Page 11 of Darkened Wings
“Ohmigods, I’m so sorry. Please don’t hate me.” I couldn’t have alienated my only friend already. I lunged after her, spewing apologies, until my legs tangled in the sheet, and I landed on the floor at her feet. Rubbing my forehead where a goose egg already grew, I whimpered.
Silence.
I tilted my face up and up to try to see her expression. Her face was reddened, her lips twisted in a grimace, eyes squeezed closed. “Astra? Please forgive me? I’ll do anything. Your laundry? Your homework?”
Her eyes flew open, but to my shock, the words that flew from her lips weren’t of anger or even forgiveness. On the heels of a peal of giggles, she gasped, “You’ve suffered enough.” Reaching for my hand, she helped me up and looked me over for injuries, but it seemed only the lump on my forehead had resulted from my tumble. Astra pressed a motherly kiss to the boo-boo. “Actually, you might suffer more. Do you have a headache?”
I went to shake my head, but the shaking set loose a pounding that made me groan. “A little one.”
“Liar.” She went to her dresser and rummaged in the top drawer then returned with a small vial. “Take a swig of this.”
I held the little bottle up to the light, studying the electric-green contents. “What is this?”
“Just a headache potion. My grandmother makes it, and it works.” She tilted her head to the side. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Of course I do.” I had nobody better to trust after all. So I lifted the bottle and gulped down the ounce or two it contained.
I set it down and grabbed for the nightstand. “Wow, that packs a punch.”
“Yeah…” Something about her tone made me nervous.
I set the bottle down and faced her. “Want to tell me why you sound worried?”
“I said take a swig. That was a lot more, but it should be fine.”
“Should be?”
“I’ve never known anyone to take twenty doses at once, but it’s all natural.” She gathered a uniform and underthings and her shower things. “I’m going to get ready for class. You sure were hard to wake up considering how early we went to bed though.”
After she closed the bathroom door behind her, I looked in the mirror over the dresser. The headache was going away fast, but the lump was rapidly turning purple and stuck out like a partial unicorn horn. And I had bags under my eyes that matched it. Great. Also, I was possibly about to overdose from scary green potion drinking.
But it was all natural after all.
Of course, so was uranium. And toadstools.
But nobody would take them for a headache. Maybe in Victorian times because they really did weird things. Just not in modern times.
Astra was out of the bathroom in a remarkably short time and I dashed in, only mildly dizzy and hopeful that my headache cure wouldn’t make me grow an extra arm or anything. And then we were both rushing around, combing our hair and touching up makeup and doing all the last-minute things like stuffing book bags with about two hundred pounds of books each.
Why on earth did these people not use digital texts?
There was a full breakfast available in the dining hall, but we were running too late for that, and I was too nervous anyway. Fortunately, there were cups of juice to go and protein bars laid out on a table near the door, and that would have to do. Astra and I perched on a bench in the hallway side by side and gobbled our breakfast. Despite my nerves, I did not want to face what the day might hold, on an empty stomach.
“I wish you were in class with me,” I told my friend. “I’m so nervous about, well, about everything.”
“You’ll be fine,” she encouraged, stuffing her protein bar wrapper in her juice cup. “The bump is hardly noticeable.”
My hand jerked to my forehead almost on its own. “I forgot about that. You don’t think the makeup hides it? Maybe I should have cut bangs before I left.”
“Don’t talk like that!” Astra gave a delicate shudder. “I did that once when I had a breakout, and all it did was draw attention to the area. The makeup helps it blend a bit, so at least it’s not purple, mostly. Your hair looks beautiful, all those silvery curls. Anyone who asks, make up a story. Maybe tell them you were attacked by a unicorn.”
Despite myself, I chuckled. “You’re awful. I can’t say that. I’ve never even met a unicorn. If they ask me for details, what do I say?” At least not to my knowledge. Not every shifter was obvious in their human form.
“Neither have any of them. Nobody I know has met one, so make it up as you go along. Anyway, I have to dash. Meet up with you later. You’ve got this. Make good choices!”
And Astra was gone, the rapid tattoo of the footfalls mingling with the others who were dashing toward the classrooms. I’d meant to ask her to point me in the right direction but of course hadn’t managed to.
I was still feeling funny, but I wasn’t sure if that was because of the strange night I’d had or if the electric-green potion was doing more than helping with the headache. For that matter, the fuzziness around the edges of everything could be related to the possible concussion.
