“Thanks,” I whisper, then quickly push through the door and into the corridor.
I make it halfway across the yard in a daze before my phone vibrates in my pocket. I slip it out and glance at the screen.
Chris: What time are you going to be in the dorm tonight?
I consider ignoring his text the way I have been for the past few weeks, but he’s lucky Linda just put me in a really good mood.
Me: In about twenty minutes. Why?
He doesn’t respond right away so I tuck the phone back into my pocket and continue toward Spencer Hall. When I open the door to room 330B, he’s sitting on my bed with his leg propped up on some pillows and a baseball cap and sunglasses lying on the bed next to him. Senia is sitting on her bed and staring at me with a skeptical look on her face.
“What’s going on?” I ask as I drop my backpack onto my desk.
Senia stands suddenly. “I have to go call my mom about this weekend. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
She leaves and I’m left even more confused than when I walked in. “Why are you here?” I ask Chris.
He flashes me a tight smile as he adjusts his position on the bed so he’s sitting up a little straighter. “Claire, I have something to tell you. Well, two things. Depending on how you take it, this could be considered good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”
I hate when people say they have good news and bad news. The bad news always cancels out the good.
I sit across from him on Senia’s bed and curl my legs up so I’m cross-legged. “Give me the bad news first.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” He leans forward a bit, but he keeps his eyes locked on me. “I told my mom about Abigail.”
The relative lightness I was feeling after leaving class is gone, replaced by a panic I haven’t experienced in a very long time.
“Why? How could you? I just—Oh, my God. She hates me now, doesn’t she?”
“She doesn’t hate you. She could never hate you.”
“This is so embarrassing.”
My heart is pounding so hard my chest hurts. Suddenly, the necklace around my neck feels constrictive. I slide my fingers between the silver chain and my neck as I take deep breaths. I need to meditate.
“Are you okay?”
I shake my head. “No, I am not okay. I can’t believe you would do that. I wanted to be the one to tell her.” I cough in an attempt to clear the trapped sensation building in my chest, but it doesn’t help. “Oh, God. I can’t breathe.”
He rises from the bed so suddenly it startles the last bit of oxygen from lungs. My hands and feet turn ice cold right before I pass out.
I open my eyes and I’m no longer on Senia’s bed. I’m lying in my own bed with my blanket tucked tightly around me. Chris is watching me from where I was sitting before I passed out, as if we magically traded places. His jaw is set and I can’t tell if he looks more pissed or worried, or if he’s in pain.
“Did you put me in this bed?”
“Are you okay?” he asks, and I can definitely tell that he’s in pain.
“Are you crazy?”
“Yes.”
I sit up and resist the urge to throw my pillow at him. “You’re so stupid. You’re going to mess up that leg forever.”
“I’m fine. Are you okay?”
I nod. “Thanks for catching me.”
“I should have let you fall.” The half-smile on his face makes my stomach flutter. “But I love you too much.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “I need to meditate.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’m not going to meditate with you here.”
“Why not? I promise I’ll be quiet.”
My chest aches as I remember the first time I meditated on Adam’s living room floor while he watched. It took me a while to get used to tuning out noise while meditating. The obvious way to deal with this is to focus instead on the steady rhythm of your heartbeat or breathing. Fallon taught me to create noise in my head to drown out the outside world. Then I gradually lower the volume on the noise until I’m fully relaxed. The deepest moment of peace always comes right after the blast.
I fold my legs so I’m sitting cross-legged and close my eyes. I take a few deep breaths and attempt to think of something peaceful. The ocean is usually my favorite thing to meditate on. You’re technically not supposed to think of anything when you meditate, but I haven’t reached that level of nirvana yet. So I imagine the waves crashing, but the first thing I see is Adam riding a wave. I shake my head and imagine a glass of water in a sink. The faucet drips into the glass, filling it up one drop at a time. Suddenly, Adam is there washing dishes in Cora’s apartment.