The Initial Insult - Mindy McGinnis Page 0,72
Gretchen usually keeps shut on purpose have been opened.
She’s not going to be happy about that. I stand on my tiptoes, scanning the crowd to see if I can catch a glimpse of Patrick and his Ravens jersey. But there are too many people, too many faces and colors. They’re all a little fuzzy, and I think I might be about to pass out . . . except that’s not right because the sounds aren’t fading, they’re getting louder and—shit. Whatever Patrick gave me is interfering with my anti-seizure meds.
Panic grips me. I don’t want to seize. Not here. Not in front of everyone.
Who will marry you then? Mom’s voice insistent, worried, cuts right through whatever that pill was. I hear her loud and clear, distinct from the rumble of the crowd.
I push through a group of people to find a wall, the banister, anything that will support me. My hands find something solid and clench on to it. It turns out that something is Hugh Broward.
“Ouch, damn.” He turns around and looks down at me. His face changes from annoyance to concern.
“Felicity?” he asks.
But I can’t talk, can’t remember this boy’s name or where I am. His arms go around me, and suddenly he’s thrown me over his shoulder and I’m being carried through the hall, the flash of his calf tattoo the only thing I can see. He’s barreling his way through the crowd, forcing his way to the front of the bathroom line. People argue but fall silent when they turn and see this boy, his size quieting their objections.
The bathroom door opens, and there’s a girl in the mirror, light hair a tousled mess, blue eyes wide and questioning, the pupils tiny black dots in the center.
She’s scared.
She’s scared.
She’s gone.
“You with me?”
It’s a boy’s voice. Quiet. Calm.
“Felicity? You had a seizure.”
Shit. Yes, I did. And that’s . . . that’s Hugh Broward’s voice.
I sit up, and he’s at my side in a second, hands on my shoulders.
“Slow,” he says, and I nod in agreement, my face grimacing when I see the puke down my front.
“Oh God . . .”
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Hugh says.
“It’s not okay,” I say, choking back a sob. “I puked all over myself.”
“Here.” He whips off his jersey, pulling it over his head. The white T-shirt underneath is glaringly bright under the bathroom lights, and I close my eyes against it.
“You all right?”
“Yeah,” I say, pushing my palms into my eyelids. Color bursts. Pinwheels spin. “Just . . .”
“Recovering, I get it,” Hugh says, hands me his jersey. “Grandma says the first few minutes after are pretty rough.”
That’s right, I remember now. Hugh lives with his grandmother. His parents got divorced in fifth grade. It was . . . messy—that’s how Mom had put it. Must have been, for both his parents to leave Amontillado behind and him to decide he’d rather live with an old lady who has seizures.
I wet a towel, wipe off the front of my shirt as best I can. There’s an angry banging on the door, three raps in a row, insistent.
“Get off already, Broward,” somebody shouts.
I scrub more furiously, only driving the stain deeper into my shirt and ruining Gretchen’s towel. Dismissing it as futile, I pull Hugh’s jersey on over it, yanking my hair free from the back.
“How’d you know?” I ask, leaning forward to check my teeth. “How’d you know I was going to seize?”
He shrugs, his massive shoulders moving up and down in the T-shirt, like a white cloud. “You just had that look about you, the way Grandma gets. I figured you wouldn’t want to go down in front of everybody.”
“No,” I say, rinsing and spitting. “No, I didn’t.”
The banging comes again, harder.
“You ready to go back into it?” Hugh asks, hand on the doorknob.
I check my reflection, adjust my hair. “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I think so.”
He twists the knob, but I stop him.
“Hey, Hugh? Why are you being so nice to me?”
He smiles, his teeth bright as his shirt. “Maybe I’m not being nice, Felicity,” he says. “Maybe I actually am nice.”
I watch carefully, weighing what I know of him against what I’ve heard. “I thought you were just some big, dumb bruiser.”
He nods, like he’s heard that, too. “Football, beer, and pussy.”
“Yeah,” I say. “So why do you let people think that?”
His hand falls from the doorknob, his eyes boring into mine. “What’s your last name, Felicity?” he asks.
“Turnado,” I say.
“And what’s that mean in Amontillado?”
“Money,” I say automatically.