By the next morning, I was restless. I knew Jayne wouldn’t want me to go to work. Period.
But I also knew I wasn’t contagious in any way. And if I was going to feel bad, I could do that anywhere. And I was bored. Very bored.
So bored I thought about buying shoes, the way Joely had, except online shopping wouldn’t result in something wearable for at least a week.
I thought about calling a taxi—we’d taken them from time to time back home, for doctors’ visits and trips to see Rebecca and her family. But I didn’t want to pay for the expense, and I figured that if I lived in a city with mass transit, I may as well figure out how to use it.
I looked up the MAX route, bundled up, and walked with careful steps to the bus stop. I prayed I hadn’t gotten on the wrong bus and prayed I’d remember to get off at the right stop. Remembering seemed harder today than usual.
The man next to me flossed his teeth. Even his back molars. Combined with my headache, the sight made me nauseous.
When the buildings began to look familiar, I prepared to exit the train. The stop was six blocks from the bookstore. I held onto the strap of my messenger bag as I walked, thankful the day was overcast rather than rainy.
I walked past the spot where the accident had occurred. If I wasn’t mistaken, I could still see pieces of shattered headlight on the road.
The bell over the door jangled as I walked in. William stood behind the register, but Zach was nowhere to be seen. One customer eyed the sale bin while another walked the shelves.
William’s eyes widened when he saw me walk in. “What are you doing here?”
“I came in to work.” I slid my bag off my shoulder.
He shook his head. “Sara…”
“Please.” I spoke with my voice lowered, so as not to be overheard. “I just need to do something.”
“How are you feeling?” He crossed his arms across his chest.
“Fine.” Even as I said it, I knew I sounded defensive. Too defensive.
William’s lips set into a firm line. He didn’t want me there, and we both knew it.
“Please?” I asked, my eyes wide.
“I’d bet twenty bucks your brother doesn’t want you working today.”
I’d bet fifty he’d leave work and take me home if he knew. And I had a hunch William thought the same thing.
I crossed my own arms to match William. “I’m not contagious. According to Joely, who’s a cop, what I’m experiencing is perfectly normal. There’s nothing I can do to make myself worse. And I think I’ll start with the shelving.”
“You do?” William’s lips quirked into a half-smile.
I squared my shoulders. Something about his expression made my face flush. “I do.”
He sighed. “Just be careful, okay?
“Of course I’ll be careful.”
William rolled his eyes and didn’t respond. Instead, he pointed at the book cart. “There they are. If you want to shelve that bad, shelve.”
So I did. Out of self-preservation I separated out the books that I felt wouldn’t require me to lift my hands any higher than my chest and started in on those first.
But then I realized I had trouble putting the books away. I couldn’t remember what order the letters came in. Letters E through V were the worst, though when I thought about it I realized that pretty much meant the whole thing.
Rather than let William catch on, I struggled ahead.
Maybe he wouldn’t notice that I spent about five minutes per book.
Zach did a double take when he returned to the shop from his break, Starbucks in hand. “What, you’re back? That’s hard core. If I’d known, I’d have gotten you coffee too.”
“That’s okay.” I was pretty sure caffeine wouldn’t do anything nice for my head.
“Feelin’ better?”
“Yeah,” I said, pasting a reassuring smile on my face.
William said something under his breath, but I ignored him.
After half an hour, I could barely see straight. Worse yet, I’d finished with the titles I could put away easily. All I had left were the books that belonged on the upper shelves.
I took a deep breath, planted my feet, made eye-contact with the target and lifted the book.
Or tried, actually. I stared at the hand holding the book and willed it to move.
My hand moved. But it moved down.
I tried again, taking a deep breath. I saw my hand go up, the pages of the book touching the shelf.
And then the world started to wobble, and I saw prickly black spots.
Before I knew what was happening or what was going on, William caught me from behind, steadying me.
“Don’t forget to breathe,” he said. “In and out. Repeat. Do you need to sit down?”
“Um…I’m not sure,” I said. One of William’s hands was on my back, the other on my arm. I felt even more disoriented than before.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Let’s go to the workroom, okay?”
Once my oxygen fully returned, I felt silly—and as steady as I had all day. But William didn’t let go until we’d reached the workroom’s studio chair.
I sat. He knelt next to me.
He gave a weary half-smile. “What am I going to do with you?”
I chose not to answer.
“Trouble lifting?”
“I can’t raise my arms very far.”
“That’s whiplash for you. How’s your head? And don’t tell me you’re fine. That bruise looks nasty.”
“It hurts.”
“On a scale of one to ten?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Seven?”
“That’s what I thought.” He moved into a sitting position on the floor, crossing his legs. “And you won’t go home.”
I bit my lip. The idea of maneuvering mass transit a second time sounded exhausting.
“Would you let me take you to a doctor? Just to be sure?”
“Joely said—”
He shook his head. “Joely’s not a doctor.”
“I can’t afford a doctor. Not right now. I’m fine, really. I haven’t had any symptoms of a more serious injury. All I really need is something to do.”
William ran a hand through his hair. “Well, there’s shredding to be done, but I don’t trust you not to get your fingers caught. But…” he paused before presenting what I hoped to be another option. I hoped it didn’t have to do with paper shredding. I liked my fingers. “We haven’t done a new set of staff recommendations for a while. We also just got some new stock. Want to read some books and write up short reviews? I’ll even take you home when you’re done.”
When he put it that way, of course I couldn’t say no, especially considering I was of no use anywhere else. “I can do that,” I said.
“Good.” He stood and offered me a hand up before retrieving his keys from his pocket. “I’ll even let you have my couch. Whatever you want, you can have it. Just don’t fall over.”
William knocked before he entered his own apartment. “How’s it going in here?”
I made a face and held up the book. “At this point, I think I’ve read enough to identify what I think you’d call ‘strangled prose.’”
“Put it down, move on. We just recommend the good ones. There’s no need to make disparaging comments about the bad. It’s like telling people their babies are ugly.”
I laughed. “I’ve never seen an ugly baby.”
“That’s because you’ve never seen my baby pictures. Hungry for lunch? It’s one o’clock.”
“Oh. Really?” I guess time flew while reading dull fiction.
“I was thinking of hitting Noah’s Bagel.”
I looked at William, and I looked at his apartment. “Why?”
“What do you mean, why? It’s lunchtime. Noah’s has lunch food.”
“But…you live maybe thirty feet from your own kitchen. You could make yourself lunch.”
“That’s easy. I can’t cook. And I can only eat so much canned soup before my ankles swell from the sodium.”
I sighed. This was why, back home, young men lived at home until they married. I couldn’t imagine any of my brothers, save Levi, trying to cook for themselves. I stood and walked toward William’s kitchen.
He blocked my path. “Oh no, you don’t. I know what that look means.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “What does it mean?”
“It means you’re going to raid my fridge and tell me what I could make with it.”
I stood my ground. “Why not? You’re not doing anything with it.”
He smirked. “You can’t lift your arms. I’m pretty sure you need them to cook.”
“Don’t be so smug.”
“Sorry. Bagel?”
“I don’t like bagels.” I heard myself being difficult, but I didn’t care. I was talking to William. As Jayne said, turnabout was fair play.
“They have paninis. Actually, I think panini is the plural and panino is the singular. The turkey club one is pretty good. They’ve got them, and that’s the point. And soup. What do you want? My treat.”
Soup with a straw sounded best, but I couldn’t dream of asking anyone for that, especially not William. However…I could sip soup from the cup when no one was looking.
“Soup,” I answered. “With a panino thing. Whatever you call it.”
“You got it.” He grabbed a jacket from the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “Don’t cook anything while I’m gone.” And then he winked. Winked and left.
Odd. Probably an eye twitch. Because he was hungry.
William drove me back to the apartment before Jayne got home. “Thanks,” I said as we pulled into the tiny parking lot. I pressed the button releasing my seatbelt. “Being out today was…nice.”
“I don’t understand it, but you’re welcome.” His voice softened. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Me too.” I didn’t want to think about how much worse it could have been.
“Before you try a stunt like you did today,” he said, “just give me a call. I’ll pick you up. Save you the pain.”
“Okay.” I suddenly felt shy.
“Go on in,” he said, nodding toward the apartment complex. “Before you get in trouble.”
I smiled. “Okay.” And I winced on the inside over my sudden lack of vocabulary.
I hadn’t thought it was possible to feel worse, but on Thursday morning I did. My headache had moved yet again. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t come up with a good enough reason to get out of bed.
Jayne knocked and poked her head through the opened doorway. “You’re not up? How are you feeling?”
I was feeling like I was tired of people wanting to know how I was feeling. And cranky. That too.
Jayne helped me out of bed so I could use the bathroom and then helped me back. After I was back in bed, she brought me breakfast and set up The Young Victoria for me to watch on my laptop.
I slept off and on throughout the day and soaked for an hour in the bathtub that night. As my eyes closed that evening, I prayed Friday would somehow be better.
Between prayer and another night’s sleep, I found that waking on Friday was much more pleasant than the previous three days. I could wash my hair, dress, and feed myself with less pain.
As my pain abated, the complicated details of the aftermath surfaced. Jayne’s insurance was liability only. Not only that, but the other driver was driving—illegally—with lapsed insurance. Jayne and Levi assured me that I had no need to contribute financially to the car repair costs, but the guilt weighed heavily on my heart.
Growing up Amish, I still couldn’t make sense out of the whole idea of insurance.
In the end, things seemed to work out. Levi loaned his truck to Jayne so she could drive me places, and he insisted that taking the MAX saved him from filling his truck with gas so often.
My muscles were still sore as I walked the halls to my first class, but the pain wasn’t debilitating.
“There you are!” I turned to see Sonnet walking behind me. “Glad you’re back in the land of the living.”
I shook my head. “Me too. I get bored when I’m not doing things.”
“Ha! You and me both. But I’m sure that’s not a surprise. It’s sunny outside—Meg and I were talking about finding a place to eat lunch outside.”
“Sounds like fun,” I said, glad to be seeing a friend again.
“We thought so. Haven’t seen Britta yet—let her know if you see her. Do you have any yarn with you? It’s a good way to get her attention. I think she can smell it. Yarn is to Britta what people are to vampires. Sorry, terrible analogy,” she said when she saw my face. “I’m reading the Twilight books at the moment. Have you read them?”
“Not yet,” I said, visualizing William’s face if he ever saw me reading them.
“They make me feel like I’m fifteen all over again, but they’re amusing. My sister sent them to me in a care package. And I’m rambling. See you after class?”
“After class,” I echoed.
I arrived early enough to check in with my instructor and explain my absence. One look at the bruise on my forehead though—which by now was starting to turn colors, despite my attempts to cover it up with cosmetics—and the instructor waved a hand and told me not to worry about it and that she was glad I hadn’t been hurt worse.
It occurred to me in that moment that if I’d been in my family’s buggy rather than my roommate’s car, I probably would have been hurt much, much worse. There was something to be said for steel frames and seatbelts.
“The missing girl returns,” Arin said as I entered Color Theory later that morning. “Thought something might have happened to you after dinner—maybe Indian didn’t agree with you or something.”
“No,” I said with a soft laugh. “Indian was fine. I got into a car accident Monday morning.” I pointed at the bruise on my forehead. “Concussion.”
“That’s too bad. I’ve had a couple of those—from snowboarding, not car accidents. You’re safe with me behind the wheel.”
I frowned. “The accident wasn’t my fault. The guy behind me was texting.”
“Didn’t say it was…sorry, this isn’t working out well. I was going to ask you—interested in going to the Art Museum with me? There’s a new Warhol exhibit up. Do you like soup?”
“I like soup.” But I didn’t know how the two were linked.
“Perfect. Want to go?”
I didn’t know much—yet—about Andy Warhol, but I did know that I’d been wanting to go to the Art Museum for months. “I’d love to,” I answered honestly.
“Great.” He grinned, his dimples making a repeat performance. They really were nice dimples. “It’s a soup date.”
I smiled but said nothing. I had no idea what he was talking about.