I would need to see a psychotherapist, if that was the case.
“I was talking to Genna Bishop,” I say. “And obviously it’s okay to bring up the Mayfairs because she knows what they are. Oh, and then to Tori for a second—thankfully that didn’t go on longer.”
“Genna who?”
“Bishop,” I say, “she sits to your right in Mrs. Schvolsky’s class?” I turn my chin at an angle and feel my eyes slant disbelievingly. Even a guy as loyal to his girlfriend as Harry wouldn’t be able to forget someone like Genna Bishop. She’s the type of girl so gorgeous that everyone knows her by name even if they’ve never met.
Harry’s gaze studies me skeptically. “Anna Johnston sits to my right in Mrs. Schvolsky’s class,” Harry says. “And I’ve never heard of Genna Bishop.”
11
I SNAP MY HEAD the rest of the way around. “Harry, don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
I let a long and heavy breath out through my nose and roll my eyes at him. I flip several pages in my book, opening it to the blue Post-It note. Harry’s still looking at me like he really has no idea what I’m talking about, or who Genna Bishop is. That’s completely ridiculous and I refuse to play along with this.
Harry’s big hand slaps down on the pages in front of me and he slides the book out of my view and toward him.
“You’re acting weird,” he says, his thick, dark eyebrows knotted rigidly against his forehead. “Who is Genna Bishop?”
I trust Harry, that sincere look on his face, but the part of me that doesn’t want him to be telling the truth because it will mean something is wrong with me is still in denial.
“She’s been sitting next to you in Geometry all year,” I say snappily, “and you can’t tell me you don’t know who she is.”
“Adria,” he says, gaping at me intensely, “honest to God, I don’t know who you’re talking about. Anna sits on my right—she’s borrowed a pen from me twice this year and Jake sits to my left—chokes me to effing death with that cologne.”
I’m staring down at the patterns in the wooden table. I’m starting to feel slightly dizzy again, but this time it’s because my head is spinning trying to figure out what’s going on. I look up to test the air again. It feels normal now, unlike things were when Genna sat here and I felt like the two of us somehow didn’t fit properly into the picture. My gaze moves around the library and people still look in my direction every now and then, but now it seems natural even though a few still give me more attention than what is normal.
“Harry,” I say, reaching out for his phone, “let me hear the voicemail.”
He’s trying to figure me out, watching me carefully like he’s worried about something. But I’m worried, too. I just can’t tell him why yet.
Harry nods and I pick up his phone, sliding my thumb across the unlock bar on the touch screen. The phone clicks and I move my finger over the little green phone icon that takes me to the voicemail. I put it on speaker, but turn the volume down enough that only we can hear it.
And I listen closely.
My voice is mostly distinct. Only a couple of times when I was farthest away from the phone and whispering to Genna are my words a little harder to make out.
I can’t hear Genna at all.
And when Tori came up to the table, I can hear her voice as clear as my own though she had been farther away from my phone than Genna was.
Not wanting to believe this, I turn the volume all the way up and listen to it again.
Genna’s voice is not there.
It was as if I was talking to myself….
“Yeah,” Harry says, noticing the baffled look on my face, “I was trying to figure out who you were talking to—didn’t realize Tori was here the whole time.”
“No,” I say, absently putting up my hand, “she wasn’t here the whole time.”
“Fine, but I’ve still never heard of—”
A short guy wearing a green Abercrombie & Fitch shirt walks by and I reach out to stop him. “Do you know Genna Bishop?” I say to him.
He thinks about it for a moment and then says, “No, does she go here?”
But I can’t answer him. I’m too stunned and I simply slide back down on the chair and stare at Harry’s phone in my hand. The guy walks away, but I hardly notice.
Maybe that’s why Tori and her friends were looking at me so strangely….
“Whoa,” Harry says, taking the phone from my fingers cautiously as if it were a gun and he’s just talked me out of it, “you’re really starting to worry me. First, you pass out at Isaac’s—”
My face shoots up then, “You saw her there, at Isaac’s, didn’t you?” I say, desperately searching for something to make this all make sense. “Genna was there next to me the whole time…up until just a few seconds before I passed out.” I feel my fingernails tapping heavily on the tabletop and I’m practically glowering at Harry. “You saw her, right?” It comes out like a demand that he absolutely has to tell me that he did see a girl, someone that he’s never seen before.
“No,” he says and his face exchanges worry with grief. He takes my hand, but I hardly notice that either. “Maybe you need to go home for the day.”
I’m shaking I’m so stressed out, feeling like I’m losing my mind.
Viktor’s face dissolves into my thoughts.
“Oh no…maybe he really did do it,” I say to myself, feeling the tears start to choke the back of my throat.
“Who did what, Adria?”
I stand up quickly and grab my books, but before I can stack them into my hands, I start to see those furious black dots buzzing around in front of my eyes again. No, this can’t be happening. Not again. I reach out to grab a hold of the back of my chair, but I don’t catch it in time before the floor starts to rise up at me. I feel my body crash against the carpet, the side of my head thrumming after it hits the chair leg. I can hear voices all around me, hovering over me and they sound muffled and interwoven and I can’t make anything out. I feel the side of my cheek pressed against the floor and the sound of my own breath is vociferous and desperate in my ears. My sight is doubling, tripling and I can’t tell if there are six, or twelve, or twenty legs standing around me, moving back and forth across the floor. Nothing is clear.
Genna Bishop walks toward me from a strange and frightening blinding light. Is she an angel? She must be an angel. The light, her beauty, the way her emerald eyes sparkle like something out of a fairytale, the way I suddenly feel calm and relaxed. But she can’t be an angel because I’m still afraid of her. Despite feeling calm and relaxed, another part of me wants to claw my way across the floor and away from her.
I hear her voice inside my head as she draws closer, the shapes and colors of everyone and everything else around her seems to fade and blend into her surroundings, becoming part of her.
She reaches out her hand to me and I feel it touch my wrist as it lies on the floor, my fingers curled inward.
“I’m sorry,” she says as she kneels beside me, but she seems too far away to be as close as she is. “I couldn’t foresee this and I couldn’t sense it and it can only mean one thing.”
Her voice sounds more like an echo coming from all sides and her lips never move. Whenever I try to move, her form becomes wispy, threatening to evaporate completely as though she is a ghost.
“What does it mean?” I say desperately. “Who are you?”
“You need to stay calm,” Genna says, “more than ever, you need to stay calm—overactive emotions of any kind will only kill you faster.” Her voice is muted like she’s speaking through a glass wall.
Suddenly, my body is heaved backwards, the floor hurtling away from me as I’m lifted into the air. Genna’s form breaks up like brushing a hand through a wisp of smoke and she disappears. I feel a set of arms underneath me and I see the white walls of the library turn into those of the hall as I’m carried briskly out the door.
I’m really getting sick of fainting and waking up in places I was not in before I fainted.
Like right now.
I open my eyes a slit at first because the light is way too bright and the walls way too white. I see a glimpse of the fluorescent light set above me in the ceiling, but then I turn on my side so it doesn’t blind me. A pair of long legs dressed in black jeans are draped over a chair, bent at the knees. Black Doc Marten boots dress his feet, which are stark against the bright white floor. I blink a few times to let my eyes blur into focus.
Isaac is staring across the room at me, but he doesn’t get up because the school nurse seems to have things under control.
“I’ve called your mom,” she says looking down at me through a pair of thin gold glasses. “She’s already on her way.”
I don’t care to correct her and say that Beverlee is my aunt; she might as well be my mom. I start to rise up from the bed, but she puts her hand on my shoulder and gently pushes me back down.
Isaac watches quietly from the side.
The door comes open then and two EMT’s enter the room, one carrying a black and orange duffle bag I know is filled with medical stuff that better not include any needles, but I’m sure does. I tense up instantly and feel like I want to claw my way up the wall, but I just lay here in a sort of quiet panic.
Isaac must’ve noticed because he is on his feet and standing closer to me, maybe just in case I try to flee.
I still might.
“I don’t need an ambulance,” I say.
The EMT carrying the bag sets it on a chair and walks over to me smiling. But I never trust anyone who is associated with needles. EMT’s. Veterinarians. Doctors. Drug addicts. They all scare me equally.
“Just going to check you over,” the EMT says. He’s already wearing a pair of blue latex gloves.
I force my head back against the pillow as his hand moves toward mine. He presses two fingers on my wrist while the other EMT pulls out an ear thermometer from the duffle bag and waits. Once my pulse is checked, he takes the thermometer from the other EMT and places it in my ear. After a few seconds, it beeps.
“Heart rate is a little high, but no fever,” he says, clicking the end of the thermometer off and into the nearby trash can, “but nothing to worry over—I’m betting you’re afraid of needles.” He smiles down at me. Clean-shaven. Middle-aged.
I swallow hard and glance over at Isaac, thinking he’s going to save me if this man tries to whip one out after me.
“No needles today, Miss Dawson,” he says and puts a stethoscope to my heart. He listens for a few seconds and pulls the cold metal away from my skin. “At least from us, but you should go to the hospital for a full assessment.”
The school nurse speaks up from behind, “Apparently, she fainted yesterday, too, off school grounds.”
Just great—Harry must’ve told them that bit of forbidden information.
Or did Isaac? I glance over at him accusingly, but he shakes his head no.