Then Everything Happens at Once, page 6
I’m about to respond to Rianne’s four messages demanding what my excuse is for ditching my sure-to-be-epic birthday party, but a more important message comes through.
[Alex] 😱 Ur latest post. 😱
[Alex] U have really pretty eyes.
With that, my hold on bad feelings loosens. Earlier I posted a close-up of my face to show off my new brow filler. My makeup is now a mess of abstract-painting-looking smears, but at least I have the evidence that it did look stellar today.
[Baylee] That kind of just made my day. And if you knew what kind of day I’m having, you’d know how difficult it was to salvage it.
[Alex] Why? What’s going on?
[Baylee] Well . . . . . . . . . . . . . currently I’m covered in my own blood.
[Alex] Um what? What happened?
I DM him lies. Lies I’m surprised I can come up with on the spot, a story about helping my good friend Freddie work on his car, and then one of the doors accidentally gets pushed open into my face. All the essential details and players are present, just rearranged a little. I’ve only been trading messages with this person for twenty-four hours, so I get to make myself up, and he doesn’t know any different.
[Rianne] WHY ARE YOU LEAVING ME HANGING?
[Rianne] I’m texting you from the bathroom at work.
[Rianne] I’ve been sitting here so long, waiting for you to answer, that my supervisor probably thinks I’m having a huge poop.
[Baylee] EW
[Rianne] Uh, HELLO? The party?
[Baylee] It’s just that . . . I kind of smushed my nose. It’s not broken, but I’m at the hospital right now.
[Rianne] OMG??????????? You’re not dead, right?
[Baylee] No. This is me alive-texting you.
[Rianne] Shit. I have to go back to work. OK text me what happened, and I’ll pretend I have to poop again in a bit so I can come read your messages.
It feels like I’ve been here for hours. Luckily, there are charging stations, so I plug my phone into one. I stare at my DMs with Alex for a while, hoping I’ll be there to see him start typing a message to me. I overthink what I could type to him to the point that everything sounds completely ridiculous.
Someone sits next to me, their leg touching my thigh, which makes me pull away. It takes me a moment to realize who it is.
Eight
Lara shakes her head dramatically as she takes in my appearance. Her thick black hair is pulled into a large bun on top of her head. She unzips her white winter jacket, revealing this black romper thing I would love to be able to get away with wearing, except rompers are next-level tuckage of shirt into pants and therefore forbidden.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“I made Kavith drive me over.”
Lara’s got three superhot cousins who are always around because they live in the house next door to hers. “He’s waiting outside?”
She shrugs. “He’s doing a TikTok live with his dumb friends, straight from the hospital parking lot. He’s fine.” She takes a closer look at me and makes a sour face. “You look like an extra from a cheap zombie movie.”
“I’ve literally never felt more beautiful.”
She keeps shaking her head, and I pretend to try and fix my hair before giving her a wide smile, painfully aware of the weird feeling of crusts and chunks deep in my nose.
“Freddie told me what happened,” she says.
“What did he say?” Now I’m wondering who else he might’ve felt the need to tell the story to, like Natasha or Jess. I bet they’d really get a kick out of the seat belt thing.
“Just that there was some super-low-key rear-ending situation and your nose got most of the action.”
“Well, what he said is pretty much accurate. Except for the part about me being too fat to buckle up.”
“Shut up,” she says. “You’re not serious.”
“I am.”
“Well, that makes no sense. Please, you’re not that fat.” When she says it, I almost believe her. “His car is a piece of shit. It’s not you.”
I shrug, hoping she senses that I’m done talking about it.
“What are you waiting for now?” she asks.
“I have to see the doctor again to make sure the bleeding has stopped. I should be able to go home after that.”
“Did you hit your head?”
“No. I just basically went forward and bonked my nose on the dash. It wasn’t even that hard.”
She nods, then makes herself more comfortable, crossing her legs in a way I cannot possibly comprehend, tucking her right foot behind her left calf so that her legs look twisted. “Want me to stay and keep you company? I could distract you.”
“Sure.”
I wait for her to take my mind off things, but all she does is get distracted by her phone, texting furiously one minute, then smiling the next.
“Who are you talking to?” I ask, trying to lean over and catch a glimpse of her screen.
She pulls her phone away, then throws me a guilty expression.
My body moves to better see her. “What?”
“So I started talking to this guy.”
“How?! I thought I was your boyfriend for a while.” I roll my eyes, a flash of annoyance erupting within. Looks like we were both busy hanging out with different boys instead of clinging to each other. “Where did this new guy come from?”
“You don’t know him. I met him at Bookworm.”
The hint of panic makes me blurt out, “Is it Alex?”
“No, why? You know a guy named Alex from Bookworm?”
“Just that guy I was DMing.”
“Oh right—are you still talking to him?” She raises her eyebrows and puts on a curious face. I sense the interest in my thing is a little fake, that she’s dying to bring the spotlight back to her. I’m the built-in audience, a fact I’ve always been okay with because I love listening, learning, and mostly, I love judging.
“Kind of,” I say. “Anyway, go on.”
“Well, my guy is not the Bookworm guy you’re talking to. My guy . . . well, he seems pretty sweet, and it’s like he’s trying to earn my attention, but not in a creepy way.”
“So all this has been going on while you were with Trey?” I ask.
She frowns. “I was just randomly DMing with this guy here and there. Nothing inappropriate. Totally platonic. It’s just now that it’s taking a flirty turn. Like, today.”
I ask her some general questions, like how old he is (seventeen), what school he goes to (St. Peter’s), and what he looks like (hot). “So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is . . .” She takes a dramatic breath. “He’s good friends with Taylor.”
“Ew. Gross.”
Taylor is Lara’s pre-best-friend—as in pre me. There was a time when Taylor and I were competing for Lara’s friendship. Taylor was Lara’s first friend when they moved to Castlehill, their houses conveniently located next to each other. But then Lara and I started talking in class, and then things just grew from there while Taylor shrank into the background. There’s also the fact that Taylor is next-level shallow and fake. She’s the one who started the nickname Kunkel’s Cankles, something that follows me to this day. Lara was the one who told me where the insult came from, which led to the final fight between the two of them last year. They’re still civil toward one another, seeing as we’re forced to cross paths at school, but the friendship that once was died for good.
I don’t even have cankles. Face, boobs, hair, hands, and ankles—those are the five things I appreciate about myself, in order.
“I thought you met him at Bookworm,” I say.
“Well . . . I saw him at Taylor’s when they were hanging out on her porch, like last year or something, but I ran into him at Bookworm recently, and that’s when I started messaging with him on a very occasional basis.”
“So they’re friends?”
“They hang out a lot.”
“Do you think she has a thing for him?”
“Yes. I’m like, one hundred percent sure she does.”
I ask her to elaborate a little, then I let her vent about her feelings. It’s pretty clear she’s looking for permission—I’ve gotten used to figuring out what she needs from me early on in the conversation. Still, I like to hear her describe what it’s like, this whole dating/drama thing. It all plays in my mind like a movie. A movie I have a tiny part in.
“I think I should stay away, right? I don’t want to do that to her.”
“Why? She literally has no soul, and she would do that to you in a heartbeat.”
“Well,” Lara says, looking thoughtful and torn.
“She totally would. Come on, Lara,” I say. “How many times has she stood there, flirting with Trey at his locker, knowing you can see everything?”
Lara shrugs. “What if she and I were really good friends—would you be saying the same thing?”
“If you two were good friends, I’d have nothing to say because I’d be best friends with Rianne, and we’d be far away from you and Taylor.”
“Come on! Be serious, Baylee.”
“Okay, fine. Honestly, Lara,” I start, but there’s a long pause, because sometimes telling the truth feels like I’m doing something wrong. “It’s kind of like you only broke up with Trey this time because you already had someone else lined up.”
“I didn’t! I swear. It’s just today we DMed a lot and I can feel a little something, like it could end up there if I wanted it to,” she says. I wonder what it must be like, to talk to people and just know that something could happen as opposed to knowing the total opposite. “The situation is a little complicated, so I’m trying to think ahead and prepare.”
“I guess I better prepare for you falling off the face of the earth again and start interviewing for the position of best friend.” I avoid her gaze. “Sorry.”
Lara and I are quiet, and the awkwardness makes me reach for words that’ll make things right again. “I guess if it was me, I would go for it because I don’t care about Taylor’s feelings. If she and I were close, though, I guess I’d try and have a conversation about it before things started for real with the guy. She can’t be mad at you when nothing’s happening between her and that guy, right? It would suck, but it’s not like it’s your fault.”
Lara makes this face like she has no idea if I’m right, but she likes my argument.
“Although . . .” I give her a sour look. “I just want to say that the fact he’s friends with a brainless, shallow idiot like Taylor is a bit of a red flag.”
“Stop!” She fake-slaps my arm.
My name is called overhead.
“Want me to wait for you?” Lara asks. “I can tell Kavith to come get me later.”
“They want me to go home with a parent, and you don’t look old enough.”
Lara laughs, and off in the distance, I notice my mother walking through the emergency doors, a mask over her face. She scans the waiting room, and her eyes settle on me. She frowns and heads over. I’m reminded of the extra mask I picked up but forgot to put on.
“Okay, I guess I’ll go,” Lara says. “Text me later!”
Mom nods at Lara as they breeze by each other.
“Sorry, Mom. I had a mask almost the whole time. It just got a little wet, so I took it off, but then Lara showed up and I forgot.”
“Never mind that,” Mom says. “Let me see.”
“They called my name,” I say. “I have to go up there.”
Mom follows me to the counter with plexiglass. A nurse opens the door to let me back into the actual emergency department, directing me to a room. The same doctor from earlier asks me about the pain and other symptoms I don’t have.
“Now I’m going to have a look to see what we’re dealing with,” the doctor says.
She comes at me with an otoscope that has a light on the end, carefully putting it into each of my nostrils, not touching each side of my nose much. Still, it’s enough to tickle, and I explode in a sneeze that brings with it a trail of mucus and a slug of blood, which makes me squeal. “Oh no! That’s disgusting.”
“Don’t worry. That’s to be expected. It’s the old, clotted blood. I want to see if the bleeding is controlled,” the doctor says. “Yeah, I think I see the cause. You must’ve had a scab there that got torn. That’s my guess, anyway.”
“My nose gets really dry in the winter,” I say.
While we all wait to see what my nose does, Mom talks about the humidifier she bought me years ago that sits in my closet collecting dust, then she asks the doctor questions about how to deal with any further bleeding. I’m praying I won’t need tampons up there or something. Five minutes pass. I breathe carefully through my nose and there doesn’t seem to be any trickling of blood down my throat.
She tells me to come back to the ER if the bleeding gets worse, or if I start feeling more serious symptoms, like a persistent headache or vision issues.
“And do not blow your nose very hard, okay? Nothing more than a soft, heavy exhale through your nose,” the doctor says. “All right. You’re good to go. Take it easy. And wear your seat belt next time, okay?”
The doctor slips out before seeing the shocked expression on my mother’s face.
“What’s that, Baylee Kunkel?”
“Nothing, Mother. Let’s just go.”
A nurse pokes her head in. “You’re free to go, ladies. I have to prep this room for the next patient.”
“Yes, well, that’ll have to wait because I just found out my daughter was not wearing a seat belt while riding in a car.” Mom motions for me to take a seat on the stretcher again. The nurse makes a face and closes the door behind her.
“It’s not like I was trying to not wear a seat belt. I’m not stupid, Mom,” I say. “We were stopped in traffic, and I unbuckled to take off my coat. Bad timing, I guess.”
Mom narrows her eyes at me, trying to determine if the truth is what she’s just been served or otherwise. Sometimes it’s not only easier to lie, but it just feels better.
If I told my mother what really happened, she might have a second of feeling bad for me or even having empathy, but then she’d just get next-level mad at me for even going along with being a passenger in a car without a proper seat belt. I should’ve known better, but I still did the dumb thing because I wanted to be the girl in Freddie’s car more than I wanted to be safe and follow the rules. She will not understand that part.
Mom sighs. “Let’s go.”
She points to the hand sanitizer as we pass by it, and both of us slather our hands with it.
“You better keep away from Beck for a couple days,” she says. “Just in case. For all we know, the coronavirus could be in this very hospital.”
“I was very careful, Mom. I swear.”
In the car, Mom lets a heavy sigh escape her lips. It’s not a reproach, exactly. It’s her usual reaction to a stressful situation that finally settles, like she acknowledges that it could’ve been worse and that another disaster might just as easily follow it up.
“How’s your nose?” Mom asks.
“Okay as long as I don’t touch my face. The pill they gave me helped with the throbbing,” I say.
“Well, I suggest you call it a day and go to bed,” she says.
“There’s blood on my new bra. I have to clean it.”
“We’ll figure it out, Boss.”
The intense urge to doze hits me as we drive, and I lay my head against the window. As we turn and head down our street, I spot Freddie seated on the front steps of my house.
“Wait—Mom, keep driving!” I say.
“Why?”
“Just go. Please. Can we go to your drive-through for something warm? Please?” I suggest, knowing the night nurse will arrive any minute to look after my sister. “The nurse might already be there, so Juliana will be able to leave. Please?”
“You couldn’t have told me that ten minutes ago, when we were driving right by the store?” Mom keeps her foot on the gas, and I know she’s going to keep driving, so I take a deep breath. But then she slows down. “Look who’s here.”
“No, Mom. Please. Let’s just go,” I say. “I don’t want to talk to him.”
Mom drives past our house, and I turn my head to avoid making eye contact with Freddie. Mom calls Juliana on speaker. “Jules, everything okay?”
“She’s still asleep.”
“Good,” Mom says. “Her nurse will be there by eleven—can you let her know I’m running a little late, but I’ll be back very soon?”
“Sure thing,” Juliana says. “Is Baylee doing okay?”
“It was a nasty nosebleed, but she’s fine.”
Mom ends the call and taps my leg. “What’s going on with Freddie? Did something happen? Sheila told me the accident wasn’t his fault.”
She sounds a little too concerned and on alert, like maybe Freddie’s mother didn’t tell her the truth. “He didn’t do anything. It’s me who ruined his car on the day he got to finally drive it.”
“You’re not the one who caused the accident, Boss. They’ll work it out with the insurance company. The car who started it will have to pay for damages.”
“You didn’t see the inside of the car, Mother. There was blood everywhere.”
“He wouldn’t hold that against you.”
Mom shakes her head and brushes a hand against the side of my head. My phone buzzes with what I know is a text from Freddie, but I ignore it.
Nine
The next day, I wake up with hazy memories of what happened, assuming they’re echoes of another one of my elaborate fantasy scenarios. But then pain spreads through my face when I go to rub the sleep out of my eyes. My bedroom door is still open from my mother’s checks on me through the night, to make sure I didn’t have some head injury that put me in a coma.
[Rianne] Still alive, right?
[Baylee] Totally.
She sends me a thumbs-up, and I open another text conversation.
[Lara] How are you? Want me to come over?
I respond, telling her I’m just tired and I might be up for hanging out later.
