by Box Set
“Holy crap,” a deep voice said from the hospital bed. “How long have I been out?”
“Graham!” I jumped up and hugged him tight. “You're awake! Finally.”
“Is it Sunday?” he asked. “Why are the Gossip Girls wearing dresses?”
“Hey,” Felicity said. “What did he call us?”
My brother had never called them that to their faces before. “Um,” I said. “I think he's still drugged.”
As soon as I stopped hugging him, he tried to sit up.
“Graham,” I said. “I don't think you should—”
He made a face and lowered himself back to his pillow, his hands on his head. “That wasn't a good idea,” he mumbled.
“Dizzy?” Felicity asked. “I think being roofied can make you dizzy. I read this article once about—”
“For the love of God, Felicity,” Graham snapped. “My head is killing me.”
He really was out of it if he was being that harsh to my friend. I looked to see if she was upset.
Felicity leaned down toward Liz. “He knows my name,” she whispered. “Told you.”
Oh for the love of God. I rolled my eyes.
“Well, good morning!” a cheerful voice said from the doorway. A new nurse came bustling into the room, carrying a bed pan and some washcloths. “How is our patient today?”
Liz and Felicity moved away so she could reach his bedside.
“He just woke up, and he has a terrible headache,” I told her.
She nodded. “Dizziness? Nausea?”
“Yes, and yes.” My brother groaned.
“Let me get your blood pressure and temp, and I'll let the doctor know you're awake.”
She set the bed pan and washcloths aside and quickly completed her tasks.
“Do you need to use the restroom?” she asked.
Graham looked in horror at the bed pan. “You aren't going to make me use that, are you?”
“Goodness, no, hon. I brought that to clean up your face. I'll help you get to the bathroom and let you have some privacy.”
“We'll go down to the lobby,” Felicity said. “Text us when it's safe to come back.”
“What's wrong with my face?” Graham asked.
As my friends filed out of the room, I filled him in on the graffiti. He was still hooked up to the IV so the nurse helped him move out of bed and over to the bathroom. Then she closed the door and stood waiting with me. I pounced on the drink my friends had left for me. I was dying of thirst.
After a couple of minutes, we heard the toilet flush and the sink run. Then my brother opened the door. He pointed to his face. “How do I get this off?”
“Paint thinner and some elbow grease,” the nurse said. “Fingernail polish remover would work too.”
“Can you do it now?” he asked.
“Let's get you back to bed. Then I'll update your chart and send for the doctor. Once that's done, I can work on your face.”
Graham muttered under his breath as he walked to the bed. “I can't believe those reprobates roofied me.”
He looked so miserable that I felt like I had to do something. I turned to the nurse. “Would it be okay if I work on his face while you're busy?”
She smiled. “That's fine. Just be careful with the paint thinner. You'll want to use as little as possible to avoid getting it in his eye.”
Oh. I didn't want to blind my brother.
“You can do it, Townsey. I want this crap off my face before somebody sees me.”
“I'll leave you to it then,” the nurse said with a smile.
“Um, Graham. Somebody has already seen you.”
“Who? The Gossip Girls?”
“No. Well, yes, but also Joe McCoy.”
Graham closed his eyes for a full minute. “Joe saw me drugged and graffitied?”
“Sorry.” He was taking it harder than I expected. But I guess Graham looked up to the man, and he didn't like looking foolish in front of him.
He sighed. “I guess it's no worse than Joshua seeing me.”
Um. “Yeah.”
“Where is he anyway? It isn't like him to leave you alone here.”
“Yeah, um, about that.”
My brother gave me the look he had perfected in the months since we lost our dad. The “what have you done now” look.
“He was out of town, Graham. I talked to him right after you sent that app signal. The app is brilliant by the way. I didn't know you'd set that up.”
“Townsey,” he said.
“Joshua told me to call Parker Security. And I would have, Graham. I would have, but we didn't need to. You were right down the street. I had the schematics of the frat house.”
“Townsey Alice Paxton, tell me you didn't step foot in a frat house last night!”
One of the machines started beeping faster.
“Graham, I think you need to relax. I mean, I'm fine, and we got you out no problem.”
“Did you drag your friends there too? Townsey, they are minors!”
“And all of us were armed.”
Graham's eyes nearly bugged out of his head.
“With tasers,” I hurried to assure him. “Liz waited in the car, and me and Felicity stayed together. We went right to you and had a couple of guys carry you out of there.”
“You should have called Parker Security.”
“If anything went wrong, we would have called the police.”
Graham shook his head. “I can't believe you, Townsey. Something had already gone wrong. I was drugged. Do you know what's been happening to girls at that frat house?”
“No,” I said. “I don't. Maybe you should have told me.”
“I'm changing the app to contact Lori next time.”
“No you aren't.” Lori was our part-time office manager. “She has triplets. You wouldn't wake her in the middle of the night.”
“I'm going to have to punish you for this, you know,” he said.
I glared at him. “For rescuing you?”
“For putting yourself in danger. You knew you were taking a risk I wouldn't approve of.”
I crossed my arms and looked away from him.
“Felicity and Liz's parents are going to kill me,” he said.
“They won't find out,” I said.
“Is that supposed to reassure me, Townsey? Don't worry about angry parents because me and my friends are skilled at deceiving them? I'm your guardian.”
“Do you want the crap off your face, or not?” I asked, grabbing the supplies the nurse had brought.
My brother gave a long-suffering sigh. “Go ahead.”
I opened the bottle that the nurse gave me and carefully dabbed some of the liquid onto a washcloth. The smell of paint thinner hit me immediately. “It smells pretty bad,” I said.
I leaned over my brother, planning to start on his forehead while I got the hang of things.
My brother pushed me aside, sitting up quickly, his hands cupped against his mouth. He grabbed the bed pan from me and retched into it, splashing my arms with some of the vomit.
I gagged and ran for the bathroom sink. I gagged twice more while scrubbing my arms with soap, but I managed not to vomit.
I grabbed the trash can and went back into the room. Graham had stopped vomiting and lay back on the pillow, grasping the foul bed pan in his hands. I held my breath as I crept closer. Then I moved the garbage can under his improvised barf bucket. “Let it go,” I said, trying to convince my lungs that I didn't need to take a breath.
Graham did as I said. I turned back to the bathroom, hoping to lock away the barf smell in there while I figured out how to get him cleaned up.
The nurse came in just then, her smile turning to a frown. “He vomited?”
I nodded and stuck the burden in the bathroom. Then I shut the door and took a breath. “Yes, but I think it was the smell of the paint thinner.”
She nodded, brightening a little. “That makes sense. The doctor was right behind me. Let me get rid of this blanket.”<
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Graham untangled the blanket from the sheet, and the nurse took it away.
“Sorry about that,” he said to me.
I couldn't help smiling. “You puked on my arms. Sure seems like a punishment to me.”
He grinned back. “You're a good sister, Towns. I’m still going to punish you.”
“Hello there,” the doctor from last night called as he came in the door. “Oh.” He stopped halfway to the bed. “Having a little tummy trouble, are we?”
“She was trying to clean up my face,” Graham said. “And the odor got me.”
The doctor came forward, nodding. “I see. You may have to wait until your headache and nausea resolve before trying again.”
“When might that be, doctor?” he asked.
“Seventy-two hours,” I said.
Graham's eyes widened.
The doctor looked at me and smiled. “Glad to see you're keeping your sense of humor.” He turned back to my brother. “I'd say twelve hours. Twenty-four at the outside. You were fortunate that you didn't sustain a concussion. Especially,” the doctor glanced at me, “after being pushed out of a car and onto a sidewalk.”
Graham turned to me. “I was?”
I patted his arm. “We can talk after the doctor finishes. I'm sure he has plenty of other patients to see.”
“When can I get out of here, doctor?” he asked.
“We'll shoot for noon,” he said. “I want to get some more fluids in you. I pulled up records from your last physical with your general practitioner. Your pulse rate is almost back to your normal resting rate. I will want you to see your doctor on Monday.”
Graham visibly relaxed. “Noon is okay.”
“You'll need someone to stay with you for the rest of the weekend and be sure to keep pushing the fluids.”
“Gatorade?” I asked, thinking back to the last time I was sick.
“Gatorade is good. Water too.”
I pulled out my phone and texted Liz and Felicity.
Me: Graham gets out around noon. Can you stock my fridge with Gatorade and water?
They each responded with a yes and a half dozen emoticons.
Maybe I should have asked Lori. Or Joe. On the other hand, was there really such a thing as too much Gatorade?
* * *
Yes. I scanned the rows upon rows of sports drinks on the shelves in our fridge. There really was such a thing as too much Gatorade.
“Where's the milk?” I asked, closing the refrigerator door and turning to my friends. “And the orange juice.”
“They were old,” Liz said.
No. Graham and I had just bought them.
I shook my head. “You guys are a nightmare.”
“Felicity wasn't going to get any sugar free,” Liz said. “I didn't think Graham should have that much sugar right after being drugged.”
“And Liz refused to get any PowerAde. I told her you were using Gatorade in the generic sense, but she insisted that you meant the brand.” Felicity rolled her eyes.
“Then we couldn't agree on the flavors,” Liz said. “Everybody likes grape. And the blue kind.”
“Not everybody,” Felicity interjected.
“I guess that explains why you bought four different brands of bottled water,” I said.
The door to my bedroom opened and my best friend, Hearst came out, his usually spiky dyed black hair giving way to bedhead. He had a new piercing. This one was under his eye and the skin around it was an angry red.
“Oh, yeah, Hearst is here.” Felicity dismissed his presence like she and Liz usually did. They hadn’t given him much of a chance in the last two and half years, and he hadn’t helped the situation.
At that moment, my brother and Joe made it to the top of the stairs. I was grateful for Joe’s height and lean muscle mass because I would have really struggled to get Graham upstairs.
“Holy crap,” Joe said, his eyes on my friend. “It's the Angel of Death.”
My brother looked too pale to make jokes, but his pallor was misleading. “It's just Townsey's friend, Hearse.”
Graham always called him Hearse because of is goth black-on-black-on-black appearance.
“Joe,” I said, glaring at Graham. “This is my very good friend, Hearst. And this is Felicity and Liz.”
Joe stood close to Graham as if he wasn't convinced my brother was going to stay vertical. “Nice to meet you.”
“Joe and my dad were good friends,” I said. “He's a cop. Hearst is in the forensics club at school.”
Hearst had won the science fair three out of the last five years for his blood splatter experiments, but I didn't like to remind Graham about that. He didn’t see the brilliance, only the gore.
Hearst stood staring at Graham. “I never thought you'd be the one to get roofied.”
My friend wasn't very good at reading Graham. I glanced at my brother who was clenching his fists. “Go take another nap in my room,” I told Hearst. I looked at Liz and Felicity. “Don't you have to get home?”
They nodded, looking gloomy.
Then Liz perked up. She got her things and walked over to the door where my brother and Joe stood. “We got you lots of Gatorade,” she told my brother. Then she flung her arms around him in a hug, almost knocking him over despite her small size. “I'm so glad you're okay.”
I smothered a laugh. I’d never seen my friend so brazen.
Graham gave me a “what the freak is happening” look.
When Liz finally released him, Felicity swooped in to take advantage and get herself a hug. “Thank God you weren't violated.”
She was much closer to his height of six feet. She looked up at his face and I knew she was using her long eyelashes and whiskey-colored eyes to great effect. “You know, worse than being drugged.”
Graham's jaw dropped.
My friend released my brother from her hold. “We'll be back tomorrow to check on you,” she said.
Graham gave me a panicked look.
Hearst watched all of this with his usual lack of expression, but as he turned to go to my room, I saw him trembling with silent laughter.
The girls headed down the stairs, and my brother went over to the couch and sank down onto it.
“Joe,” I said, remembering my hostess duties, “would you like a sports drink? Or some bottled water?”
“No thanks,” Joe said. He went to sit in the armchair. “I would like to hear the real story of what happened.”
My brother and I filled him in on most of the details. I didn’t think I should admit to tasing anybody. Then I left the two of them to plan the next move and went to check on Hearst.
* * *
Hearst lay sprawled on his back on my bed, intently focused on his phone. With his earphones on, it took him a moment to notice me.
When he did, he pulled off the headphones and gave me one of his rare smiles. He worked hard to hide his real personality. I understood why, or at least suspected I understood. But it seemed like a loss for the rest of the world for him to hide his smile away.
“Is a Mohawk too old school? Or should I give it a shot?”
I never knew what was going to come out of his mouth. I didn’t bother to answer. Instead, I walked over and leaned down to see the new piercing.
I touched his cheek gently near the two small pewter balls that were attached to the piece running under his skin. The piercing was closer to his eye than to his cheekbone. “Looks painful.”
He shrugged.
“When did you decide to get another piercing?” Since he hadn’t mentioned wanting an anti-eyebrow piercing, I had a feeling that something bad had gone down last night with his parents.
He tensed up but didn’t answer.
I climbed onto the bed next to him and stared up at the ceiling. I really needed to find something good to make the ceiling less ugly. “I’m here when you want to talk about it.”
We lay there, side by side, without speaking for a while. Finally, I said, “A Mohawk would be a lot of wor
k. I think it might be a bigger commitment than you want to make. Besides, my favorite Mohawks are dyed bright colors. If you did that, you’d lose your gloomy edge.”
He turned to meet my gaze. “You don’t think I could pull off a bright Mohawk and the brooding, morbid thing? I could.”
When had his eyelashes gotten so long? They were visible without his usual heavy-handed guy liner. I looked into his light brown eyes. “I haven’t seen you without black eyeliner in at least two years.”
“I didn’t put on any makeup this morning so I could get the piercing.”
“Those body modification people sure do have a lot of rules. And yet they tattoo and pierce you even though you aren’t eighteen.”
He shrugged. “My fake ID is rock solid. Best that money can buy.”
And that was a big part of the problem. Money. His parents were wealthy, like yacht club wealthy. They were also the worst parents on the planet. He would have been better off if they’d left him at the hospital when he was born. Instead, they’d taken him home, hired a series of cold nannies with ‘spare the rod spoil the child’ mentality, and ignored him.
We’d met the first day of high school at St. Francis of Assisi. He wore skull earrings back then. Now he had ear gauges. He was immediately sent to the office for refusing to take off his jewelry.
Since the school desperately needed a new gym and had only raised a hundred thousand dollars in three years, Hearst’s parents brokered a deal to pay fines for his transgressions rather than have him suspended or expelled. Hearst didn’t mind costing his parents money, and the school administrators practically cackled with glee every day he walked through the front door. The gym was seventy-percent funded already.
“I’m so glad you ended up at St. Francis,” I said.
“Random,” Hearst teased.
“I mean it. What if you hadn’t ended up at my school?”
“The odds were good. I think St. Francis was the sixth school they sent me to.”
“I’m glad it’s the one that stuck.”
“Me too. My parents were determined.” He reached over and touched my cheek. “What’s with all the feels today?”
“Graham had me scared,” I admitted. I’d been trying to push away the images of my brother lying so still, so lifeless, on that roof. I’d watched the life slowly drain out of my father. It had been long and miserable. The fear of losing my brother too, and of losing him without any warning, nearly crippled me.