“Sorry,” I said to John, rubbing my face. “No, wait, I’m not.”
“Charming,” he said. “Ready?” He was holding his laptop under one arm and a leather duffel bag in the other.
“Yup.”
He hmmmed but didn’t get out of the way. Instead, he shouldered the bag, then slid a hand into his pocket, watching me. There was an odd tension between us. The lightness of earlier had dissipated. He opened his mouth as if to say something but then…didn’t.
“Okay then,” I said, not wanting to waste another moment before sending in my book. But when I stepped around him, I halted in the doorway. “What the?—?”
Basically tripping over myself, I burst back into my room, checking the space where I’d been working the last few hours. Then the bed. Then under the bed. Then my bag. Then under the wardrobe.
“What…are you doing?” John peeked inside my room, watching me crawl around on all fours, having a panic attack.
“It’s gone. How…what…how?” I panted, sitting cross-legged on the bedroom floor.
“Are you having a mental breakdown?”
“Maybe. What are the signs?” Wait. I glared at John. “Was it you? It was you, wasn’t it?” I scrambled to my feet and stabbedmy finger into his chest, which was a bad idea because now, adding to my invisible laptop, I potentially had a broken finger.
John grabbed my hand before I could hurt myself any further, keeping me still. “What are you talking about, Nora?”
My mind felt like a beehive. Panic-ridden thoughts scrambled over one another. “My laptop is gone.”
“What do you mean it’s gone?”
I pulled my hand from his, inspecting it. Nothing broken. Well, that’s something.
“I left it right here,” I pointed to the desk, “then I went to the bathroom, and when I got out…” I waved at the place where it definitely had been just moments ago. “Did you take it? Did you throw it out of the window?” I rushed to said window, checking the white carpet that had covered the garden below. But there was nothing out there but a pair of footprints.
This couldn’t be happening.
“Why would I take your laptop?”
“I don’t know,” I said, waving my arms frantically around. “Because you’re evil. Because you never want to see me again. Because my book was good and you knew it!”
I was shaking.
“Is that the person you think I am?” John couldn’t quite cross his arms because he was still holding his laptop. So he hugged it to his chest instead, which seemed…suspicious.
I pointed my finger at it. “Show me. Open the laptop and prove it isn’t mine.”
“Nora—”
“What’s going on here?” Charlene peeked over John’s shoulder.
“Someone took it. I didn’t send it in yet, I didn’t—” My breath came out ragged and too fast. I started feeling dizzy, the corners of the room growing fuzzy.
“Hush, Nora, breathe.” She appeared in front of me, gently pushing me down onto my bed.
I shook my head. “No time for breathing. I gotta send the file, but it’s gone, it’s?—”
Charlene crouched before me, both her hands resting on my legs.
I couldn’t believe she was seeing me like this. That John was seeing me like this. And judging by the shadows in my peripheral vision, the rest had just arrived, having a front row seat at the Nora-is-a-crazy-person show.
The bed dipped beside me. Warmth brushed my shoulder, then the side of my leg.
“Here,” John’s dark, soothing voice said. He opened his laptop, and instead of my username and the drawing I’d added as a background, a picture of the fattest cat I’d ever seen popped up.
