Silverlighters (revised version as I edit)

14

               14

I shook my head, disorientated. The empty ache inside me seemed so much worse at that moment.

I thought I had overdone it with training, and was getting what I thought was a migraine aura. A series of silvery, shimmery stars floating across the darkening night. As bright as the stars shining above me.

I took a deep breath, the cold night air rushing into my lungs, making me cough.

“Ellie?”

When I turned I saw Jonathon walking towards me, the candles flickering behind him. The emptiness filled a little, warming me slightly. But I feared it would never truly leave me.

He was wary, his body tense, his hands jammed in his pockets, and I realized I was shivering.

I was on the verge of tears, an odd sense of melancholy surrounding me. I couldn’t seem to pull my thoughts together into anything coherent.

Jonathon pulled off his jacket, swinging it around me. His hands stayed on my shoulders. The heat I felt coming from them was doing more to warm me than the jacket.

My body shuddered, and I was helpless to stop it.

“You’re freezing.” Jonathon pulled me into his arms.

I rested my face against his chest as he rubbed my arms.

Then the nausea hit me.

“I – I need to go home,” I said as the stars shimmered across my vision again.

My head started to throb, the stars pulsing in time. I hadn’t had a migraine so severe, so sudden, since the day I turned sixteen.

My knees buckled.

I felt Jonathon scoop me up as it began; dark ink spilling into my vision, from the outside in. So that I was seeing through a tunnel that was growing narrower and narrower, until …

I opened my eyes.

My dad and Jonathon were staring down at me, their brows creased with identical looks of concern.

I was on the couch in the living room. My throat was dry and sore. My lips were tender.

“Can I have some water?” I asked, pulling myself up.

“I’ll get it.” Jonathon couldn’t get out of the room fast enough.

“What did you do to him?” I asked.

He ignored my question. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine. How long was I out?”

“Twenty minutes.” He felt my forehead, his eyes dark with worry.

“I’m fine. Honest. Just tired.”

“I – I thought–” he broke off. “I was about to take you to the hospital.”

This got my attention. “Wow. You were worried.”

Jonathon returned, and I greedily gulped down the glass of water he handed me, watching him as he stepped back, and glanced warily at my father.

I laughed – they were acting like a couple of characters from a cheesy sitcom, when the boy first meets the dad. But as they both looked at me, I turned my laugh into a cough.

“Sorry,” I choked out, holding up the glass. “Went down the wrong way.”

Jonathon cleared his throat, backing towards the door, his head down. Like he didn’t want my father to see his face. “I better go,” he opened the door.