TEN

September 13th

Emma Swartz is standing right beside my locker the next morning at school. It almost looks like she’s waiting for me. I slow my steps to a crawl, just in case. As soon as she spots me coming down the hall, she rises up on her tiptoes and waves me over. My feet come to a dead stop as my brain buzzes with questions.

What does she think she’s doing there? Why is she hounding me? Can I get a restraining order or something?

I wait for a few seconds to see if she’ll leave. But when she drops her backpack and smiles at me, I know I’m going to have to go through with it. I trudge up to my locker and start dialling the combination.

7…

“Hey, Lily!” Emma chirps.

“Hey.”

13 …

“Did you get my message last night?”

“Nope.”

25 …

“Okay … Well, Todd Nelson’s parents are going away for the weekend and he’s having a party tomorrow night. Wanna go?”

“Not really.”

35 …

“Come on, Todd’s parties are always fun. He’s got a pool and everything.”

I turn to stare at her like she’s just spontaneously combusted in front of me. Do I really look like the pool party type to her? My backpack catapults onto the floor, just missing a collision with her pink pedicured toes by a measly centimetre. “Okay, Emma … what’s going on? Why are you being so nice to me?”

“W-what do you mean?” she says, her smile melting into a pout. “I’m always nice.”

I pull down on the lock and yank open my locker door. Emma jumps back just in time to avoid getting hit by the swinging metal. “What I mean is that we haven’t spoken one word since the day I attacked your Barbies. Don’t you remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“So, what gives?”

“Nothing. It’s just when I saw you on the first day of school, you looked like you needed a friend. And I … I guess I kind of did, too.”

Okay, now she’s officially making no sense. “What are you talking about?” I demand. “I am not looking for a friend. And can I remind you that you have one already. A BFF, even.”

Everyone at school knows that Emma Swartz and Sarah Rein have been inseparable since … well, since the day I attacked her Barbies.

She shakes her head. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she was about to cry. “Something went down over the summer and she kind of stopped talking to me.” Her voice is so low, I can barely hear it over the din of the crowded hallway. I close my locker with a bang and wait for more.

“Okay, so what was it?”

“We sort of both had a crush on the same guy,” she explains, twirling a thin, red ringlet around her finger, “but he ended up liking me better. And Sarah didn’t appreciate that.”

Why am I not surprised? Such typical high school pettiness. I can’t understand why girls act so jealous and bitchy to each other. I mean, aren’t we all on the same team, here?

And on the heels of that thought, I feel so much of my irritation with Emma fade away to nothingness. We’re on the same team, after all.

Le sigh.

I try my best to insert a bit of friendliness into my voice. Believe you me, that’s not so easy for a person who’s made it her life’s mission to push people away. “Sounds like you’re better off without her, Emma.”

Her smile makes an instant recovery. “Yeah, anyway,” she continues, “you looked all broken up over your aunt and … well, I’ve never seen you turn your back on a friend.”

I let out a sarcastic snort. “Yeah, that’s because I never had any.” Come on, did I really need to spell it out for her?

And that makes her smile balloon into a grin. “Dude, you’re avoiding my question,” she says, poking me in the arm. “Are you coming to Todd’s or not? It’s probably going to be the last pool party of the year.”

“I don’t know.”

And I really don’t. Just between you and me, the whole idea of a party is kind of horrifying for an introvert like me. But there’s a little part of me that wants to go and see what it’s all about. I mean, it has to be better than staring at the ceiling and waiting to die. Right? And the way things are going, this will probably be the one and only pool party of my adolescence. How can I pass up the chance to at least check it out?

Just at that moment, Party-Boy Nelson walks past us. Emma reaches out and grabs his arm.

“Todd, wait! Help me convince Lily she should come to the party tomorrow night.”

Todd turns to look at me, his eyebrows stretching with surprise. I’ve been in school with Todd since we were both barely out of diapers. But in all these years, the only time we’ve ever really spoken was when we were partnered up for a seventh grade science project on volcanoes. Todd’s parents own Big Bend’s only landscape and garden centre and he works there every weekend and school holiday. Gardening must be good exercise, because Todd is like a wall of muscle — the kind of guy who looks like he was born to be an athlete. He’s big, broad, and blond. But he’s also the least co-ordinated person you’ve ever seen in your life. He’s always dropping his pen, tripping over his own feet, and bumping into walls. So instead of turning to hockey or football like most of the guys our age, Todd turned to books. He’s one of the smartest kids in our school. He won a big provincial science competition last June for his project on hybrid plants. Turns out he developed some kind of species of onion that doesn’t make your eyes tear up when you cut into it. That got him a lot of attention. He even got driven in a limo to Toronto to accept the award. If people were fonts, Todd would have to be Courier: smart, simple, and strong. The muscle-bound brainiac.

Guess that makes him kind of like an oxymoron too.

“Tell her she should come,” Emma urges, poking Todd with her pinky finger.

“Yeah, you should definitely come,” he says. There’s a big, awkward smile slowly spreading across his face. It almost makes me want to smile too.

Almost. But then I remember the day he publicly outed Aunt Su’s secret ganja plantation and the urge to smile fades away.

“So, are you coming?” Emma asks again.

“I don’t know, maybe,” I finally say. My voice has shrunk to a squeak because, out of the blue, my heart’s fluttering again.

“Maybe? What does that mean?” she demands. Todd’s green eyes are watching me with interest.

“It means what it means. Maybe I’ll see you there. I gotta go now.”

The fluttering is suddenly a thundering drum roll. Jeepers creepers, it feels like my chest is going to explode. Last thing I want to do is buy the farm here in the dingy halls of Big Bend High. I rush past Emma and Todd, out the front doors of the school, and down the street. This time, I’m not wasting my energy with that useless school nurse. Believe you me. This time, I’m heading straight to Dr. Vermin’s office for a real diagnosis.

(Okay, okay— really bad name for a doctor, I know. But he’s the only one in Big Bend so it’s not as if I have a choice).

By the time I get to his office, my heart’s galloping like a greyhound. I march right up to the receptionist and put on my best “emergency patient” face.

“Please. I have to see Dr. Vermin right now. It’s urgent.”

She doesn’t even look up from her computer screen.

“And what’s the nature of your problem?”

“I think I’m dying here, lady!” I yelp. A startled hush falls over the waiting room. Yeah, yelling in public is an epic breach of village etiquette. But this happens to be an emergency! The receptionist looks up from her screen, her eyes round as frying pans. She gives a slight nod.

“Okay, yes — you can go ahead inside, then.”

I stagger in through the open door and collapse onto the crinkly-papered examination table. Dr. V’s pen drops to the floor with a clatter.

“Goodness! What seems to be the problem, Lily?”

At first when I tell him about my heart, he looks mildly concerned. But then, after listening to my chest for a few seconds, he just shakes his head and gives me the same old “nothing to worry about” speech as the school nurse did.

“You’re perfectly fine, honey,” he says. “Heart palpitations are common enough.”

I slap a hand over my eyes and let out a frustrated groan. “No, you don’t understand! There’s nothing common about it. I think my heart’s giving out because I — I’m not sleeping.”

He sighs as he bends down to scoop up his dropped pen. “That’s nothing new, Lily. From what I remember, you’ve never been a great sleeper —”

“No!” I cut in. “I mean I’m not sleeping at all. Seriously, not a wink in eighteen nights. I’m a nocturnal freak of nature.”

Right. So there it is. My huge secret revealed. I hold my breath and wait to hear what Dr. V’s going to do about it. Will he call my parents and break the bad news for me? Have me air-lifted to the Mayo Clinic for observation? Or, better yet, offer me a miracle cure to get my sleep back?

I hug my arms to my chest and wait.

“Eighteen days?”

I nod weakly. “Nights, actually. I looked it up on the Internet. It’s practically unprecedented.”

He brings a hand to cover his mouth. But it doesn’t work — the chuckle escapes through his fingers. He turns his back to the wall while he tries to compose himself. After a few seconds, he clears his throat and faces me again.

“I see you’ve inherited your aunt’s talent for storytelling,” he says, patting me on the shoulder like a pet poodle. “Let me assure you, your heart is not giving out. Now, with your mother’s permission, we can discuss the option of prescribing you a mild sleeping pill if you’re having a bit of trouble —”

A mild sleeping pill? General MacArthur’s permission?

Great, thanks for nothing.

Feeling more hopeless than ever, I hop down from the table and make for the door.

How could I have been dumb enough to put my trust in a guy named Vermin?

Maybe it’s my imagination, but I swear I can still hear him chuckling as I stomp out of the waiting room and into the street.