Chapter Five

Attack

Pippi threw herself violently onto the bed. She had run so far and fast that she was shaking uncontrollably, her throat so sore and tight that she couldn't breathe. She stared down at her small hands making fists around the bedcovers, the black nail polish chipping on her stubby fingernails. She gripped them until her arms shook spastically with the strain, as if her fingers might dig their way through her palms. Then a searing cough broke out in her chest, and tears flooded her eyes.

You stupid klutz. What did you expect? You nearly killed him in the hallway, and you thought he would listen to you after that?

But she hadn't known what else to say. She had been planning that moment for months, years, and she had ruined it before she even had a chance to say a single word. What else could she do but spit it all out in a panic, every last miserable detail, as she sat there dumbly on the floor...?

Pippi choked on the water in her throat, and she buried her face in the pillow, trying to stifle her ragged coughing. Her shoulders jerked with sobs. The fabric of the pillowcase grew hot and wet around her face where the tears were soaking into it. Stupid, she told herself under the sound of her heart pounding heavily in her ears, the sound of the oxygen fighting to reach her lungs. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

If he had told her sooner, she might have understood. If he had said something, anything, even if he was angry with her for knocking him over, if she had just known that he thought she was ugly, or fat, or her clothes looked funny, even then she would have been able to handle it, she might have gotten away without feeling so hurt. But she had told him everything. All of it. Her stupid wildflower farm, and her stupid Shepherd's Violet. She had told him every reason that she loved him, and he told her that he didn't care using only four words, four simple words that now reverberated in her head with every speeding palpitation of her heart. I don't like you. I don't like you. I don't like you...

"I don't like you."

For a moment Pippi couldn't make sense of the words; she only knew that she had been interrupted, a shyly blissful expression momentarily trapped on her face. You're the Faun, and I think it's wonderful. I think it's a beautiful secret. The words she had wanted to say still flowed through her thoughts, like tiny petals carried away by the wind. Then she realized the meaning of his words, and as the shock slowly set in and pulled a snug knot around her throat, she saw that Michael Shepherd was gone.

It was as if she had fallen asleep there on the floor and dreamed it all. But she knew it wasn't a dream, because she could still hear his voice as clear as it had been when he was standing right in front of her. I don't like you, he said. Before she could even finish...

The bell signaling the end of the lunch period rang, but Pippi couldn't bring herself to get up right away. She sat there with her knees splayed on the cold tiles, her elbows scraped and bleeding from when she had grabbed Michael to keep him from hurting himself on the cement. One of her red and black striped socks had torn at the knee, but she hadn't noticed. She still felt out of breath from running to catch up with Michael earlier.

A group of kids rounded the corner of the cafeteria and started heading down the hallway. Pippi stood up quickly and pushed through the double doors to the breezeway, letting them swing shut behind her. Outside in the shaded walkway it was quiet. Pippi felt her eyes tearing and she shuddered, leaning against the closed doors.

I have to get out of here, she thought. She couldn't go back to class. She couldn't see Ashten's face again, couldn't bear to answer her questions. She had to get home.

Pippi ran without thinking. She avoided the front of the school, cutting across the parking lot instead, heading for the sidewalk by the street that led downtown. She would catch the city bus to take her back home. It was a long walk, and Pippi usually took the school bus, but she couldn't wait another three hours for school to end, not even another three minutes. So she ignored the burning pain rising in her chest as she ran faster and faster, her checkerboard shoes flopping loudly on the concrete.

Nobody saw her leave. She turned the corner by the chain-link fence and ran with her head down, hiding her tearful face. Still, she was hardly an unnoticeable figure heading down that road, with her striped clothing and apple-red pigtails bouncing to and fro in her mad rush to escape. Adults, children, and dogs turned their heads to steal curious glances at the running girl as she sprinted past them.

She got to the bus stop just as the bus was closing its doors and preparing to pull away.

"Wait!" Pippi shouted, but her voice broke as a painful cough gripped her chest. She stumbled up to the bus and pounded on the glass door repeatedly with her fist, coughing loudly.

The door slid open and a weathered face stared down at her.

"Hey, kiddo," the bus driver said with a smile. "You almost got left behind."

Pippi was too breathless to speak. She nodded quickly as she climbed the stairs, trying to silence her coughing in the crook of her arm.

The bus driver saw her scraped elbow and frowned. "Something wrong, Pippi?"

He had known Pippi and her mother for a long time, as Pippi had ridden the bus every day with her mom when she was younger. "Aren't you supposed to be in school?" the bus driver queried.

"I have to go home early," Pippi answered finally, her voice barely a rasp. She fumbled in the pocket of her skirt for change.

"Your mother's not home yet," the driver said suspiciously. "I haven't seen her since this morning."

"It's really important," Pippi sustained. "Please, Mr. Jacobs, I have to get home." She held out a handful of pocket change. "Is this enough for the fare?"

Mr. Jacobs took the money in his wrinkled hands, then held out a single coin to her. "With a dime to spare," he said. "Well, I don't suppose it's any of my business," he added, muttering.

"Thank you," Pippi breathed, making her way to the back of the bus and trying not to start coughing again. She collapsed into a seat by the aisle, folding her sweaty hands between her knees. She tried to focus on breathing. Instead, her mind was suddenly filled with images of Michael Shepherd, his cold blue-brown eyes glaring down at her, his beautiful face expressionless and unforgiving. The tears threatened to fill her eyes again, and Pippi was reluctant to stop them upon feeling their warmth. It now seemed to her that tears were the only warm things left in her shattered world. She closed her eyes and hoped nobody was watching as she scrubbed one clenched fist against her freckled cheek.

When the bus reached her stop, Pippi hurried off to avoid Mr. Jacobs' inquiries. She ran the rest of the way home. It was normally a fifteen-minute walk, but Pippi made it in seven. She burst through the door to the house, grateful that it was empty inside, and immediately ran up the stairs to her room and flung herself on the bed, sobbing and fighting to breathe.

She had been lying there for almost twenty minutes now, yet the coughing had not subsided. Pippi cried harder from the pain, and the tears worsened her breathing.

Come on, she told herself, you know what to do. Focus on inhaling, exhaling...

It wasn't working. Why wasn't it working? Instead of slowing down, her breath was coming faster and faster. She was coughing endlessly with every attempt at receiving air. She needed her inhaler.

Forcing herself up with trembling arms, Pippi slid off the bed and staggered toward her nightstand. Black spots danced before her eyes, and her head throbbed like a hundred-pound weight was pressing down on it. She swept her hand blindly over the nightstand, sending her alarm clock crashing to the wooden floor. Empty. Of course. Her inhaler wouldn't be there, it would be...

Pippi's heart turned to ice. She searched the room frantically, falling once on her hands and knees. It was gone. She remembered. Her inhaler was still at school. She had left her bag in her locker, with everything inside it.

Pippi stood shakily in the middle of her room, frozen with fear and dizziness. She was alone. She needed help. She needed air.

You can fight this, she thought. Don't panic. Don't let it control you. You don't need an inhaler, you don't have asthma. Remember what the doctor told you...

But she was fighting now, panicking, and it felt like the walls of the room were closing in on her. Pippi dashed to the window, feebly throwing it open with her shaking hands. That's when she saw the little purple flowers, glowing in the sunlight.

Pippi seized the fragile Shepherd's Violet by the roots, and threw the tiny planter with all her might against the door to her room. The clay pot burst into shattered fragments with a loud crash, the soft brown soil sprayed across the wall and floor. Pippi's chest heaved with sobs. She picked up the paper drawing of the flower's namesake to tear it in half.

Her fingers gripped the penciled drawing, shaking the image to a blur. Her tears fell rapidly on the paper, ruining the soft lines with smudges. She dropped the paper, and it fluttered to the floor as she slid down to her knees.

"No," she whispered, crawling weakly to the door.

Three delicate flowers on a torn creeper vine were buried in the mess on the floor. Pippi closed her hands gently around the purple blossoms, barely able to hold her fingers still.

"I'm sorry," she choked, as the world turned black around her. "I'm...sorry."

"Pip?"

It was dark. She had been dreaming.

"Earth to Pippi Short. Ashten Walker's on the radar."

As she blinked her eyes, the darkness steadily grew to a bright white. She realized that it must be morning, not night. When had she fallen asleep?

"Earth to...hey. Hey. Calm down. It's okay. You're all right, Pip."

She felt two warm hands around her wrists, and she stopped struggling. Her green eyes focused on the gentle olive face leaning over her. Ashten.

Pippi felt a dull ache in her chest, and she groaned. "Houston, we have a problem," she muttered groggily.

Ashten smiled. "You're back."

Still disoriented, Pippi glanced around at the strange surroundings, then down at the IV in her wrist. She was in a hospital. "What happened?" she asked, though she was already beginning to guess.

Ashten's smile changed quickly to a frown. "You tell me. You had everyone worried sick, Pippi. Why'd you leave school like that?"

Pippi shut her eyes. "Then it wasn't a dream," she mumbled to herself.

"What wasn't a dream?"

Pippi grabbed the covers of the bed she was lying on and pulled them over her head. "The worst day of my life," she moaned.

"You're telling me. What were you doing, running away from the mob?"

"No." Pippi shook her head. "I was running away from Michael."

Ashten tilted her head, then anger shot through her brown eyes. "What did he do to you?" she demanded. "That bloodsucking jerk, I'll tear his arms off..."

"Ash, it wasn't him. It was me. I...I ruined everything. And now he hates me." The red-haired girl bit her lip, trying to postpone the tears that wanted to come back and haunt her. "I'm sorry, Ash, I don't think I can talk about it."

Ashten's expression softened. "Well, okay..."

"Pippi?" A musical female voice rang out in the room, and both the girls turned to see Pippi's mother at the door.

"Mom." Pippi smiled, brushing at her eyes.

But the older woman was unashamed of her own tears, and they flowed down her cheeks as she ran to the side of the bed. "You're awake," she exclaimed. "I was so worried. How are you feeling, honey?"

"Tired," Pippi admitted.

"We won't keep you up much longer," her mother promised. "Doctor Evans wants to see you before you go back to sleep, though."

"All right." Doctor Patrick Evans had been Pippi's doctor since the diagnosis. She liked him; he was kind and gentle. But she always felt worried when she had to see him, as if at any moment he would tell her that they had finally reached a date, that she only had so many days left to live.

Ashten got up to give her seat to Pippi's mother. "I'll duck out," she said with a half-smile. "See you, Mrs. Short." She glanced at Pippi. "I'll talk to you later," she said meaningfully.

Pippi's mother waited until the tall girl had shut the door to the room before she spoke again. "You still haven't told her, have you," she said calmly, more a statement than a question.

"No." Pippi said it without looking up.

Her mother sighed patiently. "Pippi, do you remember what happened today? Any of it?"

"I...yeah." Pippi fiddled with the edge of the bedcovers. "I was coughing, and I left my inhaler at school. I think I fainted." She left out the part about running half the way home. She thought about the empty house, the worried bus driver. "How did you find me?" she asked.

"Honey, Ashten called me from school. She didn't know where you were. She had already called the house, but no one answered. I was on my way home from work, and I was going to stop by the grocery store before she called. I got on the bus instead, and Mr. Jacobs told me that he saw you earlier that day. Pippi, I was worried. I didn't know where to look. If I hadn't come back home, if Ashten hadn't called looking for you, I don't know what would have happened. I might have been too late."

She paused. Pippi was silent, embarrassed. Mother and daughter both fixed their gazes on separate tiles of the floor.

"When I found you," Pippi's mother continued at last, "you were facedown on the floor. Your flowers..." She dabbed at her eyes. "I didn't know what had happened to you. I called the ambulance. I thought...I thought I was too late. You had stopped breathing. Your face and fingers were blue, swelling. You didn't look like you."

"I'm sorry, Mom..."

"It's okay, Pippi, don't think that I'm angry with you. I just want you to understand how serious it was. Doctor Evans said it was practically a miracle that the scarring on your lungs didn't worsen." The older woman ran a hand through her curly black hair, her face still wearing a distressed expression. "Ashten was worried, too," she said. Then, sincerely, "It's only going to get harder, Pippi. I don't know how much longer we'll be able to play off these accidents as simple asthma attacks."

Pippi was quiet. "I know," she whispered. She looked up at her mother. "But I can't tell her yet, Momma," she said pleadingly.

"You still think it would be best if she didn't know."

The young girl nodded slowly. "Yes."

Silence for a moment. Then Pippi's mother rose from the chair and placed a cool hand on her daughter's forehead.

"Okay. We'll keep it a secret a little while longer. But if you change your mind..." She smiled slightly. "I think your friend has a right to know. She cares about you, after all. And so do I."

Pippi nodded, allowing her mother to tuck her in like she was a little girl again. She shut her eyes briefly as the door closed and she was alone in the room, feeling a knot tighten in the pit of her stomach, in the back of her throat. She knew she couldn't hide forever. One day, she would have to tell the truth.

Ashten's face flashed briskly through her mind, and she thought of other things: a gravestone, her wildflowers.

One day, she would have to know.