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.