The Education Of Hailey Kendrick Part 14

Then it went dark.

28.

My eyes struggled to open. Everything hurt, even my eyelashes. I stared up at a white ceiling. My mouth tasted funny, like I had been sucking on rusted nails. My tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of my mouth. I couldn't tell where I was. I turned my head to the side. It felt as if the entire world slid off the axis and my stomach flopped over. I closed my eyes quickly, trying to get my sense of balance back. My eyes opened again, and I saw there was an IV pole. I followed the plastic tubing down from the pole to where it was connected to my arm.

IV. White. Hospital. I had to be in a hospital. Then the fall from the tree came rushing back to my memory. I'd fallen. There was a bright flash of pain in my leg. I glanced down. There was a giant cast that went from above my knee all the way down, with just my toes peeking out the end. Looked like the fall hadn't ended well.

"Hail?"

I turned my head slowly to the other side. Kelsie was sitting in a chair next to the bed. Her eyes were red and her face splotchy. She'd been crying.

"Can you hear me?" she asked, her voice shaking.

I tried to nod, but moving my head up and down made the sickening bed spins start again, so I stopped.

"Oh my G.o.d. I'm so glad you're awake." Kelsie grabbed my hand.

"Is there anything to drink?" I asked, my voice coming out raspy.

Kelsie leapt into action. She poured a gla.s.s of water from the pitcher on the rolling table next to the bed and jabbed the bendy straw into the gla.s.s. She held it out, and I took a sip. The cool water tasted better than anything I could imagine. I took another sip, but Kelsie pulled the gla.s.s away before I could finish.

"Careful. Not too much. Do you want me to get your dad? He's downstairs talking to one of the doctors."

"My dad's here?" My brain tried to find something to hold on to that made sense. I'd been trying to get my pa.s.sport so I could see my dad in Chicago. What was he doing in Vermont?

"The hospital called him right away. He flew in last night. He's super-worried about you."

"Last night? How long have I been out?"

"A day. The doctors said it was a concussion. There have been a few other times when you seemed to come around, but you didn't make much sense. Mostly just mumbling and stuff."

"Huh." I closed my eyes. My stomach was starting to feel better. At least I didn't feel quite so much like I was going to throw up at any moment.

"Hail, you have to know I am so so sorry. I have never been so sorry in my whole life." Kelsie started crying again. sorry. I have never been so sorry in my whole life." Kelsie started crying again.

I patted her hand absently while I searched my memory to figure out why she was sorry. Right. She'd been seeing Tristan. Maybe it was the fall, but I couldn't remember why it had made me so upset to start with. They would be good together. This could be what they meant by having sense knocked into you. Why had I been so concerned about the relationship with Tristan? I didn't love him. "It's okay," I mumbled.

"I never thought you would do something like this. I just feel sick," Kelsie sobbed.

"Something like what?"

Kelsie stopped crying for a beat and looked at me. "Suicide," she whispered.

I tried to sit up, and then froze when every muscle in my body screamed. "Suicide? I fell," I explained.

"Everyone is saying you tried to kill yourself when you heard about Tristan and me."

"If I'd wanted to kill myself, I would have jumped off the top of a building, not from the second floor." I couldn't decide if I was more offended that people thought I was the kind of person who would kill myself over a boyfriend or that I was apparently too stupid to know how to do it right.

"Ms. Sullivan gave a talk at the morning a.s.sembly and said your kind of attempt can be seen as a cry for help." She sniffed. "It's like when someone takes only a few pills or does superficial cutting."

Great. It sounded like Ms. Sullivan had finally found something to keep her busy. She was most likely giddy with all the excitement I'd caused. "It wasn't a cry for anything. I was trying to get out of the administration building," I tried to explain.

"Why didn't you use the door?"

"It's a long story." I could tell that she didn't believe me. She acted suddenly fascinated by a microscopic-size chip in her fingernail polish. "It was an accident, Kels."

"Then, why did you leave a suicide note?"

"What! I didn't leave a note." Then my mind flashed to the note I had meant to keep people from coming after me when I left for Chicago. I wanted to pull the covers up over my head.

"There was a note. I saw it; someone leaked to the Web already." She slapped her hand over her mouth. I guessed she wasn't supposed to upset me further by telling me that my latest adventure had also made the tabloids.

"Can I see your phone?" I said. Kelsie opened her mouth to protest, but I held my hand out. She pa.s.sed me her phone, and I did a quick search on the Internet. The story popped right up on one of the celebrity sites. I skimmed past the headline and story and read the note again, to see if it sounded as bad as I'd feared.

Please don't worry about me. I have to go away. No one is making me do this. Please don't blame anyone. This is my decision. I know my leaving will upset people. I don't want anyone to be hurt or angry, but this is something I have to do. Please try to understand.

I closed my eyes. It sounded worse than I'd imagined. I might as well have ended the note by writing GOOD-BYE, CRUEL WORLD! GOOD-BYE, CRUEL WORLD! and drawing a skull or a black heart. and drawing a skull or a black heart.

"It'll be okay." Kelsie patted my arm like it was a kitten.

"I jumped off the balcony because I didn't want to get caught for having broken into Winston's office. I needed my pa.s.sport for identification for the plane, so I took it out of his secretary's file cabinet. My plan was to go to Chicago to see my dad. We had another fight and I wanted to see him."

"We thought you had your pa.s.sport on you so your body could be identified."

"I was jumping from the second story, not into a farm combine. I would have been identifiable."

"Unless you landed on your face," Kelsie pointed out.

Our eyes met, and we started to giggle. "Good point. Never land on the face."

"Well, I suppose the silver lining is that you don't have to travel to Chicago. Your dad's here. Not to mention you don't have to take a cheap discount airline. If you're going to travel, go first cla.s.s, or don't bother going."

"Whew. Saved from the horrors of low-cost coach travel. All I had to do was break my leg and knock myself out." I laughed again.

"I am sorry about Tristan, you know," Kelsie said. "I was going to tell you a thousand different times, but then I never could bring myself to do it. At first I excused it by telling myself nothing was happening. We were just flirting, joking around. Then when it was more, I didn't know how to stop."

"Do you love him?" I asked.

Kelsie's eyes filled back up with tears. "I know I shouldn't, but I think I always have."

"It's okay. You'll be good for him. He always needed someone who would keep him more on his toes."

"He still cares for you."

"I care for him, too. I never stopped. We were good together, just not meant to be a couple forever. I think both of us stayed because we loved how comfortable it felt. Stability is a good thing, but not everything."

"You still must have been mad that I didn't tell you. You shouldn't have heard it from someone else."

"I wasn't exactly making myself easy to talk to," I admitted.

"You pulled away from everyone. Not just Tristan, everyone. It was like you put yourself in exile. It was like you didn't want to be our friend anymore."

"I know. At first I was sure it was everyone else, but I think you're right. I did exile myself. Maybe I needed the s.p.a.ce to figure things out, figure me out."

"Did you?"

"Nope." We laughed. "But I'm making headway. At least I'm doing something about it instead of waiting for someone else to figure it out for me. I'm not sure where life is going to take me, especially when Dean Winston figures out I broke into his office and wasn't suicidal. But at least now I feel like I'm going somewhere," I said.

"Can I come with you?" Kelsie's voice was serious.

"Can't imagine going anywhere without my best friend," I said.

Kelsie threw her arms around me. "As long as you know that if I'm going, we're going first cla.s.s."

29.

After Kelsie left, I closed my eyes, and I must have fallen asleep, because when I opened them again, the room was dimmer, the late afternoon light turning silver gray. I saw a figure standing in the doorway, but with the bright light from the hall, I couldn't make out who it was.

"Dad?" I asked.

"He just left. He went down to the cafeteria to get something to eat. Watching you sleep can wear a man out." Drew stepped into the room.

"I was just dozing." I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to make it look decent, or at least not horrid. I wiped my tongue over my teeth. They felt a bit furry. No one had brushed them for me while I was out cold. My breath probably smelled like dirty gym socks.

"Dozing, huh? You always snore like a truck driver when you doze?"

"I wasn't snoring," I insisted.

"Oh, I'm sorry. You weren't snoring. You were simply choking to death on a live ferret."

I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. Drew pulled the chair closer to the bed and sat. Great. He was close enough now to see the smell waves coming out of my mouth.

"Just so you know, typically, bungee jumping works best when you wear the bungee part." Drew motioned to my leg. "How are you feeling?"

"A bit rough. You know what they say. The fall went fine right up until the very end." I picked at a loose thread on the blanket. "About the last time we were together . . ."

"You want to apologize."

I met his eyes, surprised he knew what I was going to say.

"The thought of not having a chance to kiss me again made you throw yourself off a roof. I should be more careful. I know the effect I can have on women."

I threw one of my pillows at him, then winced from the effort. He caught it before it even came close to his face.

"I was going to apologize for hitting you. There was no excuse for that. And I didn't throw myself off the roof-for you or anyone else." I had the feeling I was going to be explaining this to people over and over for weeks. I paused, trying to find the words to explain to Drew how I felt. I couldn't explain it to myself, so I wasn't sure how to tell him.

"I know you didn't try to kill yourself. You're crazy, but not that kind of crazy. Besides, now that you've seen the glory of Denny's, you've got too much to live for."

"The stuffed French toast was pretty amazing."

Drew poured a gla.s.s of water. "I brought you some more ice while you were out." He held the gla.s.s so I could have a drink. "I figured you'd be thirsty. I've been knocked out a few times in hockey. I always wanted a giant gla.s.s of water when I came around."

"Thanks. It was nice you came."

"I keep telling you, I'm a nice guy." Drew looked around to make sure we were still alone. "In addition to checking on you, I came to tell you something."

"Sounds very top secret."

"I know who's leaking all the stories to the tabloids."

I sat up, ignoring the flash of pain. "Who?"

"Mandy Gallaway."

My mouth fell open. "Why would she sell stories to the press? She hates the tabloids. And it's not like she needs the money."

"You might be wrong about that. I asked around. Turns out her grandfather controls the purse strings and he thinks some of her shenanigans make the family look tacky. Sounds like he's limiting her allowance. Now, she still is getting more money than the average family of four, but with her tastes she's going to need any extra coin she can get her hands on."

"Did you actually just use the term 'shenanigans'? Are you channeling your inner eighty-year-old?"

"I think you're focusing on the wrong thing again."

"Are you sure that it's her?"

"I'm sure. She's ticked off a lot of people on staff. It's one thing if she wants to do her own thing, but letting that security guard take the heat was low. The guard was put on unpaid suspension for two weeks. The maid who cleans her room saw the leaked photo of Mandy on her laptop and did some poking around. Mandy's doing it under a fake name, of course, but she's definitely the leak."

"Should we tell the police?" I asked. I enjoyed the image of the cops coming and taking Mandy down, maybe handcuffing her in the middle of the morning a.s.sembly, or perhaps they could set the police dogs loose on her.

"Selling out your friends isn't a crime, just disgusting. The police aren't going to do anything."

"She's not my friend."

Drew leaned back. "That's true."

"What should I do, then?"