Page 70 of Artfully Wild
“I’d be yelling if it wouldn’t cause you excruciating pain.”
“I’ll let you yell at me later,” I try to joke, but she doesn’t laugh.
“Where is your prescription?”
Shit. I never refilled the as-needed medication Dr. Adams prescribed me on top of the daily one. I ran out last week and didn’t get the chance before we went to the lodge. Then I forgot this week since I’ve felt so good and hoped they’d started to go away. But I can already tell this is going to be a bad one, like my head is trying to make up for all the relief it allowed me to have. “I don’t have any more,” I mumble, even though I know she’ll hear every word.
“Jacob fucking Sinclair.HOWcould you not refill your prescription? You have to take care of yourself.”
“Oh, sure. Coming from Skylar Waters,” I say with a sarcastic flare that could rival hers. She gives me a deadpan stare. Well, it’s the best I can do in the moment when it feels like my head is going to explode.
“It’ll be fine,” I try to calm her. “I just need ice and sleep.”
“I have some Advil,” she says, grabbing her purse. “Or I thinksome Motrin. I can’t remember which.” The sound of her dumping out her purse fills the air. My migraine makes the clattering items on the ground sound like they are amplified and I cover my ears and groan.
“Sorry,” she whispers, searching the ground for a pill bottle. I try to help her look, but my vision becomes fuzzy.
“Skylar,” I try to get out, but it comes out slurred and awkward. Feeling my face, I try to figure out why I sound like that and move my lips, but one side feels like it’s been injected with local anesthesia.
“Sssss…kkk,” I manage. She finally locates the bottle and looks up at me.
“Jacob? What’s wrong?”
I attempt to point to my face, but my limbs don’t want to cooperate and the simmering anger that was heavy in my chest only minutes before is replaced by an all consuming fear. I don’t know what is happening and I have no idea how to stop it. I feel weird. My body doesn’t feel like my own and I just want it to stop. I want to be me again.
“—elp,” is all I manage to get out before I feel myself falling. I hit the floor hard, landing on my shoulder. She’s able to get her hand under me before my head hits and she gently lowers it down. Reaching for her phone that clattered out of her purse, I hear her dial three numbers before placing it on the ground.
“Hello, 911, what’s your emergency?”
I try to listen to what Skylar is saying. I see her lips moving rapidly as she starts to haul my body to one side. I try to help her, but I don’t think I’m here anymore.
Her stained hands stroke through my hair and the last thing I think of is the first time they did that. And then I let the darkness consume me.
I’m like a fox in the woods sneaking up on its prey avoiding every single twig in its path as he stalks and plans on the best course of attack. I sniff the air and follow her scent until I am a few feet away from the tree I know she’s leaning her back on.
I know, because I can see one leg stretched out, her red Converse swaying back and forth with the wind. The other leg is bent and her sketchbook is propped up on her knee. A horse is out in the clearing, sniffing and grazing, unaware of the danger that awaits its owner.
I have to wait for my moment. She tears out the page she was working on and crumples it up to join the others that are scattered in the grass around her and turns to a fresh page. My moment is here.
Swiftly, I move on the ground in a crouching stance, silently going in for the kill.
“You know, if you really didn’t want me to know you were back there, you shouldn’t wear such strong cologne next time. You smell like a damn Christmas tree.”
I lift my shirt up and catch a whiff of the forest cologne I used this morning. Maybe she’s right and next time I can do just one spray instead of three.
I stand and walk normally to close the distance. Looking at all the scattered pages, I pluck one from the grass and open it. Smoothing it out, all I can do is stare at it. I’ll never understand why she scraps these. I start uncrumpling the rest of them, carefully smoothing them as flat as I can against the soft grass.
“You know, you should start painting,” I suggest to Skylar.
“Why would I do that?” She asks like I just posed the most ridiculous question she’s ever heard.
“Because, you never like your drawings. Maybe if you tried a different form of art, you’d like it more.”
“I like my drawings,” she argues. Or tries to argue more like.
I hold up the evidence, i.e. the wrinkled pages that were crumpled up around her moments before. “Liar.”
She snatches them before I have a chance to react and shoves them in the shoulder bag she has next to her. My hand follows hers as I dive my hand into the bag, trying to grab one of the drawings. It’s not as easy as it seems when a fifteen year old girl, who seems to have the strength of a thirty year old man, is using all of it to keep your hand out. She resorts to pinching me, but I keep digging despite the pain. Except it isn’t the relentless pinching that causes me to get my hand out. I yelp, yanking my hand out of the bag and grasp my bleeding finger.
