(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 16; sick

Tisper had been staring at the screen of her laptop, not working—just staring, while the endless white stared back at her. Three hours had been chiseled away, refilling her wineglass and prepping herself for a research paper that would never come. Maybe it was the television, captivating her every time the screen lit up with a new blaze of color. Maybe it was the boy who'd smiled at her in her morning lectures, or maybe it was Jaylin, coughing and hacking in the next room over.

She groaned and wedged her laptop onto her cluttered coffee table, dragging herself into the kitchen. Then Tisper selected a small glass from the cupboard and filled it halfway with milk, shuffling through her disorderly livin groom in her white kitten slippers to deliver the glass to her own nightstand table.

"Jay, did you use the spray at all?"

A small, pitiful sound groaned back at her from beneath the mounds of blankets on her bed.

"Jaylin." She whipped the covers off and there Jaylin laid, curled into a human ball atop her mattress. He shuttered from the sudden lack of heat and twisted to look at her, hair wet to his face with sweat.

"Go away," he croaked.

"Just drink the milk, you big baby. And if it hurts that bad, maybe try the throat spray I gave you."

"I can't stomach that stuff." Jaylin's voice was threadbare and pitchy, and he groaned as he pushed himself upright. Then he took the milk from Tisper and swallowed it down in a few painful grimaces. "More," he gasped once he'd finished and Tisper took the glass away from him.

"Dairy will just cause more mucus and I don't want your snot all over my Egyptian cotton. Why won't you just try the tea?"

Jaylin grumbled out a phlegmy sound and jerked the blankets back up over his body to bury himself alive.

"You're stubborn. A nice boy brought you tea. Drink the tea."

From beneath the blankets, Jaylin squabbled back, "There's no such thing as magic tea. It's just grass water. It's not going to help."

"I'll put milk and honey in it. Then you're drinking the damn tea." Tisper fled the room before Jaylin could argue. Setting the kettle for tea, she puttered over to the backpack he'd dropped by the door and yanked it up onto the counter.

"It's in your bag, right?" she called out. And as she rifled inside, the first thing she found inside was the warm fleece of Jaylin's sweater, then beneath that, a mesh bag. She tugged it out gently by the string-tie that held it closed.

"This is tea?" She wrinkled her nose and held it to the light. "Where are the bags?"

Then something caught Tisper's eye. She took a second look into the pocket of Jaylin's backpack, dragging out a sheet of paper. Tisper spared a moment to make sure no one was watching before she brought it up to her face and read the first line of his college application essay.

But something was off, Tisper thought. And as she read on, she swore there had to be a misunderstanding. This prompt was from last summer—they change it every year. Had Eduardo given him the wrong prompt?

At the rap on her door, Tisper nearly leapt from her skin, thrusting the papers back into Jaylin's bag. She unlocked every latch and popped her head beneath the single chain that held the door from opening fully. Relief drew a breath from her when she found Matthew on the other side. She released the chain and swung the door open. "Come in."

Matt strode in with his lumberjack boots and his heavy fleece jacket, and shed them both from his body once the warm had welcomed him. "Shit it's cold," he trilled, patting his cheeks with his gloves. "Went from eighty to forty in a week."