Page 25 of My High School Rebel Boyfriend
“It’s called hypoglycemia,” Maddie said, “her blood sugars drop and she has to have something sweet to bring them up again. She always carries juice or candy or bars with her. She has to inject insulin after every meal.”
I frowned. “Inject?” That sounded intense.
“Yeah, diabetics have to inject insulin because whatever part of the body that makes insulin doesn’t work for her.”
“The pancreas,” Tanchia offered.
“Oh yeah, the pancreas.” Maddie smiled wryly at her own cluelessness. Yet she knew more than me. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was.
The training session became a blur as the girls went through their fitness routine and then played a game. Coach Barber stopped it early for a big team talk, giving me an opportunity to google diabetes.
There were two types, 1 and 2. Harper seemed to have Type 1, because Type 2 was what the overweight people got. That could generally be managed by diet and exercise. But Type 1 was an auto-immune disease, like my Mom’s rheumatoid arthritis. And like Mom’s arthritis it was chilling to read that like there was no way to prevent it and no way to cure it. This was something Harper was cursed with for life.
But then a grip of horror seized me as I read:If blood sugars drop to low levels, convulsions, coma or death may result.
Our actions could have caused Harper to die.
Icould have caused Harper to die.
Chapter 10
MITCHELL
THE THOUGHT WOULDN’Tleave me that what we’d done could have seriously harmed Harper. I’m talking tossing and turning all night, and not just because my legs ached (growing pains, not the hike). Could coma or death come so easily from such a disease? I mean, what if Harper was lost in the wilderness without food—would she most certainly die?
The next day I went to the cafeteria specifically to look for her. Not to talk, just to check that she was okay. I rarely ate lunch in there, preferring to go to the gym to shoot hoops, technically not allowed in the lunch break but staff usually turned a blind eye.
The volleyball girls were at one table, and my heart sunk to see she wasn’t there. Oh man, was she still sick? Was she going to miss the tournament the next day because of what we’d done?
Volleyball was a team sport, one person wouldn’t make that much of a difference to the tournament result. The scouts probably wouldn’t look at her anyway, it was Maddie who was the best player. If she was diabetic, she’d never make it in college sport anyway.
That’s what I made myself believe: that her absence wasn’t really a big deal, therefore our actions hadn’t been that bad, a bag of stolen candy, nah...it didn’t matter in the scheme of things.
But still my mind rattled, my conscience perching itself on my shoulder, loud and clear, refusing to let go.
The whole situation caused me brain fog. Ugh...I went to my History class instead of Industrial Tech, and after school I forgot to pick up my Mom’s prescription from the drugstore.
A simple mistake, but try telling Wade that.
“Honey, how could you forget?” Mom sounded woefully desperate which meant her pain levels were off the Richter scale. “Honey, I reminded youandI sent you a text.”
“I didn’t check my phone,” I said, pulling it out of my pocket to see that she’d sent three messages. “I’ll go now,” I said, already backing out the door.
“You sure will get it now,” Wade said through clenched teeth, his hand menacingly on my chest. Mom was sitting right there on the couch, so it was a threat at this stage, a hint of what to expect. He let out a string of expletives as I hightailed it to my car.
The minute I was back he was in my face. Apparently it was my fault that the queue was long, making Mama suffer in unnecessary pain for too long. It was also my fault that he’d been called in for night shift and had to start work in four hours.
He helped Mama to bed and said to her, “Go to sleep baby, Mitch and I are gonna train.” And he summoned me to the garage.
Sixty seconds. That’s probably the amount of time I had before I had to make an appearance. Sixty seconds of fear. Of not quite knowing what version of Wade would be there to greet me. That fear was probably worse than the actual beating.
He used a rope that we use on the cable machine, thick with plastic handles on each end. He flicked me on the back of my head, snapping it like a whip. I flinched, and sensibly dropped to my knees. Go down quickly, get it over and done with. Body blows I could deal with. Though to see he was wearing his heavy duty work boots zapped any hope that I would get through it lightly.
Loser. Simple task. Mama’s medicine. Good-for-nothing. Zero future.
Those were some of the words I heard as he kicked me relentlessly. I curled up like a ball; he liked that, it meant I was scared of him. Yet he laughed at me for cowering like a baby.
Weak, pathetic, soft.
