f i f t e e n ; unsteady

“Something’s wrong,” he tells me, biting on the bottom of his lips. His features contort.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, worried. “Is everything okay?”

He shakes his head, diverting his gaze to everywhere but me. “I don’t think I can do it anymore.”

“Do what?” I question. The desperation in my voice wobbles.

“I’m tired of being your friend. Can’t you see? We don’t have anyone but each other. I’m tired of it all,” Kai continues to say. Each word like buckets of ice splashed on me. I want to recoil from the coldness of them. “And I’m bored. I want to be friends with new people. You weigh me down, and I don’t want you to cling onto me anymore.”

I hear these words but my mind has stopped listening. Confusion and hurt and anger cause a storm inside me. “So why. . .” I trail off, swallowing the tightness in my throat. “If you felt this way for a while . . . why are you telling me now?”

The way he’s regarding me feels like a stranger. I don’t know the person in front of me even though just yesterday, he's the person who knew the most about me. Maybe it’s all a joke. Maybe he’ll tell me that he’s pranking me. Maybe we’ll laugh about it right after. Except none of that happens.

“Why?” He laughs, but it’s all wrong. Nothing similar to his usual playfulness.

It’s a cold, chilling laugh.

And then he destroys me with six words.

“Because I felt sorry for you.”

•   •   •   •   •   •   •

The inside of my body burns like I've been ignited on fire. At the same time, it feels like someone has flung me into the depths of the bottom of an ocean. I am simultaneously freezing and heating up. It is contradicting how I am sweating through my pores yet pulling the blankets toward me with a desperation like my life is depended on it. The fever has started somewhere in the middle of the night, and my head feels like it weighs a couple tons.

My mom enters my room and pulls the shades away to reveal the light of the morning. The brightness is intolerable, even when my eyelids are sealed shut.

“You’re going to be late to school,” my mom warns in a firm tone. It has been past my last snooze button and I am still bedridden. I'm too disoriented to string up a proper sentence, so I gesture to my forehead for her to examine and release a gasp at how relieving her cool touch feels against my skin. She says something I can't make out, though I moan out an incomprehensible reply. Hours later, or has it been minutes? Maybe seconds? I make out the footsteps as she enters the room again. Mom tortures me by making me sit up to swallow the awful taste of medicine. Before she leaves for work, I overhear the call she makes to the attendance office that her daughter is taking a day off today. Her voice is a soft murmur down the halls, and my mind drifts away in a hazy state as the effects of the medicine begins to kick in my system.

•   •   •   •   •   •   •

Hot moisture coats my skin, causing me to throw the blankets off my body. Unfortunately, the exposed air send cold chills down my spine, so I scramble to cover myself again with the blanket that I tried to rid of moments ago. There’s no happy medium. Regardless, my exhaustion wins out, and I fall asleep with feverish breaths and an unbearable combination of too hot and too cold.

•   •   •   •   •   •   •

I’m a new state of disorientation when I wake up from my nap. I drag my feet out my room, carrying the blanket with me because my body can’t properly decide if I need warmth or cool air. My brother turns his head when I appear in the living room. If he’s home already then it means I’ve slept the whole day. I feel like death has graced me with his presence.

“Where’s mom?” I slur, plopping myself on the carpet next to the sofa where Ethan stations himself. He’s got his math homework out with the television on.

“At the grocery. She said she left porridge in the fridge.”