Chapter 37: Sunday Over A Rainbow

I returned to my senses long enough to roll to the side and throw up. I felt the urgent need to roll because otherwise my vomit would have gone all over Tara’s lovely velvet dress. I felt Nana’s firm hands guiding my head over a bowl and I think Tara was holding my hair out of the way.

I lay back on Tara’s velvet-covered lap and tried to figure out what was going on. My eyes had been closed the entire time. I didn’t need to open them. I knew what I would see and I wasn’t ready to deal with that. Also I had a mystery to solve and keeping my eyes closed helped.

I knew who I was – Rebecca Louise Freeman, age thirteen years and zero days. I knew I was lying on the carpet in our living room. I knew it was my birthday. I knew that my entire extended family was in the room staring at me – that’s the other reason I didn’t want to open my eyes. I knew I’d just had hysterics in front of everyone and then collapsed.

The one thing I was drawing a complete blank on was ... why.

I looked inside my brain and the place where my memories should be looked like the film you see after a tornado has ripped through a cheap housing tract. There was this wide stretch where there was rubble – broken bits of wood and litter piled up on top of each other. A little girl in a lilac party dress with a purple ribbon in her hair picked through the rubble. Hey wait, that’s me! She bent and picked up something from amongst the debris. “Found it,” she yelled. Then she held up a half-squashed birthday cake with way too many candles mashed into the icing.

I remembered having a party breakfast, having a talk with Tara about condoms and getting ready for the party with Liz. After that – nothing!

From somewhere out there I heard Dad’s voice, sounding all distorted and fuzzy.

“Can anyone tell me what’s going on?”

“I think I can.” I think that was Aunt Penny’s voice. She sounded like she was crying. I wondered why. “But can we not do this in front of everyone?”

“Here you are, Nana,” said Sam’s voice close to my head.

A second later, I felt a warm, wet cloth washing around my mouth. Then it went away and a second cloth dabbed and wiped and pressed around a spot high on my forehead. The place being dabbed at immediately started feeling a bit sore and sticky as soon as I thought about it.

I wanted to listen to what Aunt Penny had to say. I wanted to find out what was happening. I wanted to know why I’d had hysterics and collapsed. I wanted to know why ... I knew there was another ‘why’ but I had no clue what that was about.

I felt Tara’s hand brushing a strand of hair back out of my face. “Shh! Everything’s going to be okay,” she whispered.

I sure hoped so.

A weight kneeled by my side and my hand was picked up and held.

“How’s her head? Should we call an ambulance?”

It was Dan’s voice. Some automatic piece of my brain started ringing alarms. I tried to pull my hand away but my muscles weren’t obeying my brain. In desperation, I fled into the back of my head and looked for somewhere to hide.

Right at the back I found an image of our couch standing on one end and leaning against the back of my skull. Nana, Mum and Tara sat sideways on the couch, still eating from their plates – apparently unaware that sitting on a couch that was standing on one end broke all the rules of gravity.

Angie had crawled down from Mum’s lap and was running around in the debris, picking up little packets of salt that were scattered everywhere.

Poking out from under the end of the couch were Aunt Penny’s legs, with a pair of ruby slippers on her feet.

Now that was weird.

I crawled into the tiny, dark space behind the couch and I curled up into a little ball.

Maybe I could hide here for a while.