Chapter 56

I hear Kayla and Dot out on the porch. As promised, Jenna gave Kayla more playtime after her bath. Even over my shower I hear Kayla's squeals and Dot's hoots as they take turns going up and down the porch steps. I smell the casserole Jenna has baking too. I could eat two. I scrub the dirt from my chest and pull a washcloth over my back to undo the damage from the spider. The soap stings the scrapes and scratches. The pain is nothing compared to the damage that Gatsbro's goons did, or maybe I have readjusted my sensitivity levels just as Hari feared I would. Yes, Gatsbro, be very afraid. I am becoming something you never planned on. Something I never planned on, either.

Jenna offered to clean and bandage my back. The thought of her touching and bathing me while I was fully awake was tempting. Before the world turned upside down for all three of us, when we were just friends at school, I wanted so badly for her to notice me, not in the friend way that she already did, but in the same way I noticed her. The way I thought about her at night when I went to bed, thinking about her skin, her lips, her hair and how it smelled when I got close. Our friendship meant everything to me, but I couldn't help wondering about more. And sometimes at school, on the bench at lunch, sometimes she would linger, her shoulder touching mine more than it needed to, her eyes watching me a second longer than a friend's would, and I would wonder if maybe she was noticing me in more than the friend way too.

Hmmm.

I drop the washcloth and spin around in the shower. I wipe away a circle of steam on the glass door. The bathroom is empty. I open the door to be sure. Steam pours out into an empty room. Did I only hear the hum in my head? I grab the washcloth from the floor and hurry to finish washing, letting the shower spray in my ears.

I listen to Jenna out on the porch laughing at the antics of Dot and Kayla, and I turn off the water, grabbing a towel to dry myself. I don't want to keep her waiting. As I pull on my pants, I remember a line from a poem that Jenna always liked--all I could see from where I stood--and I wonder if she remembers it too. Or was it Kara who liked it? It's hard to remember.