Page 43 of Here We Go Again
“Go use the bathroom in the hotel lobby,” Hale grunts back.
“Let me in.”
“No!” Hale shouts. It’s all for naught, because she forgot to lock the door, so Logan just opens it anyway. There are further screams of protest, and thankfully, for both parties involved, Hale isn’t actively going to the bathroom as Logan pushes her way inside. She’s sitting on the floor between the toilet and the rim of the tub, and she looks…human. Like she did last night when she cried.
Which is to say, she looks absolutely disgusting. Gone are the airs of perfect Hale, emotionless Hale, in-control Hale. Her hair is falling out of her braid in greasy chunks, and her skin is both horriblysunburned and somehow peaked at the same time. Her ridiculous wedges are tossed aside in the opposite corner of the bathroom.
“You can’t be in here!” Hale croaks.
“Trust me, this isn’t my ideal scenario either, Princess. The smell in this bathroom is truly something. But—” She pulls a Vitaminwater out of a reusable grocery bag. “You’ve got to try to get some liquids down.”
“No,” Hale says again, her head lolling to the side pathetically.
“Come on. I can only handle one stubborn invalid at a time, and Joe’s already claimed that title.”
“I can’t drink liquids. I just can’t.”
“Of course you can. You’re Rosemary Hale. You bend the universe to your will all the time. You’re not going to let a little thing like vomit stop you.”
At the use of theVword, Hale gags again. Logan steps deeper into the bathroom, until she’s hovering over the piteous form of her teen frenemy. “You have to drink something. You’re extremely dehydrated, and you’re going to end up in the hospital if you don’t.”
“I’ll just throw it up.” Hale whines hopelessly. “I feelawful. I’ve never felt this awful before.”
“Please,” Logan begs. “Please drink.”
Tears form in the corners of her eyes. “I-I just can’t.”
This is clearly about more than her heat exhaustion. Hale’s anxiety is doing the talking again, which means pleading won’t work. Logan thinks about Hale’s brain, about that scared little girl, about how she used to help when it got like this. Then she puts down the grocery bag, pulls out her phone, opens Spotify, and presses play on an old favorite. The opening electronics fill the bathroom and Hale looks up at her with watery eyes and a confused mouth. “What—?” she starts, but the openinghey, heyclarifies all questions, and then Logan is doing the hand-mouth to the first “Bye Bye Bye.”
“What’s happening?” Hale asks, seemingly horrified by the pelvic thrusting. Logan is horrified too, both by the fact that she’s not aslimber as she used to be and by the fact that she’s degrading herself to make Rosemary fucking Hale feel better.
They spent the entire summer after sixth grade watching MTV and memorizing the full routine to this song, filming their own music video on a camcorder in Logan’s backyard, a boy band consisting of two girls. And for the rest of their friendship, without fail, nothing got Hale out of her head faster than watching Logan break out the old moves.
Except now, in this hotel bathroom, she just looks scared. And annoyed. “I have heat exhaustion! Why are you making things worse?”
Logan stomps her foot and punches her arm and does a body roll. “You know you love this.”
The smallest smile cracks across Hale’s chapped lips. “I really hate it.”
But she clearly doesn’t, and Logan commits to a full lip-sync for the second verse. Halealmostlaughs. It turns into a belch, but Logan will take it.
“Okay, stop, stop!” Hale throws her hands up over her eyes when Logan goes for the crotch-grab and releases something that’s distinctly chuckle-like in nature. “Fine, fine! I’ll drink the Vitaminwater.”
Logan is embarrassingly winded as she tosses Hale the drink. Hale lifts it to her dried lips and takes a cautious sip. Then, when she’s certain it’s not going to cause her stomach to explode again, she takes a full drink. “I can’t believe you remember that dance.”
Logan presses her back against the wall and slides down to the floor. “Don’t lie. You totally still have the choreo memorized, too.”
Her mouth curls into another smile, which she hides by taking a drink.
“Here. You need this.” Logan hands her two Dramamine from a package she bought for thirty bucks, because national-park prices are criminal enterprises.
Hale obligingly takes the meds. “Why are you being so nice tome?” There’s something about the sheer disbelief in Hale’s tone that makes Logan feel sick to her stomach, too. “Last night, and… and now?”
“I have to be nice to you. You’re absolutely wretched-looking.”
“You know you love this.” Hale attempts a little flourishing gesture at the dribble of puke down the front of her dress, and it’s ridiculously charming.
Logan’s stomach twists again. “And, well, because… I sort of feel like this is my fault.”
