Last week, she snuck into the school library during lunch and perused the psychology section, searching for the name of her disease, her affliction, or this possible curse. She found herself distracted by the pictures, the words meshing together into a giant bowl of alphabet soup. Her fingers dug into her hair, loose pieces covering her face, the dull ache taking her off guard, as if it recognized the sudden act of mutiny, and had to act quickly to save its own skin.

One day she would just give up, walk to her father’s tool bench, place a drill to her temple and listen to it scream in pain, begging for mercy or a quicker, less messy death. Moisture dripped from the corners of her eyes onto her pillow. Whether they were tears or just escaping liquid, Spencer wasn’t sure. The bug began to shift in her brain, forcing the pain and hurt to rise to the surface like a hand squeezing a waterlogged sponge. Her eyeballs stared straight ahead at the insides of her eyelids, the image of the lake morphing into her uncle’s cabin in Tahoe the summer before freshman year, the porch swing swaying in the breeze, the pine trees casting large fragmented shadows across the sleek rooftops.

Her uncle had pulled away in his truck, on route to the store to pick up more eggs for their breakfast. The kitchen was a mess, she and Ashley having attempted to make pancakes, but the bag of flour ripped and a large pile of snow white powder cascaded down onto the linoleum floor. She had laughed hysterically at the mess Ashley had made, only to have her laughter cut short by Ashley’s lips, kissing her anxiously as they sat on their knees and hands on all fours across from each other, the flour covering their clothing and resting within their hair.

Spencer’s hand had slipped on the flour, ramming her teeth into Ashley’s lip. Blood began to trickle down her lip and onto her chin, mixing with the faint white powder that lay in tiny patches upon her chin. Spencer had leaned forward and kissed the blood off her lip, only to pull back into the center of Ashley’s stare, her brown eyes wide with surprise. Spencer mouth tasted of copper as she swallowed Ashley’s blood; the saliva, oxygen, and hemoglobin mix sliding down her esophagus.
A drop of blood had landed in the flour, both girls staring down at it: a tiny speck, lost within the massive clumps of flour. They sat on upright on their knees in the flour; time ticking past, lost forever within space.