I stumbled forward. The floor seemed to drop away beneath my feet. Maya was there. Why was Maya there? When did she get there? Did I know she would be there?
“Emily, honey, what’s going on? You’re freaking us out right now.”
Mia’s hand on my arm. I could see it but couldn’t feel it. Or maybe I could feel it but it didn’t register as real. Like touching through glass.
“The scholarship.” My voice sounded wrong. Flat. Someone else’s voice. “I didn’t. They said no.”
“Oh, Em. I’m so sorry.”
Sorry. People kept being sorry but it didn’t help. Nothing helped. My brain was skipping like a scratched record, jumping between tracks without warning.
“She bought the painting.” The words came out sideways, wrong order, fragments. “Cam’s mom… On the wall… Every day she’ll see it and she said… Real gift… She said real gift but they didn’t… The scholarship people… They didn’t think so.”
I was moving but I didn’t know where. Someone was guiding me. Mia maybe. Or Maya. The room kept sliding around.
“Mom said… She said for the best... Because I was never... She was right all along and I called her… I said the word. The C word... Right at dinner.”
My hands were shaking. The whole room was shaking. Or I was shaking. Everything was shaking.
“He said he loved me…” The thought crashed in from nowhere, derailing whatever I’d been trying to say. “Cam… He said it but that’s... People don’t... You can’t love... Not someone who’s all... I’m all...”
The sentence wouldn’t finish. My brain kept starting thoughts and abandoning them halfway through, jumping to the next panic, the next broken piece.
“Okay, hey.” Mia’s voice was soothing but distant. Muffled. Like she was speaking from another room even though she was right next to me. “It’s okay. Let’s just take a breath.”
Breath. I tried to pull air in but it got stuck halfway, my chest too tight, my throat closing. The panic was rising, black and choking, and I couldn’t stop it.
“I can’t. I can’t breathe.”
“You’re okay, Em. You’re breathing fine. Just slow down.” Mia’s hand was rubbing my arm now. The friction made a swishing sound against my sleeve. Loud. Too loud. Scratchy and unbearable. “We’re just going to get the living room, and then…”
Mia kept talking but the sound was drowned out by the blood rushing in my ears. My stomach lurched.
“Bathroom,” I managed.
Mia moved fast, dragging me. The world spun. Tilted. Colors smeared together. Then the sharp scent of bleach and toilet bowl cleaner hit my nose. My knees cracked against tile. I bent over the toilet, my body purging everything inside me in violent waves.
Mia’s hand was on my back, rubbing small circles. Maya’s voice came from somewhere behind us, saying something I couldn’t understand.
When my stomach finally emptied, I slumped against the bathtub, my whole body shaking. The tears came then, hot and relentless, and I couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t breathe past them.
“I can’t,” I gasped. “I can’t do this anymore.”
I was aware of movement around me. Maya saying something. Mia responding. Their voices blended together into meaningless noise while I sat there on the bathroom floor, crying so hard my ribs hurt.
I wanted Cam. The thought crashed through the chaos in my brain, sharp and desperate. But I’d blocked him. I’d pushed him away and now I was alone on a bathroom floor falling apart and he wasn’t here because I’d made sure he couldn’t be.
The crying got harder, morphing into something that felt like it was tearing me in half.
The room started to tilt. Or maybe I was tilting. I couldn’t tell anymore.
Time stretched and compressed in weird ways. One second I was curled on my side, the next I was sitting up again, though I didn’t remember moving.
Somewhere in the distance, a door slammed. Hard. The vibration of it rattled through the floorboards and into my bones.
Heavy footsteps hammered against the wood. Fast. Urgent. Like thunder approaching.
Hands touched my back. Large palms. Calloused fingertips. My lungs seized. I knew those hands.
