call my family, too, and I said no. They’re used to me sulking in my room and probably won’t even notice I’m gone.
We pile into the Venkatrams’ Ford Explorer, Priya taking shotgun, leaving me alone in the back seat like a kid who’s been told to sit in the corner and think about what they’ve done.
Let me tell you, my head isn’t the most inviting place in the world right now.
All the life-and-death, having-to-call-911 shit hit the reset button on my anger, which is great in that, yay, no more feeling like I’m Hulking out on my supposed boo and BFF, but also bad because once the fury’s gone, all that’s left is guilt and pain and me wanting to hit myself on the head, repeatedly. Seriously, spying on my best friend and boyfriend and assuming that they’re cheating on me? It’s not like they were kissing or anything.
Up in the front seat, Mr. Venkatram’s grilling Priya for details.
“What did you say was going on when he fainted?”
“We were just looking over some video footage.”
“Maybe he had a seizure or something.”
Priya just hums, and my stomach prickles with guilt over what she’s not saying, over what she’s hiding for me. I don’t deserve her. I don’t deserve Will.
When we get to the emergency room there are four people waiting in line just to check in. Mr. Venkatram waves us over to where there are two empty seats in the almost-full waiting room. “You guys sit. I’ll go find out where Will is and when we can go see him. Then maybe I’ll go get some coffee. It might be a long night.”
Priya and I trudge over and squeeze ourselves in between an elderly man who’s been there for so long that he’s fallen asleep and a woman with a lethargic toddler draped over her shoulder.
We sit in silence for a while. The automatic door to the ER opens twice, and I catch a glimpse of stretchers and people milling around in scrubs and white coats. The TV in the waiting room is on CNN and I lose myself in the scrolling captions. More forest fires in California. Gridlock in Washington. The follow-up to a college admissions scandal. I try to numb myself with other people’s problems, but it doesn’t quite work.
The AC is jacked up to high, and I twist my hands together, trying to rub in some warmth. When I glance over at Priya, she’s scanning the room, and I would bet a million bucks that she’s making up backstories in her head, casting the people in the waiting room as characters in her Great American Movie.
“What do you think?” I whisper, jutting my chin out in the direction of a man with a bloody rag tied around his hand. He’s wearing work boots that are chalky with dust. “Handyman who was sleeping with his client. Attacked with a chef’s knife when her husband walked in on them doing the nasty on the kitchen counter?”
Priya huffs, and her mouth twists into a not-smile. “Have you got cheating on the brain, or what?”
I look at my hands and wish I could just disappear, but there’s no running from this. I bite my lip and sigh. “I’m sorry things got out of hand. I wasn’t… like, clearly I wasn’t thinking. My brain was like that old Keanu Reeves movie, what was it, the one you made me watch where he’s on a runaway bus that will explode if it goes under fifty miles an hour?”
“Speed. AFI Thrills list.”
“Yeah, that one.
“That’s what it felt like. Completely out of control. Like, if I stopped to, I don’t know, work things out, I’d explode with jealousy.”
Priya bites at her fingernails, searching my face. She sucks her cheeks in like she’s just tasted a lemon. “Well, as you so kindly noted, it’s not like there’s much for you to be jealous about,” she says bitterly.
And oh, I feel sick to my stomach when I remember the things I said to her. They were like targeted missiles directed straight at her worst insecurities.
I am such a shit friend.
“Pri, you know that was all BS.… That was just the crazy speaking. You know I’m crazy, right?” I say it like it’s a joke, a parody of the way people say that they’re “reclaiming” the words “crazy,” “insane,” and “bonkers.” I say it like it’s the most central truth of my life. It’s the first time I’ve even hinted that I might suffer from mental illness.
“That’s not an