AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I start to cough, my throat closing up at rapid speed, making it hard to intake air into my lungs. I stare down at my salad in horror, moving some of the leaves around when I realize that there's flakes of pecans all over it. Something that definitely wasn't there when I'd left to go to my locker.
I gasp for breath, and I can feel my face going red.
It takes forever and a day for Kyle to finally realize that something's wrong.
"Sky?" he asks, concerned.
I can't answer him. My hands are wrapped around my throat and it’s almost impossible to breathe. Unable to keep my balance, I abruptly fall out of my chair to the ground.
“Skylar!" he calls out frantically.
The world's turning fuzzy around the edges, and all of a sudden, Noah is hovering over me. His mouth moves, but I can't hear the words coming out. He screams at someone, and then the world completely fades to black.
* * *
There’s an annoying beeping sound in my ears when I come back to consciousness. My eyelids feel like they've been glued together, and it takes what feels like forever to finally get them open, revealing a white, sterile, unrecognizable room. I move my arm and feel a sharp splash of pain. Sluggishly, I stare down at the offending limb, finding an I.V. hooked up to it.
A second later, something collapses against me.
"Sky!" Daisy says frantically. "You're awake!"
My head feels like there's a fifty pound weight attached to it, but I finally get it turned so I can look at her. There are dark circles under her eyes, but her smile is bright and relieved.
"Where am I?" I ask, my voice coming out in a rasp.
"You're at the hospital. You scared us to fucking death." She shakes her head and wraps her arms around herself, looking uncharacteristically unsure for perhaps the first time in her life.
The hospital?
I try to recall how I could possibly have gotten here. I remember I was at school…I had run to get an assignment and then I was seated at the table…
My salad! The mysterious pecans!
"I ate some pecans," I say slowly. Daisy nods her head in agreement.
"Sky, I'm honestly shocked. You always do a much better job of making sure you're okay to eat something."
"I swear there weren’t any before I left…" I whisper, half to myself, trying to really remember how careful I had been.
I remember asking the lunch lady if there were any pecans in the salad, and have a very clear memory of her saying there weren’t. I also had at least a few bites of it before I left for my locker, so there was no way my allergic reaction wouldn’t have set off at the first bite. My nut allergy was so severe, it was basically instantaneous. So I obviously hadn't been exposed to them prior to leaving.
But surely someone at the table would have noticed if someone had dropped by and sprinkled some nuts on my salad while I was gone.
The idea of them not noticing, and not saying anything to me…sounds insane.
"What happened?" I croak.
"You were just eating and then…" She closes her eyes as if in pain. And that’s when I realize how pale my sister looks, her normally perfect hair all over the place, the chaos of it matching the emotions in her eyes. "You passed out, and fell from your chair onto the floor… And then you started to have some sort of seizure and…” She shakes her head, her voice trailing off again.
"Noah had to give you CPR until the medics got there."
"Noah gave me CPR?" I croak out.
She nods and raises a trembling hand to her face to brush some hair out of her eyes. "I know you want me to be firmly on the hate train with him after everything he's done, squirt, but I'm not sure that I can pretend to hate him after he savedmyperson’s life."
I’m still reeling with the image of Noah performing mouth-to-mouth on me in front of the whole school in my head, but her words bring me right back.
"Your person?" I ask, staring at her a little bit…awestruck.
