In Harmony (Fenbrook Academy #2)(29)
Author: Helena Newbury

I looked across at Connor and Taylor. He finally saw me, and gave me a happy wave. In his mind, he’d done nothing wrong.

I drank.

Chapter 19

I woke up, and it wasn’t like throwing off the peaceful veil of sleep. It was more like sleep didn’t like the taste of me and spat me out.

Something was wrong with me. My brain was too big for my skull, and expanding rapidly, the pressure and pain building by the second. When I turned my head to look at the clock, violet lances of agony spiked through my skull.

I was in my own bed, in my clothes—although my shoes were missing. The clock said 10:20am. I felt like I could sleep for another week, so what had woken me up? The pain in my head?

My stomach gave a warning lurch. No. Something worse.

I tried to get up, but all my movements were slowed down, my mind unable to cope with doing anything at normal speed. I had to focus on slowly swinging my legs out of bed and then carefully sitting up, and every millimeter triggered a fresh explosion in my head and gurgles in my stomach. When I tried to stand, my legs felt like rubber so I crawled to the bathroom on hands and knees.

The last thing I remembered was ordering The Godfather. What happened?

I decided I’d think about that later. I had to get to the bathroom before—

I crawled faster, hard wood under my knees and then white tiles and then—

I grabbed the toilet with both hands and vomited longer and harder than I ever had in my life. Long, long after my stomach was empty it continued to convulse—seemingly out of sheer spite. I will never drink again, I pleaded. Never ever ever. Not even when Jasmine gets her big break. I promise. Never! Just please make it stop!

I chose what I thought was a safe moment, closed the lid and flushed. Then I knelt there begging for it to finish its cycle because I needed to throw up again. Come on! Come on!

This went on for a half hour.

Eventually, my body figured out that there was nothing more inside me, but I didn’t dare move in case I was wrong. I dozed off like that, still clutching at the bowl, and then woke with a start. I wanted to brush my teeth but, not up to the taste of mint yet, settled for washing my mouth out.

I crawled back to my bed, my throat raw. This time, I noticed the glass of water next to my clock and the Post-It stuck to it in Connor’s handwriting: “DRINK THIS. TAKE THESE.” There was an arrow and I followed it down to two white pills.

I didn’t argue and gulped them down with the water. My stomach grumbled but indicated that, if I lay extremely still, it would play ball.

I begged for sleep to take me back and, eventually, it did.

When I woke up again the pain in my head was still there, but it had shrunk to a level that allowed me to actually think. I started to ask questions like, “What happened last night?” and “What did I say to Connor?” Clearly, he’d been the one who put me to bed. Did that mean we’d spent the evening together, before I’d become incapable of standing?

I closed my eyes as I thought about him and Taylor. Had I had a cat-fight with her? Had I declared my love for Connor and he’d laughed? I wracked my brain, but there was just a black void between drinking The Godfather and waking up. The only thing I could be sure of was that everything hadn’t come out well. I clearly hadn’t pushed my way between Connor and Taylor, told him how I felt and squealed in delight as he swept me up into his arms, because if that had happened he’d be here with me in my bed. Instead, he was probably across town somewhere in her bed. Probably waking up and having sleepy, languorous morning sex with her—

I felt like I was going to throw up again.

I opened my eyes to try to distract me and saw another note on my door. It was at eye height, so I hadn’t noticed it when I’d crawled to the bathroom. It said “GO TO KITCHEN.”

I pulled the covers over my head instead and lay there, half asleep and drowning in misery, until my stomach started to do a different sort of rumbling. Around noon, I finally pulled the covers around me like a protective cocoon and trudged to the kitchen.

There was a frying pan on the stove with oil already in it and a note on the handle saying “FRIDGE.” There was a box of eggs I didn’t remember buying and a pack of some sort of strange, flat bread. When I opened the refrigerator there was a pack of bacon. Connor must have bought all this stuff the night before….

That’s when I spotted the final note, on a plate. It said, “EAT = FEEL BETTER” and, crucially, there was a smiley face underneath.

That smiley face gave me hope. If I’d done anything too awful, he wouldn’t have done all this for me…right?

The bread-like things turned out to be potato bread, and delicious when fried up with the bacon and eggs. I started to feel like I might one day be human again.

My phone beeped with a Facebook update. You have been tagged in a photo. There was another one above it, and another and another. Thirty-seven in all.

I went to the first photo and my fork clattered to the floor.

The photo had been taken in a nightclub, with garish purple lights bathing the scene. A woman with my face but in a tight silver dress was dancing on a table, her arms above her head.

The next photo seemed to have been taken in a Chinese restaurant. The same woman was attempting to hug a worried-looking man in chef’s whites.

The next one I recognized as Battery Park, because the Statue of Liberty was in the background. The woman was imitating her in the foreground, wrapped in what looked like a tablecloth and holding aloft a hot dog.

Thirty-seven photos, each with ten or twenty “likes.”

I called Jasmine. “This is awful! Someone’s Photoshopped my head onto some woman’s body!”

“Oh, no,” said Jasmine. “That’s you.”

The world stopped turning, and I spun off into space.

“How do you feel, this fine morning?” Jasmine asked.

“But that’s not me! I don’t even own a silver dress!”

“You do now. You insisted on going shopping at an all-night market at midnight. You said you needed a whole new look. You changed back later, when you got cold. Just before the strip club.”

“Strip Club?!”

“Oh…you haven’t gotten to that yet?”

I flicked forward. There I was, back in jeans and sweater, standing between two disgruntled doormen. Signs advertised an all-male strip show.

“They wouldn’t let you in,” Jasmine told me. “Despite your insistence that you could walk in a straight line. You couldn’t, as it turned out.”

I almost didn’t dare to ask. “Did I say anything to Connor?”

“Not that I know of. He seemed happy enough. Worried about you, actually. He’s just a big fluffy bunny rabbit, isn’t he, under that hard man exterior?”

“And Taylor?”

“He sent her home about the time you got completely out of control. Then he took you home in a cab.”

For the first time that day, I felt a tiny ray of hope.

***

By mid-afternoon, I was feeling slightly better, even if my stomach lurched every time I thought of facing the rest of Fenbrook. I lay on the couch, dozing and drinking peppermint tea, glad that at least it was Saturday and I didn’t have to do anything.

When the sun went down, I couldn’t rouse myself to turn the lights on so the room dimmed to a pleasant gloom. My phone’s ringtone shattered the silence. The screen said Connor.

I put it to my ear, closing my eyes in the hope that would help me concentrate. “Hi.”

“How are you feeling?” He sounded concerned and slightly amused. That was better than angry.

“Not good. Better for breakfast. Thank you. Where did you even manage to buy potato bread at three in the morning?”

He laughed. “I stayed all night, to make sure you were okay. I went to the store this morning, while you were still sleeping it off.”

I bit my lip. “I’m sorry if I messed things up with Taylor.”

“Taylor? Not much to mess up. We were just larkin’ about.”

I put my palm to my face and took a few deep breaths to stop myself screaming in frustration.

“Karen?”

Not now. I wasn’t going to tell him now, when I was hungover and humiliated and a mess.

“I’m fine,” I told him. “Just exhausted. I think I’ll sleep some more. You didn’t want to rehearse tonight or anything, did you?”

“Nah. A friend from back home’s crashing.”

When I’d hung up, I lay there and planned it out. Tomorrow morning, first thing, I’d get a cab over to his apartment and tell him. Simple and direct and to his face, and he’d react how he’d react.

I was done playing games; tomorrow, everything would change.

***

The next morning brought snow, the last gasp of winter before it handed over to spring. It wasn’t heavy, but it took everyone by surprise and between that and it being early on Sunday morning, cabs were thin on the ground.

That didn’t stop me, though. A glacier that split the city in two wouldn’t have stopped me.

I pressed the buzzer for Connor’s apartment, only to find it didn’t work and probably hadn’t since he’d moved in. Now I knew why he’d come down to meet me, when we rehearsed there.

Luckily, the main door’s lock was as broken as the buzzer. I trudged up the five flights of stairs, glad that at least I wasn’t carrying my cello this time, and stood outside his door for a second to get my breath back. There was a chance he wouldn’t be there, since I hadn’t called first. But who went out before nine on a Sunday morning?

I knocked, and my heart started pounding. I went through it again and again in my head, just as I had backstage at the bar when I’d asked for his help. I have to tell you something. I have to tell you that—

A thin-faced woman with ruler-straight hair opened the door. For a second, I tried to tell myself that I’d got the wrong apartment, but I recognized her from her photo.

A friend from back home’s crashing.

“Yeah?” said Ruth.

Her accent was just as strong as his and immediately I was imagining them together. She was wearing a vest top and I saw that she had a tattoo, too: A guitar, with a name running down the side. I knew what name it would be.

“Well?” she asked as I stood there frozen. Each word was snapped out with a viciousness that made me flinch, the hiss of a lioness warning me off her mate.

I turned and ran.

***

It was too early for the low-lifes and the dealers to be out on the streets so no one hassled me as I blundered down the street, wiping at my eyes. I didn’t want to cry in public.

I held it together even in the back of the cab. I held it until I got home and then I collapsed on my bed and sobbed and sobbed.

Chapter 20

I got the full story from Connor the next day as we prepared to rehearse in a practice room.

“Saturday morning, I get a collect call. She was standing at a payphone at JFK with a handbag—that’s all she brought, a handbag—and no money. She had nowhere else to go.”

I was staring down at my cello, ostensibly tuning it. “So the two of you are…?”

He sighed. “I don’t know yet. It’s complicated.”