Parker Chapter Two Part One

Chapter Two: Visits

         They let me leave that day. I went home and went straight to bed; I didn't know how tired I really was. Of course, I was starving too, but the tiredness won and I collapsed on my bed before I could even ask what was for dinner. School tomorrow was going to be horrible.
         I woke up too early. It had to be before three in the morning. The pain was what woke me. It started on the crown of my head, and slowly worked it's way forward until my whole head was throbbing. I climbed out of bed and dragged my feet all the way to my small bathroom. I turned on the hot water and climbed into the shower. The warm water felt great as it rushed over my skin. I wrapped my new silk towel around myself and stepped back into my room. I felt more awake now, so as I walked to my dresser and pulled out a grey tank top and my favorite pair of Bermuda shorts, I yawned one last time. I quickly pulled on my clothes and walked back into the bathroom. I pulled my brush through my black, almost navy blue hair.
         I sighed at my reflection. Of course. The bruise on my nose was almost gone completely now, so my face was perfect again. Too perfect. I hated it. I didn't want to be what the other girls wanted to be anymore. I was tired of the evil glares from girls who's boyfriends broke up with them in a feeble attempt to be with me. I didn't want it anymore. Chandelle could have it.
         Chandelle was the girl who I had been in competition with since Freshman Year. Back then, I actually wanted to be Queen Bee. Now it just seemed really stupid. I didn't want to be that girl anymore. It made me sick.
         "Parker!" I heard Mom's voice call up the stairs. "Hurry, or you're going to miss the bus!"
         Ah, the wonders of the Gregory High bus to school. Thirty screaming Freshmen boys that wouldn't know their way around a mall if it slapped them in the face. Joy.
         "Coming Mom!" I screamed over my shoulder. I grabbed my backpack off my desk chair and pulled my purse out of one of the cubbies. Walking down the stairs, I could hear plates being pushed around in the sink and being put into the drain. Mom was washing the dishes from last night's dinner of spaghetti. Yum, food, I thought as my stomach growled.
         "Honey, your breakfast is on the table," said Mom as I walked into the kitchen.
         "Bus!" I said in explanation for why I didn't sit down immediately. As much as I wanted my Mom's great breakfast, I also didn't want to miss the bus on my first day back.
         "Okay, hon. Tomorrow?"
         "Tomorrow!"
         "Bye, hon."
         "Bye, Mom!"
         I opened the front door and stepped out onto the small front porch. The warm California morning air hit me and I breathed it in happily. I loved this place and everything about it.
         I walked down the sidewalk towards the bus stop, where a few people on my street were already gathered. I could see Jess and Rich holding hands and talking to Bryan, who was looking pointedly at their clasped hands, though they didn't seem to notice. Bryan has liked Jess since as long as I could remember. Me, Bryan, Jess, Rich, Kim, and Katie had been friends for as long as I could remember too. We had even been together in preschool. Kim was the only one that didn't ride the bus with the rest of us. No one really knew where she lived; she had never really talked about it. Of course, none of us had ever asked, in fear that we would upset her about something. I had my suspicions that she lived somewhere that she was ashamed of, or something she didn't want anyone to see; that she would find embarrassing.
         As I got closer to the bus stop, my friends started waving and calling my name. I smiled in response and waved back.
         "Parker!" shouted Jess, taking her hand out of Rich's and running to meet me. She wrapped her arm around my neck and I hugged her back. "We were wondering if you were going to be back at school in time for graduation next week!"
         Graduation was a great tradition at Gregory High. Two people from each class were chosen to give a speech at the graduation. This year it was me and Katie. I had already thought the whole thing out in my head over and over again, but I was a procrastinator, so I hadn't written it all down yet.
         "I'm sorry," I said apologetically, frowning.
         "Ah, it's okay. We understand."
         We walked to the bus stop and Bryan and Rich hugged me in turn.
         "How bad was it this time?" asked Rich. "Katie never tells us anything."
         "Rich!" said Jess, hitting him on the arm. "You know what's happening to Katie right now!"
         I looked down at the ground. Katie hadn't answered the phone since her brother. . . Anyway, none of us knew what was going on with her, or if she was even okay. Of course, she would have missed a few days of school, but we all still worried.
         "Sorry," said Rich, staring at his feet. "So, what did happen?"
         "Well. . ." I said, glad for a change of subject. "I just got really dizzy and blacked out, and when I woke up, I was in a hospital bed."
         "What about you're nose?" asked Bryan, obviously trying not to laugh.
         "I fell in the hospital," I lied.
         They all laughed at me. I glared.
         "Ah, come on Parker! Don’t' be like that!" said Jess.
         We all turned to look as the stupid yellow bus came around the corner. It sputtered and slowed to a stop in front of us. The doors swung open and we all suffered the painful glare of the old bus driver, Mr. Jenkins. I stepped up the steps slowly and looked around for an empty seat. I spotted one in the very back and rushed to get there before Bryan and Rich. When Jess stepped on, I waved to her to come sit down and she hurried back to the seat. Bryan and Rich gave us angry looks when we stuck our tongues out and laughed. Bryan had to sit with a Freshman girl who was wearing all black and looked like she was about to kill him. After Rich walked to the front of the bus and back three times, the bus driver yelled at him and he had to sit with an elementary school boy that looked like he was dying of terror just by looking at Rich. Jess and I giggled and when Bryan and Rich both gave us glaring looks we just laughed harder. Finally, they turned around and slumped down in their seats.
         "So, I heard that you were in the hospital the day that. . ."
         The day that Jake died. She didn't say it but we both knew what the words would have been.
         "Um. . . yeah, I was."
         "How long before. . . it happened. . . did you see him?"
         "The day before."
         "How did he look when you talked to him?"
         "He was perfectly fine. He even said that he was getting better."
         "Wow," Jess looked down for a minute and then she looked back up. "Oh, yeah! Katie told me that Adam was going to visit you! How did that go?"
         Jess and Katie were the only two people besides me that knew about my Adam secret. Though it didn't look like he was going to say anything about standing me up two days ago, I still hoped.
         "Actually, it didn't. He never showed up," I replied sadly.
         "Oh, honey, I'm sorry," she said comfortingly.
         "It's okay. I guess it doesn’t matter. If it was meant to be, then it would have happened."
         "Wow. That's definitely not what I expected to hear from you," said Jess, her eyes widening.
         "What do you mean?"
         "Well, usually when you want something, you don't give up until you get it. Like with Jason Grey last year! You spotted him on his second day at school and you didn't give up until he asked you to his senior prom two months later!"
         "Okay. . . so, well, maybe this is different. Maybe I want to give up on this one."
         "But, why?"
         "I don't know, can we just drop it, okay?"
         "Okay, fine. But what's up with your eyes?"
         My eyes had gotten worse. They weren't just navy surrounded by a red circle anymore; they had turned to a darker blue, almost black and surrounded by a large red band of scarlet. The doctor's said that my headaches were causing the color change by messing with the pigmentation or something like that.
         "Oh, that. It's just something the headaches are causing. You know, stupid medical stuff."
         "Oh. That's kind of weird."
         We pulled into the Gregory High parking lot. More joy.
         Before us was the two-story hell hole that they called a school. No one would ever enjoy coming to this school--even if they were a math or science geek. The school sucked. The walls were crumbling and the staircases were so messed up that it was more like an uphill climb than stairs. We had one elevator--but it was in the middle school hallway and we only had five minutes in-between classes, so it was near impossible to get to the elevator, upstairs and all the way to your classroom in time.
         The cafeteria food sucked--not just your average "sucked" though. The school was low on funding, so the best we got in one week was maybe two bowls of soup a week, a salad, what we all thought was cat food but they told us it was chicken, some kind of weird mush, and if we were really lucky, we had one piece of pizza a week. There was no breakfast.
         What with my growing appetite, this was definitely not enough to fill me up. So, I brought a packed lunch every day lately of two sub sandwiches, a large bag of chips, two sodas, an apple, a banana, and a pack of cookies. The only way this worked out for me was I spent my lunch hour in the projection room with Jess and Katie, and we watched movies on the wall with the 1950's projector. Of course, the movies were really old, but we had no problem with that; the old ones were the best ones.
         The bus doors swung open and kids started filing off. It finally cleared out enough for me and Jess to follow two senior boys off. Rich and Bryan were waiting for us just beside the school entrance. Rich wrapped his arm around Jess' shoulder and smiled at her. Bryan glared.
         "That was pretty mean, what you guys did on the bus back there," said Bryan. "I thought that chick was going to cast a spell on me or something."
         Jess and I laughed.
         "Missy Toolbox doesn’t cast spells. She performs hexes," said Jess. "Get it right or she will perform a hex on you."
         "Oh, and how do you know that?" asked Rich.
         "Because she tried to make all my hair fall out when she was in third grade."
         "What did you do to her?" I asked through giggles.
         "I stole her gothic-looking Barbie doll."
         We all laughed. We walked down the high school hallway and stopped at our lockers. Bryan's Mom was married to the Physics teacher, so he had special connections and he got us all lockers right beside each other. But, he had thought it was funny to make mine and Katie's lockers on the bottom, so we had to get down on our hands and knees every time we wanted to get something from our lockers. I kneeled down and twisted the dial to my combination. I grabbed my biology and civics books and closed the locker again. I stood up slowly, not wanting to get dizzy.
         "Me and Bryan got to go to Geometry," said Rich.
         "Okay," said Jess, closing her locker door. "See yak."
         "Bye, hon," he said. Rich gave her a quick peck on the cheek and he turned to leave. Bryan waved at them and followed Rich.
         Jess and I walked in the opposite direction, towards the elevator. We hated walking all the way to the staircase, up the crumbling stairs, and all the way back down the hallway just to get to the biology class, so we took the elevators up every morning. A few of the younger kids stared at us as we walked down the hallway.
         "So, what are you going to talk about in your speech?" asked Jess, putting both of her books in her bag.
         "I don't know. Definitely about how much I'm going to miss Cody."
         I had dated Cody in Freshman year. He was just a junior then. It hadn't worked out then, but we had agreed to stay the best of friends, and that's what we were. He was my best guy friend.
         "Yeah, it will seem kind of weird without him, won't it?"
         "It seems like we've all been friends for so long. . . I don't want us all to split up."
         "Yeah. He's been absent for three days, just like you."
         "Really?"
         "Yeah. No one knows where he is either."
         Jess pushed the button for the elevator and it dinged. The doors opened and we stepped in, followed by three younger kids, who shrieked against the corner and averted their eyes fearfully. Not wanting to be overheard, we waited until we were on the second floor and out of earshot. It wasn't that we were talking about anything important, we just didn't like for people to listen to our conversations.
         "What homework did I miss?" I asked as we turned a corner into the science hallway.
         "A lot. I don't even remember everything we did. Um. . . there was a bunch of stuff from biology. Like, twenty worksheets or something."
         "Great. Anything else?"
         "Yeah, we started a project about the Iliad in English. . . and I can't really remember anything else. You know how I am with the memory thing."
         "Okay. I'll just find out when I get to class," I said, pulling my bag a little higher on my shoulder. We finally reached the Biology classroom and walked inside. As usual, we were the last two people to come in. Everyone else were already in their seats and looking at the board, and then back at their papers. Great, I thought, automatically knowing what I was going to find on the board. More notes and an assignment. I sighed and took my seat in the back of the class.

         It was another long day of school. After second period English, I was so loaded with homework that I didn't think I would be able to make it through the rest of the day. Kim caught up with us close to the end of the day and she had the same questions for me that all the others had. About Jake, my eyes, and my nose.
         The final bell rang and Kim, Jess, and I went into the bathroom--they wanted to show me how destroyed the sinks I had held onto were. They were almost demolished. My fingers had done more damage to the sinks than they had ever done before to anything else. There were deep ridges where my finger nails had bit savagely into the marble. Each of my fingers had left a deep dip in the clean white surface, and part of one of the sinks was completely gone.
         We hurried to get to the bus, and Jess and I were the last ones on. We said goodbye to Kim and she walked off in the opposite direction. Rich and Bryan were in the back seat and laughed at us as we stepped on. There were two seats with only one person in them; and they were occupied by two Pre-K kids, one in each seat.
         I bent over and tapped one of them on the shoulder. "Excuse me," I said. "But do you think you could sit with him," I pointed to the other little kid. "So my friend and I can sit together?" 
         The little girl nodded and moved into the other seat, where she asked what the little boy's name was. I turned around and smirked at Bryan and Rich before sliding onto the window side to the seat.
         Jess laughed. "That'll show them."
         I laughed too, but another pang above my eye stopped the laugh midway through. I put a hand to my brow and cringed.
         "You okay honey?" asked Jess. She wasn't used to this. She was always around me when I was happy and the pain had subsided. Katie was always the one who took care of me when I wasn't feeling well or the weird pains started again.
         "Oh, no. I'm fine. That was minor compared to usual."
         "Okay."
         The rest of the bus ride was silent. Jess was uncomfortable; I could tell. She had pulled out her history notes from when I was absent and I was copying them when we finally reached our stop. The four of us clamored off the bus, kids grunting all along the bus in response to having to move out of the aisle to make way for us. I jumped off the last step and onto the pavement. Jess, Rich, and Bryan followed me and turned to watch the bus drive away.
         "See you guys tomorrow!" said Bryan, turning quickly in the opposite direction. He wasn't too fond of the way Rich and Jess said goodbye now-a-days. Even I didn't watch, averting my eyes to the ground every time we got off the bus.
         "I'll call you tonight," I heard Bryan say.
         "You'd better," said Jess in her flirty voice.
         "You know I will."
         A kissing noise reached my ears and I just kept staring at the ground. Finally, after what seemed like a million years, I heard Jess chuckle and Rich turn to walk away. I slowly turned and Jess was smiling at me.
         "Let's just walk, okay? I heard enough," I said.
         She laughed. "Sorry. I know how you hate it when we kiss in front of you like that."
         We turned and started walking down the street toward her house. It was in the same direction as mine, but there were two blocks between our houses.
         "So how was the hospital?" Jess asked.
         "I guess is was okay. Everyone was really nice. So, how many people were staring at my nose today?"
         "I didn't notice," she said through a giggle.
         "Sure you didn't."
         She laughed again. We walked a few more paces and suddenly we were apon her house. She stopped in front of her mailbox as usual and pulled out the mail.
         "I'll see you tomorrow Parker," she said, walking up her driveway.
         "Bye."
         She opened her front door and stepped inside. I turned in the opposite direction and started walking to my house.
         I wondered where Cody was. He had never disappeared for more than a day at a time. I was hoping I would get to hang out with him like he, Katie, and I always did on Thursday nights. It used to be Friday nights, but now he was always busy doing other things. Like dates, or Varsity Football games where he was the starting quarterback. I would call him as soon as I got home. Of course, Katie wouldn't go. Not after. . .
         That night. That horrible night before it happened. I had put off thinking about it until now. It wasn't true. It was a dream. Just like the other ones. Only this time, my brain was longing to see Adam and at the same time it was longing for an explanation to why the dreams were happening. There was no way that I was a. . . a. . . a werewolf! It was just rediculous and my brain's idea of a cruel joke. However, Adam had not tried to call or text me since that night. I figured he just felt guilty for standing me up and didn't want to face me. Or talk to me. I wished he would call me. I know that probably made me sound desperate or stupid for liking someone who was completely ignoring me.
         I shivered. It was August and it was still cold. That was odd. Ever since I got out of the hospital a dark cold had settled around my neighbor-hood. But the weird part was, you could drive just a few miles down the road into the smallest part of town and it would be eighty degrees. The weather men said it was because we were on a lower elevation than the rest of the town, but I didn't believe that.
         I walked up my driveway and saw that Mom was still at work; her car was gone. I pulled the spare key out from under the welocome mat and turned it in the lock until it clicked. I pushed the door open after putting the key back under the mat.
         Walking inside the living room, I threw my backpack down by the front door and climbed onto the couch in front of the TV. There was a note on the coffee table in front of me.
Hey honey,
I'm going to be home late tonight, so don't wait up for me.
There is a message on the machine for you.
We are going to talk when you wake up in the morning.
I love you.
         I sighed and climbed back off the comfortable couch. Walking into the kitchen, where the phone was, I pressed the message button and opened the fridge.
         "One old message."
         Mom had obviously listened to it already.
         "Thursday, 10:17 AM."
         That was weird. Who would be calling me while I was at school?
         "Hey Parker. It's Adam."
         My heart skipped a beat and I almost dropped the gatoraide bottle I was holding.
         "Um, listen, I'm sorry for standing you up, but I think that we should try again. Maybe tomorrow? Call me and let me know. Bye."
         Beep. "No new messages." Beep.
         Great. That's why Mom needed to talk to me. She heard it and was wondering who Adam was. Well, at least this proved that I wasn't crazy and everything that happened that night in the hospital was just a dream.
         But then there was the bigger question of, why did Adam want to talk to me now? He had stood me up and broke my heart. Then he had completely ignored me for three days. And now, suddenly, he wanted to be with me again? I pulled out my cell phone. He hadn't texted me or called. Why did he call the house phone? I didn't remember giving him that number. . .
         Whatever. I would call him later. He stood me up, so I could keep him waiting for a while. I walked back into the living room and put the gatoraide down on the coffee table. Siting down on the couch, I pulled out the beginning of my graduation speech that i had quickly written down during a lecture in English.
Fellow students,
I am not here to talk about how much I am going to miss the graduating seniors. I am here to tell you about all the good times I've had with all of them. To Amanda and Pete, you guys are the best. I can't imagine life without you. You guys were my Junior mentors when I started Freshman Year here. I remember walking into the lobby on my very first day and you two were there waiting for me and three other Freshman. The smiles on your faces said it all. You were happy to help and answer all of our eager questions. Jeremy, thanks for just being a good friend and being my "Dr. Phil" last year after my diary got passed around the girls bathroom (hold for laughter). I know, I know. And to Macy, thanks for getting my diary back from the juniors who were threatning to make photocopies of it and post it on the school bulletin board.
         
         What could I possibly say about Cody? I would miss him the most out of all the seniors put together, but I couldn't say that in a speech. But I didn't get to think about it for long because there was a knock on the door.
         I threw the paper down on the couch beside me and walked to the door. Cody was stading on my doorstep and was holding something in his hand; it looked like a wrapped package.
         "Hi," I said, kind of surprised to see him here when I had just been thinking about him.
         "Hey," he replied. "Can I come in?"
         "Well, my Mom's not home. . .But what she dosen't know won't hurt her."
         I opened the door wider and stepped aside for him. He walked in and I closed the door behind him. He sat down on the couch and saw my speech sitting beside him. He picked it up and scanned the page.
         "Am I not important?" he asked with a smile.
         "I'm not finished with it yet," I said, sitting in the chair across from the couch. "Trust me, you'll take up the most room."
         He laughed. I smiled back at him.
         "Do you want something to drink?" I aked him.
         "Um, yes please," he replied.
         I stood up and walked into the kitchen. Cody followed me. I pulled open the fridge and grabbed the last bottle of Gatoraide. It was the blue kind--Cody's favorite.
         I handed it to him.
         "Blue Gatoraide. My favorite," he said before he took two big gulps.
         "Yeah, I know," I said.
         He followed me into the living room and we sat down together on the couch. Cody looked down at his hands with a saddened expression on his face.
         "Cody?" I said. "What's wrong?"
         He looked up at me.
         "I got accepted to Princeton," he said.
         "Oh my gosh! That's great!"
         "Yeah, great," he said sarcastically.
         "But. . . I thought that was were you wanted to go?"
         "Yeah, but there are things that might change my mind."
         "Like what? Don't your parents want you to go to Princeton?"
         "Yeah. . . it's not them."
         "Then what--"
         My heart almost stopped. Cody was trying to tell me that he was still in love with me. I was the reason that he didn't want to leave for Princeton in the Fall. He wanted to stay for me.
         "Cody. . ." I started. But I couldn't seem to find the right words.
         What could I say to that? I still love you too. Don't go, stay with me, seemed like it should have been the right to say, but I couldn't make my lips form the words.
         "It's okay," he said before I could even think straight. "You don't have to say anything. Just take this." He reached over to the table and grabbed the small package that he had been carrying when he walked in and placed it gently in my lap. I had almost forgotten about it. "Go on," he said. "Open it."
         I grabbed a corner of the brown packaging and ripped it open. Inside was a small box that I had given him the year before when we were still dating. I smiled at the memory.
         Christmas day last year was a long and tiring one. Cody picked me up after the usual family breakfast of bisquits, gravy, sausage, eggs, bacon, toast, and fried potatoes. We went to his house for dinner and a movie, and afterwards, we exchanged gifts. His gift to me was a silver-chained necklace with an emerald pendat with my name of the back of it. But my gift for him was in a box that I had decorated myself. It was a small heart-shaped box that I had gotten for like a buck at the farmer's market. I had taken a silver sharpie and written both of our name's on the top, colored in with other more colorful sharpies. Little fake jewels and sequins were scattered over the rest of the box. He had laughed when I had given it to him. But what was inside the box was what was important. A three page long love letter that detailed how much I loved him and never wanted to leave him.
         The box was what Cody had liked the most, though. He had said he would always keep it.
         But now he was giving it back to me. Wow. I mean, wow.
         "Go on. Open it," he insisted.
         I took the top off of the box and looked inside. There was a folded up note sitting in the bottom; just like the one I had given him on Christmas. I started to grab it and unfold it, but he grabbed my hand before I could.
         "I don't want you to read it now. Wait until I'm gone."
         "Okay," I said, closing the box and placing it on the table. When I leaned back, Cody put his arm around me and smiled. I smiled back.
         "You have to promise me that you'll do what you want to do and not change your mind about Princeton just because I'm going to miss you," I said.
         "But it's you that I'll miss the most," he said, slowly taking my hand in his. "Princeton's too far away."
         "Cody," I said, looking down, "I'm going to miss you too, but there'll be holidays and weekends."
         "I can't do long distance relationships."
         Now he wanted a relationship? This was all just too much for one day.
         "Cody, can we just talk about this some other time? Today's been a really crazy day. "
         His expression changed to one that I had seen only once before. The day he was forced to break up with me. Sadness. It was not a good look for him.
         "Okay," he said. "Can I come back tomorrow?"
         "Yeah. Just call me before you do, okay? It would be nice to have some warning next time."
         He chuckled and then said, "Okay."
         we both stood up and I walked him to the door. My hand was on the door knob, ready to open it, but he put his hand on top of mine.
         "Just think about what I've said, okay?" he said, turning the knob himself.
         "Okay," I said, as he opened the door. He walked out, but turned around on the doorstep.
         "Oh, and Parker?"
         "Yeah?"
         He bent down and kissed me on the cheek, just like he had every time he dropped me off after a date and Mom was peeping inbetween the curtains, thinking we couldn't see her even though we really could.
         "Goodnight," he said in his cute, deep voice.
         "Goodnight." I said back.
         He turned around and strutted down the street. I watched him go.
         Damn, I thought. There goes my only chance at a real relationship.          
         I stepped back into the house and flopped down on the couch.
         I looked at the folded up note still lying on the table in front of me. I sighed and picked it up.

Parher,
I know that we used to date and that you weren't entirely very happy when we broke up.
I wasn't either.
And now I regret that we ever broke up in the first place.
I can't believe that I broke your heart like that and I am truely sorry.
Do you think that you can find it in your heart to forgive me and possibly give me another chance?
-Cody
         I wanted to cry.

         Later that night, I tried calling Adam, but he wasn't answering his phone. Or texts. Or e-mails. Grr.
         "Parker?" came a voice from downstairs.
         Well, Mom was home really late. It was already 10:30 and she never came home this late.
         "Mom?" I called back.
         "Honey, come here. I want to talk to you."
         Uh-oh. What did I do this time? She couldn't have heard Adam's message because I had deleted it as soon as I listened to it for the three hundredth time. . . Did she find out that Cody came over today when she wasn't here? . . . What did I do?
         "Yeah, Mom?" I asked, jumping off the bottom step.
         "I heard what happened to Katie's little brother."
         Oh. At least I'm not in trouble.
         "You guys were friends, weren't you?" she asked, taking out the plate of eggs and toast I had made for her at around 7:00 and sticcking it in the microwave.
         "Yeah."
         "Then would you know what would have caused him to slit his wrists?"
         I could feel my palms becoming sweaty. My mouth was dry--I couldn't talk.
         "W-What?" I managed to breathe.
         "Well, that's what the report said. Something about so much stress that he just wanted to let it all go."
         Stress? Jake had never been stressed. At least not that stressed.
         "Mom, I don't think I'm very up to staying awake late tonight, so I'm going to go to bed," I said, yawning fakely.
         "Okay, honey. Remeber to set your alarm clock because I'm not going to be able to wake you up in the morning. I've got to go in early for because we're catering a wedding." she repiled, picking up a dishrag and turning on the water.
         "'Night Mom."
         "Good night Parker."
         I turned around and walked up the stairs to my room, where I collapsed on my bed in a fit of tears.
         What the hell is going on?

         The next morning I almost fell out of bed the alarm clock scared me so much. I grunted and untwisted myself from the covers.
         I stumbled to the bathroom and turned on the hot water. It woke me up immiediately.
         After I was dressed and put my makeup on, I pulled on my black trench coat and threw my messenger bag over my shoulder. As I walked down the stairs and through the kitchen, I grabbed a Poptart out of the cupboard and stuck one end in my mouth. Mom probably wouldn't be home until late if she was catering a wedding, so I grabbed the house keys off the hook beside the door.
         I was the first one at the bus stop. Only then did I realize that it hadn't taken me as long as normal to get ready as usual. I had found many ways to distract myself from the throbbing pain in my head over the past few weeks. Keeping myself busy was just one of the many. But now, as I stood by myself in the dark with no one to talk to, I felt the throbbing pain once more. With no one and nothing to busy myself, I sat down on the sidewalk and pulled out a book to read.
         The words on the pages swam before my eyes, making my head throb and start to spin. I slammed the book closed and shoved it in my backpack. I couldn't even read a book anymore without my head pushing it away and rejecting everything that I wanted to do. I looked around, desperate for someone to talk to, to make the pain stop for just a few minutes.
         But I didn't see anyone. I saw something. Two big red dots shining in the darkness from behind a bush across the street.
         Just car headlights.
         I stood up and tried to get a better look at the glowing lights, but a voice behind me startled me out of my daze.
         "Parker?"
         I spun around. Jess was standing behind me with her hands on her hips. She was looking at me like I had gone crazy.
         "What are you looking at?" she asked, narrowing her eyes at me.
         "Huh?" I said, confused. "Oh. Nothing. There were just some weird car lights over that way." I pointed in the direction of the bush.
         "Oh. Okay."
         We stood in silence for a while and waited for the rest of our friends.
         A few minutes later, Rich and Bryan walked around the corner, still lauging over something that one of them had said. Bryan stopped in front of Jess and hugged her. Rich looked at me and smiled awkwardly and I returned the smile as best as I could.
         "Still no Katie?" asked Bryan as the bus pulled up.
         "No," replied Jess. "She won't answer her phone either."
         We all three climbed onto the bus and the door swung shut behind us. Jess and I climbed into a seat together, and the bus was so packed today that Bryan and Rich had to stand up in the aisle.
         I slept on the ride to school. I hadn't gotten any sleep at all last night. I was too busy thinking of Cody, and Adam, and Jake. My life seemed to be right on track, and everything was going great. . . then the headaches started at about the same time that I met Adam, and Cody walks baack into my life, and Jake goes and slits his own wrists! I had cried myself to sleep at two o' clock in the morning. Just three and a half hours before my alarm clock is set to go off.
         And then there were the headaches. What were they? I had figured out something though. The nightmare I had had about Adam. . . it was just my mind searching for an answer that wasn't really there. I had wanted to figure out what was happening so bad that when I fell asleep, my mind gave me an answer; even if it wasn't exactly a logical or probable reason. What the hell were they?