Cherish Farrah, page 11
It’s better than I could have hoped for—making Cherish my new home and being rid of Kelly all on the same night.
Only I don’t get to enjoy it.
I go to sleep big-spooning Cherish and wake up with my guts in a vise. There’s a fire under my skin, and it’s clearly not a sudden development, because the sheets beneath me are soaking wet. At first, I’m worried I lost control of my bladder. I sincerely hope I haven’t capped off a perfect night by pissing my best friend’s bed.
I haven’t. At least I don’t think I have. Sweat is gushing from my pores, and the wetness is everywhere, like an aura, or an outline of my entire body. My bladder could not have held enough contents to do this damage.
My scarf has slipped clean off and is on the pillow above my head, and my hair is wet either from the sweat-drenched pillow or from the sweat flooding from my scalp. Or both.
This is disgusting. Everything is wrong.
Cherish isn’t in my arms anymore. It looks like she rolled away, probably to escape my sweat-scape, and while she hasn’t woken up, she’s on the absolute edge of the bed. I get three seconds into a half-baked plan to somehow change the sheets without waking her, and also without knowing where the Whitmans keep their linens, before the reason I woke up in the first place barges back to center stage.
I’m gonna be sick.
I don’t have time to turn on the bathroom light, and I shouldn’t need to. I know where the toilet is by now—I just don’t know how I miss it. The first wave of vomit bursts out of me like water breaking through a dam, and I hear it splash against the floor.
I moan because my throat keeps pulsating even after the stuff escapes, and I can’t get the curse word out.
Now the bathroom reeks, and the nightmare isn’t over. More is coming, but when I try to get closer to the toilet, to thrust my face into the open bowl this time, my hand serendipitously finds the pool of chunky bile, and I lose what little stability I had. My chin crashes into the porcelain, and I both hear and feel a crunch on impact.
My eyes are squeezed shut but the world lights up.
I hear a splash, so at least some of what comes tearing up my throat next makes it into the toilet.
I give up. Hope this is all a dream.
My face is throbbing in pain, there’s vomit on the floor and in my hand and under my knees now, and my throat feels raw from whatever undigested chunks of food are forcing their way up and out.
Food poisoning. It has to be. From Dad’s conchiglie and meat sauce.
And then I’m back at their house, remembering standing in their sterile bedroom and the packed suitcases I didn’t see.
They lied to me. And I figured them out.
I called them on it. And now I’m sick.
I burp into the toilet, my guts heaving and my throat gagging, but nothing more comes out.
I can’t speak, so I just moan.
My parents didn’t do this on purpose. They ate the same meal I did, and they sent leftovers for Cherish. If anything, they’re curled up around toilet bowls right now, too, one in the master bathroom that’s barely large enough to deserve the name, and the other in the one in the hall. I guess it’ll feel more lived-in now.
But if they had done it on purpose, it would’ve almost been the perfect cover. I’ve been sick to my stomach for weeks. It’d just look like more of my homesick, world-turned-upside-down confusion, and only they’d know it was something else. Only my mother would know.
I can’t escape the fetid smell anyway, so I just lay my head against the cool toilet seat and breathe.
They didn’t do this. I know that because my parents might be liars but they aren’t cruel. They’ve only ever used traditional punishments—grounding me from social gatherings or personal electronics—and those have always been accompanied by long talks. My mother is cunning, but I haven’t ever actually seen her do any of the things I know she’s capable of. Which is why I’ve never told her the truth about what happened in the fourth grade, even though I wanted to. I could never decide whether she’d be proud or feign disapproval—or something worse. Because now I wonder whether she would have told Brianne Whitman the truth during her little character assassination attempt, knowing how much the story means to the Whitmans.
“No,” I finally manage, and it croaks out of my sore throat.
If my parents had given me food poisoning on purpose, they’d want me to learn a lesson, and the only way to know that I had would be to talk to me about it. There’s no such possibility with secrecy.
The blinding light is outside my head now, and the bathroom is bathed in it.
“RahRah!” Cherish discovers me at last. “Oh my gawd, Farrah, wait here!”
As though I’m going anywhere.
Relief swallows me up. My Cherish knows something’s wrong; she’s going to take care of it. Knowing that, I fall asleep right there.
The next time I bat my eyes open, Brianne Whitman is kneeling beside me in what looks like a satin robe. I feel her cool hand against my forehead.
“Run a bath, but keep the shower running, Che,” she directs.
“It’s all right, sweetie.” Jerry Whitman’s somewhere in the room, too. “She’ll be fine.”
Cherish is crying.
I moan, try not to smile, but I can’t help it. They’ll just think I’m delirious. I probably am.
“Honey, I can’t lift her.”
“I’ll get her in the tub, and then you girls get her undressed after.”
“RahRah . . .”
I can hear the tremble in her voice now, and when Jerry Whitman gathers me up, groaning under my deadweight, I try to open my eyes a little to find her.
“Che,” I manage, still fighting back the smile I can feel has tugged my lips higher on one side. It hurts, and my chin is swelling up already, so I sound even more pathetic.
“Cherish, honey, please give your father some space. She’s okay, baby.”
His back must get rained on when he leans in to lower me into the tub as gently as possible. Thank God for fit dads with impressive core control.
“I’m gonna step out,” he says when the water is already swelling over my shins. In a moment, it’ll cover my knees. Luckily I’m only wearing a nightshirt and underwear, so there isn’t much for Cherish and her mom to wriggle me out of.
“Go,” Brianne answers, like he’s been called to war. “We’ll manage from here.”
“Should I send someone up for the mess?” he asks, almost like he’s hesitating.
When his wife answers him, it sounds like she’s made a serious decision, rather than elected not to have her hired help wipe up my stomach bile and half-digested conchiglie in the dead of night.
“We’ll manage.”
Cherish is still whimpering when Brianne instructs her to get me out of my clothes, and when my best friend leans into the shower, she doesn’t even think to put a shower cap over her bonnet first. She’s only managed to get my soaking-wet nightshirt from under my butt, which is now completely submerged, when one side of her head interrupts the water falling from above.
“Mom!” She’s fully crying now, and if I had any strength at all, I’d reach for her.
I have no idea what’s happened to me, or why I’m so sick . . . but it’s worth it.
Cherish can’t stop crying.
Jerry and Brianne Whitman came running like I’m their own child.
He lowered me into a bath, and she stayed to take care of me.
I can’t see Brianne, but I know she’s upset. Her agitation is bleeding into her voice, and she’s losing patience with Cherish. That’s the most overwhelming part of all—the way Brianne is snapping at Cherish now. Cherish, her universe, her heartbeat. Because of me.
“Cherish, stop crying, please. None of that is helping Farrah.”
“I can’t—” But whatever comes after in Che’s almost unrecognizable shrieking voice is completely undecipherable. Neither I nor her mom can make out what she’s blubbering about at first, and it’s a good thing Mr. Whitman didn’t wake the housekeeper to witness this embarrassing scene.
“So turn off the shower for a moment and get in, Cherish! It’ll be easier than trying to undress her bent over that way.”
Another whiny series of shrieks that are clearly in protest.
“Then your hair is already wet, and it shouldn’t matter. I hardly think that’s as important as getting your best friend cleaned up and back in bed so she can rest. Now, Cherish.”
The showerhead stops pouring water over me, but the bath is already full enough to cover my stomach. It’s going to be next to impossible for Cherish to get the now heavy, clinging nightshirt off me on her own, but her mother isn’t helping.
I can’t keep my eyelids open, and when I manage to bat them, there must be water on my lashes and in my eyes because it’s like driving in the rain. Everything’s distorted, blurry and bleeding into something else. Cherish disrupts the water when she steps in with one foot, wedging it between my legs to steady herself, and I see only wet and blurry brown stems and a red pajama shorts set. Whatever Brianne is doing, it’s outside the bath, and I can’t hear her over the sound of Cherish grunting near my ear while she laboriously peels my clothing off my skin.
“Mom, some of her vomit got in her hair,” Cherish says, on the verge of sobbing again.
“You were going to have to wash her hair anyway, Che.”
“It’s the middle of the night!”
“Maybe you’ll think next time.”
That’s the part that doesn’t make sense.
I roll my head to the side, trying to find Brianne, but even if I could keep my eyes open, there’s a fogged and frosted window between us.
Brianne doesn’t speak to Cherish that way. Cherish is a masterpiece of her parents’ design, and it isn’t as though she’s ever been made to undress a full-grown human with vomit on their clothes. It isn’t like she should have known how to avoid cross contamination—but I’m not one hundred percent certain that’s what Brianne said in the first place.
The bath that’s supposed to be getting me clean of my bright-orange vomit must be serving the dual purpose of sweating out my fever, because I realize it’s sweltering in here.
But Cherish is going to wash my hair.
She’s been given permission to leave my underwear on because they’re free from throw-up, and it’s almost like we’re back at my house, in the pool together, preparing for baptism. Even though she’s still dressed, she hugs me to her and clumsily rearranges me so that my head rests against the basin instead of the tiled wall. I’m not sure how this’ll make it easier or less messy to wash my hair, but I guess we’ll see. Only Brianne interjects again when she grabs the detachable showerhead.
“Part her hair, Cherish, you know how to wash hair. I’ll get the clips,” she says, and then it sounds like she turns away.
“I’m tired!”
“So Farrah should wake up with a knotted mess because you’re tired? Because that’s what’s gonna happen if you try to wash it all at once like I didn’t teach you how to simplify wash day.”
And then I feel Brianne’s thin fingers in my hair. I know it’s her by the faint waft of floral that precedes her touch.
“Here, sweetheart, I’m sorry. I’ll help.”
When her fingers pause, separating my hair, I hear her kiss Cherish’s cheek.
“It’s okay, baby. I know you’re tired.”
Apparently the agitation is gone. I can hear my friend sniffling, and occasionally the swift work Brianne is accomplishing in making six sections of my hair and clipping all but one of them down stops, and I know she’s coddling her daughter.
She’s taking care of us both now.
My chest and shoulders are goose-pimpling without the shower running over them, and I’m exhausted, despite not being able to throw a tantrum the way Cherish did. Thankfully, they only jostle my head for another fifteen minutes or so, rinsing the conditioner out without undoing the twists they made of each section, before wrapping my head in a fresh terry-cloth turban and working together to get me somewhat on my feet. They get me out of the bath somehow and back into the bedroom.
Mr. Whitman must’ve changed the linen, because Brianne and Cherish have to turn down the covers to put me back to bed.
“What happened to her?” Cherish asks when the two return to the bathroom for what I assume is going to be a long and backbreaking hour of cleaning, at least.
“It’s probably just something she ate,” Brianne answers, and I can tell by the echo of her voice that she’s near the toilet. Bent down, probably, and beginning to clean the putrid mess I made. “I’ll let her mom and dad know in the morning.”
“It couldn’t have been from their dinner.”
“Well, of course it could, honey. How would we know?”
“Because I had the same thing she did,” Cherish insists.
It’s quiet except for the sound of a scouring pad or maybe a brush scrubbing the bathroom tile and the grout groove in between. Mrs. Whitman must be concentrating, or more likely sick to her stomach, because she doesn’t respond to her daughter.
I didn’t know Cherish had eaten my dad’s leftovers already. When we got home, I didn’t expect her to do anything but collapse in a crying heap on her bed, but her parents called her name as we were going upstairs, and I went ahead without her. It was only a little while before she came up, too, and then Brianne was in our suite at some point. I’m having déjà vu, listening to their voices reverberate in the bathroom on the other side of the wall—only the last time they were intentionally hushed.
I’ve started to sweat again, but at least it’s not like before. Whatever’s going on with me, it isn’t food poisoning, and it’s not completely out of my system. I’ll have to give in at some point, but I want to stay awake a little longer. I want to enjoy the way they’re all responding. The way everything they’re doing and saying revolves around me, and the way they don’t know I’m conscious enough to know it.
“This can’t happen again,” I think I hear Brianne say when it seems like they’ve been working in silence for a long time.
“Do I put a trash bin next to her side of the bed?”
“I’m talking about what happened at Judge Campbell’s, Cherish.”
My eyes actually open completely now.
My head is muddled and I’m probably borderline delirious, but that feels like a strange and disjointed segue.
“It’s done,” Brianne says, in a tone that—from my post-puke stupor—is nothing like I’ve ever heard from her. “Am I making myself clear?”
She means Kelly. By “what happened at Judge Campbell’s,” she means whatever Kelly and Cherish were doing that drove Tariq poolside, not whatever came after that resulted in Tariq’s black eye and Kelly’s destruction of property. She’s telling her daughter that she’s not allowed to see Kelly anymore, which makes perfect sense—except for the timing of it. I just assumed that’s what she and Mr. Whitman wanted with Cherish when we got home last night . . . so why is she saying it now?
“Cherish. Am I clear?”
“Yes.”
No whining, no hissy fit. No pleading or declaring her mother unfair. Cherish agrees with shocking calm, even if her voice betrays a hint of apprehension, or worry. Which is impressive for a one-word reply.
“Good. Give me Farrah’s toothbrush.”
My eyes have fallen shut again, and I can’t do anything about it. They’re heavy like an iron curtain, so I only manage to ribbon my eyebrows at the second confusing segue.
But there’s no question I’m delirious. I know because the same rainy windshield effect that was happening in the shower is happening now, even behind my eyelids.
There’s a good chance I’ve been falling in and out of sleep, hearing snippets of conversation and thinking they’re immediately following other pieces, when really I’ve missed the connective tissue in between. There’s no way for me to know without asking the two people I’m eavesdropping on, and I couldn’t if I tried.
I’ll ask Cherish tomorrow. Assuming tomorrow comes.
I hear my toothbrush clatter against the inside of the small waste bin under the sink.
“There should be new ones in the top right drawer.” Brianne waits through the sound of a deep wood drawer sliding open. “The very furthest right drawer, Cherish,” and then—when I think she’s exasperated again, the way she was when they were bathing me—I hear her laugh.
“What?” her daughter whines. “Stop laughing at me, Mommy.”
“I’m not, baby,” she manages, though her twinkling laugh continues until there’s a golden swarm of locusts amassing above the bed. A moment later, the sound of her kissing her daughter, probably against the temple, like she so often does, with Cherish nestled under her shoulder. “You’re just adorable.”
“Why?” And I can tell she’s smiling. “Because I don’t know where things are in my own bathroom?”
In reply, Brianne lets her head fall back—I know she does—and the swarm hovering over my head expands.
Of course that’s how she responds to evidence that Cherish is ridiculously spoiled. It’s not like it happened by accident.
Reindeer playdates don’t just happen.
Reindeer, with furry antlers, might still draw blood.
I furrow my brow, unsure what I was thinking just before that.
I’m so tired. The back of my neck feels clammy and uncomfortable against the pillowcase, and there’s an itchy, throbbing discomfort inside my head that’s localized exclusively on the left side. Worse, there’s a rumble in my gut, and it’s followed by a series of pops and small-scale explosions.
I know what’s coming.
I could test my vocal cords, see if I’ve built up enough energy to make them hear me.
