Page 43 of Catch the Sun

Max squeezes me a little tighter as I press my temple to his shoulder and close my eyes.

He holds me.

I let him.

Chapter 11

Ella

Pneumonia.

That’s what I get for thinking it would be easier to float away than to fight my way back to the surface. Truly, that’s what it came down to. It’s not that I actively wanted to die. It just felt…easiersomehow. It was less work to allow the universe to have its way with me.

We’ll call it laziness.

Now I’m suffering the consequences, bedridden at home after a three-day hospital visit where I was poked and prodded by a woman in scrubs who smelled like uncooked rice and wore her hair in a lopsided beehive. The good news is I’m out of school for two weeks. I’ll take the win where I can.

Mom doesn’t know all the gory details of my near-death experience, nor will she ever know. After Max carried me the two-mile trek home that evening, he stayed with me until my mother returned from work twenty minutes later. He told her I went swimming in the lake and my shoelaces tangled in the underwater vegetation.

Luckily, she was too blindsided with worry to question why I was wearing shoes while swimming.

A small oversight.

Everything inside of me yearned to call out Andy Sandwell and his meathead cronies, but the only thing I yearned for more waspeace. And peace would nevercome if I began an uproar in Juniper Falls. I’m done with battles, done with unproductive wars that can’t be won. Besides, Andy didn’t intend to drown me. He’s not a murderer like Jonah. It was my choice to lay down my sword.

I surrendered.

He won.

That’s that.

Now I’m lying in bed five days into my at-home recovery when Brynn! breezes into my bedroom with bouncing pigtail braids and the brightest smile I’ve ever seen.

It’s too bright. It hurts my eyes.

I pull the covers up over my face and hide.

“Ella!”

I groan into my blanket cocoon. “My lungs are filled with mucus. My body feels like I was on the losing side of a UFC match. My brain is as responsive as an AOL dial-up connection.” I wheeze a little. “I smell like feet.”

“AOL?”

“That’s what Mom always says when I complain about the Wi-Fi connection.”

The covers are whipped off me, revealing my lowly state. Brynn! winces when she drinks me in but recovers well. “These are from me and my dads.”

“Dads?” I wonder, blinking slowly.

“Yep. I have two.”

“Lucky. I don’t even have one.” My gaze trails over to a platter of chocolate-dipped fruit made up of pineapple stars and strawberries turned into heart-eyed emojis. “This is supersweet. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome!” She sets the plate down on my cluttered nightstand strewn with used tissues, antibiotics, and fifty-thousand water bottles, and plops down beside my legs. “I’d ask how you are, but you already gave me a detailed rundown.”

“I’m sorry I smell like feet.”

She sniffs me. “You don’t. You actually smell like orange peels and sweat. It’s not a terrible combination.”

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