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I nodded my head, feeling disappointment flood my eyes. "Where's your newest member?"
"Over there." I followed Max's pointed finger to a small dark car that was pulling up beside the van and watched Angelica get out and walk toward Andrew who was standing with a mix of guys and girls, all smoking and talking. She was present and accounted for, at least.
I couldn't remember Jake mentioning anything about leaving me alone. That morning he'd said we'd bunk up again. Then, he was upset with me and wouldn't talk until he calmed down. I left him at the club and now he was openly avoiding me.
I wanted to close my eyes and let the pain wash over me. Instead, I opened them wide to keep the emotion from falling down my cheeks.
Max still noticed and gave me a big, warm hug. "You're good. He's just not ready to talk yet."
I wanted to know why Jake ditched me, but couldn't bring myself to ask. If it was something bad, I didn't think I could take it. Besides, I'd never asked Max for anything like that before. Then, I was distracted by a girl standing behind him, one who'd gotten out of the van at the same time he had. She was waiting over by the door, and then she was half way to us with a hand on one hip. She cleared her throat, reminding Max that he had better things to do.
Max turned and told her, "Patience is a virtue." Back to me he said, "I promise it'll be okay." He planted a kiss on my forehead. I was almost smiling when he pulled away. "You're his girl. He might be pissed, but he's still gonna take care of you."
I nodded, disappointed, but also comforted as Max walked away.
The night was muggy as I stood in the lot long after everyone was gone. Sweat was building on my neck and back, watching other people pass by. They were living their lives and I felt like mine had stopped. Jake was mad and gone and it was work to take a step in any direction without him.
Eventually, I decided I should get back to my room. But on the way, I couldn't help but notice how extremely loud the lights in the parking lot had become. How unusually bright they suddenly seemed compared to just a moment before. Suddenly lights burst and flickered across my vision, blinding me with their bright and leaving me in the dark. The muscles in my neck and back seized in hulking knots that drew my shoulders up. My stomach constricted in a violent crush that took my legs out from under me. Avery's voice called out to me. I pictured her in the doorway of our room, imagined her lips moving, forming my name. Her voice was drowned by the extraordinary buzzing noise that burrowed into my ears.
Lights flashed, bringing me back to the parking lot. My knees were on the coarse asphalt. The night was so, so bright, like staring at the sun, or the end of the matchstick that lit the fuse of a migraine.
It was another migraine sweeping in, making me want to wail. Every cell in my body went into overdrive, preparing for the onslaught. Yes, I was hurting and I could barely see, but this was nothing. It was only beginning.
My temples started to throb, the pressure building and drawing inward, deep into my brain. My blood cells were skyscrapers inside my undersized head, trying to force their enormity through my insufficient corpuscles. They ripped everything in their path, tearing me fiber by fiber. I braced my hands over my head. How was I supposed to stay together? How was I supposed to survive? To breathe, when it hurt so badly?
All I could do was let Avery take me into the motel room. My legs didn't want to work. I couldn't see or hear anything beyond the ripping in my head, the rush of blood and the absolute hell it brought to the veins in my forehead, eyes, my neck and shoulders. My throat had closed. My mouth watered from the horrid pain. There was only one place I could go. Only one thing I could do to combat the migraine. I needed my pills and I had to lie down.
My vision cleared long enough to see Avery's lips moving. I think she was saying something.
Then, BOOM!
The room exploded with noise. Blaring lights from the lamp on the dresser. The piercing confusion of lights from the parking lot. The TV set: I swear, people could hear it from a hundred miles away.
Avery dropped me on the bed. Her deafening whisper blared that she was afraid to move me. She knew it would get worse if I didn't keep still. Although, I couldn't imagine I could possibly feel anything more than I did in that moment. But that is one thing about pain: you can never imagine anything worse until you feel it. Then, it's a whole new level of torture you never knew existed.
There was nothing that I could do except lay still in a dark, quiet room.
Avery shut off the blaring TV and the click was so loud, I think my eardrums burst. She rubbed my forehead trying to soothe me but even the slightest touch of her painted fingers just prickled in my skin and made me scream.
I cried, "Bathroom." I had to be on a hard surface. Carpets made noise. Beds were worse. The thicker the fiber, the more noise it made. I had to be in the bathroom. When I puked I had to be near the toilet.
Avery helped me from the bed and into the bathroom, somehow managing to touch me as little as possible. The biting pain of my headache made me crumple onto the tile and beg to be left alone. Quiet was my only solace. Darkness, my only friend.
"Light." The painful sound of my voice was like a chainsaw to the brain and needles to the eyeballs. It made me want to pull my teeth out for counter-pressure.
Avery turned off the horrible buzzing light and left the room, closing the door tight behind her. I knew she felt bad. She'd told me once that she wished she could trade places with me. As much as I hated to suffer those headaches, I would never ever wish it on another human being, but just then, I wanted to reach out to her, to beg her to take it away.
After some focused concentration, I managed to calm myself enough to deal quietly with the dread that seeped into my bones, corrupting every fiber of my body. I had no control over this pain; how bad it got or how long it lasted. I simply wished for the mercy of an axe. The explosive throbs felt as if grenades were going off inside my skull. The pieces of them ricocheting around my head, banging one spot and then another, but I somehow stayed intact. The reverb bounced in waves through my bones, into my jaw, down my shoulders, through my spine, and into my back. My teeth hurt, the soft skin of my mouth ached like my cells were crashing into each other. It would have been much more tolerable to just die.
The sounds outside my chamber tapered off, but the horrible buzz of the lights in the parking lot were still on loudspeaker. I tried to take solace in knowing that the sun would come up and the slicing buzz would eventually shut off.
The door to my tomb slowly swung open. Avery tip-toed in her socks over the tile-the noise was fingernails on a chalkboard-and set my pills on the floor near my mouth. Next to that, she set a glass of water, then tip-toed back out, carefully shutting the door behind her.
What was I going to do? Jake was coming. Part of me hoped he'd take pity on me and forget the whole anger-thing. But another part of me worried: how was I supposed to go out to California with him? What if the pain didn't go away before we had to leave tomorrow? What would happen if I got one of my migraines out there? What if I was alone when it happened? Who would help me, then?
Beyond the thin walls, I heard Avery moving. A soft tap on the clock radio and the low hum of Guns 'N' Roses, "Don't Cry" was playing. She knew that music always soothed my senses like a balm. I embraced this small mercy. Click-click from the door as it locked, a slide of the window and grating rings of the curtain rod as she closed the curtains. The music helped soften the sharp sounds, spreading its' white-noise over me.
Having a migraine is like suddenly gaining super-sensitive hearing. A most horrifically uncool superpower; a gift straight out of hell. A cursed present straight from the devil himself. I once explained it to Avery, and she was like, "But that sounds awesome." It was not. It hurt to hear people chattering five or six blocks away, hearing a fly crawl across the wall, or a light bulb burning. The fly may as well be playing castanets into a loudspeaker. His wings may as well be flapping into an amplifier set at decibels meant to destroy eardrums. It hurts like nothing in the world. And it had been my curse as long as I could remember.
