’t matter. Besides, tomato soup is pretty much the only kind I really don’t like, so just give me something.”
In the end, she hands me the corn chowder and a bowl of canned fruit—peaches this time.
I end up scarfing down half the bowl in three minutes flat. Macy eats at a more sedate pace, taking a couple of bites and then asking, “Hey, why exactly were you in Jaxon’s room anyway? Last I heard, he was avoiding you.”
The last thing I want to do is tell Macy about how I was crying. I don’t want her to worry about me, and I definitely don’t want her thinking that she hasn’t been wonderful since I got here, because she has. “We were talking, and he offered to show me the meteor shower.”
“The meteor shower? That’s the best you’ve got?”
“It’s the truth. It was gorgeous. I’ve never seen one so bright before.”
She still looks skeptical. “And how exactly were you watching this meteor shower from inside his bedroom?”
“We were on the parapet outside his bedroom. We’d just crawled back through the window when the earthquake hit.”
“The earthquake.”
“Yeah, the earthquake. You know, that whole ground shaking thing that happened about five thirty this afternoon. It must have been an aftershock from this morning.”
“Oh, I know about the earthquake. We all felt it.”
“So why are you acting like I’m losing it?”
“I’m not. I was just thinking… I mean, it’s probably silly. But what exactly were you and Jaxon doing when the earthquake hit?”
I freeze at the question, my gaze fastening on the wall directly behind her ear. But it doesn’t really matter where I look, because I can feel my cheeks heating up.
“Oh my God. Were you—” Her voice drops. “Were you hooking up with him?”
“What? No! Of course not!” Pretty sure my cheeks just went from pink to bright red. “We were…”