Nineteen.

<< Hey I was wondering if we could talk. Are you free?

>> No not today I’m sorry

I was afraid of that. I sighed and turned my phone over in my hands. Damnit…

<< It’s important

>> How important?

Oh… I hadn’t expected that.

<< It would mean a lot to me if we could talk face to face

>> Come over in an hour but you can’t stay long

A No Day had never been overturned so quickly and so easily. Maybe things were getting better? But I was asking the wrong questions. I was too optimistic.

“Hey, uh, is Madison here?”

I had never met the woman who answered the door. She was short and young and beautiful in an adult way. Her hair was fluffy and short, her face was round and warm, and her clothes were tight and on point. Not a hair was out of place.

“You must be Jamie! It’s soooo nice to finally meet you! I’m Bethany, Madison’s mom.”

…well, that’s where Madison gets her personality.

“It’s nice to meet you too,” I said with a courtesy smile. How was she a mom? She must have had Madison when she was sixteen or seventeen. Then I noticed, all of a sudden, that I had no idea what her parents looked like before I met them! They had no pictures up on their walls, just decorations and art hangings.

“Well come in, come in. I didn’t know we were expecting you. Would you like some water? We have juice?”

“No, I’m okay, thank you.” I followed her into the house. Madison wasn’t in the living room.

“She’s upstairs,” her mom told me. “You can go on up if you’d like.”

I’d never been upstairs before. I’d never been in Madison’s room before. I didn’t know what to expect, but I’d braced myself all the same. After all, if she liked to act like a child…

But her bedroom was oddly ordinary. The walls were a pale eggshell, lined with only few posters, drawings, and photographs. She had high shelves - too high for her to reach, I was sure - with dolls and plastic cases that looked older than Madison herself. Her dark-stained oak dresser matched perfectly with her vanity table on the other wall, down to the handles. And on the far wall, under a window with drawn purple curtains, sat a thick, oak bed frame donned in floral sheets and a comforter twice the size of the bed itself. The blanket was so thick, so huge, that I hadn’t even noticed Madison tucked under it until I walked around the room.

“Hey,” I said, careful not to let the sound of my voice hurt the simple quiet of the room.

“Hi,” she said, and sat up. She was wearing the same pajamas from Monday, the yellow ones with the sunshine lyric. She was also wearing the same gray jacket. The curls in her hair had obviously fallen out in her sleep and she looked paler than usual. Worse yet, her eyes were quiet. She didn’t look at me with those eyes; they only went up as far as my nose, or my lips, and then back down to her bedsheets.

“You alright?” I asked.

She shot me a look of frustration, or annoyance, or something… something I remembered from before Christmas.

“Don’t worry?” I guessed.

She nodded. I took a seat next to her on the bed and immediately realized what a mistake it was. I had never in my life sat on anything so comfortable. There was no way I could ever bring myself to leave this bed.

“You needed to talk about something?” she asked me. Her words sounded heavy, like she was half-asleep. I was starting to think that maybe my coming here was a mistake…

“Is this what you do on days when you don’t want to hang out? Just stay in bed?”

She was quiet.

“I mean, I can see why. It’s like a cloud had a baby with morphine.”

“Did you need something?” she asked again.

Fine.

“Come over,” I demanded. “Let’s get out of here. We can go to Walmart.”

“I can’t today.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t.”

“Madison.”

She put her head back down on the pillow and I put my forehead in my hands. Why was she so irritating today?

“You always do this. You say no to things for no reason. But things can’t get better if you just stay in your room all day.”

“Leave me alone,” she said under her breath, just loud enough for me to hear.

“Why won’t you listen to me? Are you afraid I’m right?”

She turned away from me.

“Madison!” I put my hand on her arm, just below her shoulder, and like a crack of thunder, she kicked me straight out of her bed and onto the floor. I hit the ground on my elbow, but the carpet was soft and gentle. When I looked up again, she was peering over the edge of the bed, down at me, and water filled up the underside of her eyes. In a flurry of blankets, she disappeared into them.

What. The. Fuck.

“Leave me alone,” she repeated, but I could hear the regret in her words. I could hear her crying…

I got up from the carpet and made my way onto the bed once again, careful to avoid her, wherever she was. When I finally found a safe place I could lay down without disrupting any suspicious lumps of blankets, I put my head on one of her pillows. I swear, if I wasn’t so worried in that moment, I could have fallen asleep at the snap of fingers.

“I’m sorry I did that,” I said quietly, but hopefully loud enough that she could hear me. Honestly, I didn’t think my voice would go any louder. I was dizzy and my shoulders ached. How could I still understand so little about Madison Bell, after all this time?

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” I went on. “I won’t do it again. But I’m not leaving either. I’m going to stay all weekend if I have to, until you’re over this… whatever this is. Until you feel better.”

She didn’t say anything back. To me, that was a resigned acceptance.

“I’m not going anywhere.”