“A pen,” he says, his eyes scanning Simon’s brick-red face. “You have a pen?” Simon nods wildly, his hand clawing at his throat. I grab the pen off my desk and try to hand it to Nate, thinking he’s about to do an emergency tracheotomy or something. Nate just stares at me like I have two heads. “An epinephrine pen,” he says, searching for Simon’s backpack. “He’s having an allergic reaction.”
Addy stands and wraps her arms around her body, not saying a word. Bronwyn turns to me, face flushed. “I’m going to find a teacher and call nine-one-one. Stay with him, okay?” She grabs her phone out of Mr. Avery’s drawer and runs into the hallway.
I kneel next to Simon. His eyes are bugging out of his head, his lips are blue, and he’s making horrible choking noises. Nate dumps the entire contents of Simon’s backpack on the floor and scrabbles through the mess of books, papers, and clothes. “Simon, where do you keep it?” he asks, tearing open the small front compartment and yanking out two regular pens and a set of keys.
Simon’s way past talking, though. I put one sweaty palm on his shoulder, like that’ll do any good. “You’re okay, you’re gonna be okay. We’re gettin’ help.” I can hear my voice slowing, thickening like molasses. My accent always comes out hard when I’m stressed. I turn to Nate and ask, “You sure he’s not chokin’ on somethin’?” Maybe he needs the Heimlich maneuver, not a freaking medical pen.
Nate ignores me, tossing Simon’s empty backpack aside. “Fuck!” he yells, slamming a fist on the floor. “Do you keep it on you, Simon? Simon!” Simon’s eyes roll back in his head as Nate digs around in Simon’s pockets. But he doesn’t find anything except a wrinkled Kleenex.
Sirens blare in the distance as Mr. Avery and two other teachers race in with Bronwyn trailing behind them on her phone. “We can’t find his EpiPen,” Nate says tersely, gesturing to the pile of Simon’s things.
Mr. Avery stares at Simon in slack-jawed horror for a second, then turns to me. “Cooper, the nurse’s office has EpiPens. They should be labeled in plain sight. Hurry!”
I run into the hallway, hearing footsteps behind me that fade as I quickly reach the back stairwell and yank the door open. I take the stairs three at a time until I’m on the first floor, and weave through a few straggling students until I get to the nurse’s office. The door’s ajar, but nobody’s there.
It’s a cramped little space with the exam table up against the windows and a big gray storage cabinet looming to my left. I scan the room, my eyes landing on two wall-mounted white boxes with red block lettering. One reads emergency defibrillator, the other EMERGENCY EPINEPHRINE. I fumble at the latch on the second one and pull it open.
There’s nothing inside.
I open the other box, which has a plastic device with a picture of a heart. I’m pretty sure that’s not it, so I start rummaging through the gray storage cabinet, pulling out boxes of bandages and aspirin. I don’t see anything that looks like a pen.
“Cooper, did you find them?” Ms. Grayson, one of the teachers who’d entered the lab with Mr. Avery and Bronwyn, barrels into the room. She’s panting hard and clutching her side.
I gesture toward the empty wall-mounted box. “They should be there, right? But they’re not.”
“Check the supply cabinet,” Ms. Grayson says, ignoring the Band-Aid boxes scattered across the floor that prove I’ve already tried. Another teacher joins us, and we tear the office apart as the sound of sirens gets closer. When we’ve opened the last cabinet, Ms. Grayson wipes a trickle of sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. “Cooper, let Mr. Avery know we haven’t found anything yet. Mr. Contos and I will keep looking.”
I get to Mr. Avery’s lab the same time the paramedics do. There are three of them in navy uniforms, two pushing a long white stretcher, one racing ahead to clear the small crowd that’s gathered around the door. I wait until they’re all inside and slip in behind them. Mr. Avery’s slumped next to the chalkboard, his yellow dress shirt untucked. “We couldn’t find the pens,” I tell him.
He runs a shaking hand through his thin white hair as one of the paramedics stabs Simon with a syringe and the other two lift him onto the stretcher. “God help that boy,” he whispers. More to himself than to me, I think.
Addy’s standing off to the side by herself, tears rolling down her cheeks. I cross over to her and put an arm around her shoulders as the paramedics maneuver Simon’s stretcher into the hallway. “Can you come along?” one asks Mr. Avery. He nods and follows, leaving the room empty except for a few shell-shocked teachers and the four of us who started detention with Simon.
Barely fifteen minutes ago, by my guess, but it feels like hours.
“Is he okay now?” Addy asks in a strangled voice. Bronwyn clasps her phone between her palms like she’s using it to pray. Nate stands with his hands on his hips, staring at the door as more teachers and students start trickling inside.
“I’m gonna go out on a limb and say no,” he says.
Chapter Two
Addy
Monday, September 24, 3:25 p.m.
Bronwyn, Nate, and Cooper are all talking to the teachers, but I can’t. I need Jake. I pull my phone out of my bag to text him but my hands are shaking too bad. So I call instead.
“Baby?” He picks up on the second ring, sounding surprised. We’re not big callers. None of our friends are. Sometimes when I’m with Jake and his phone rings, he holds it up and jokes, “What does ‘incoming call’ mean?” It’s usually his mom.
“Jake” is all I can get out before I start bawling. Cooper’s arm is still around my shoulders, and it’s the only thing keeping me up. I’m crying too hard to talk, and Cooper takes the phone from me.
“Hey, man. ’S Cooper,” he says, his accent thicker than normal. “Where you at?” He listens for a few seconds. “Can you meet us outside? There’s been … Somethin’ happened. Addy’s real upset. Naw, she’s fine, but … Simon Kelleher got hurt bad in detention. Ambulance took him an’ we dunno if he’s gon’ be okay.” Cooper’s words melt into one another like ice cream, and I can hardly understand him.
Bronwyn turns to the closest teacher, Ms. Grayson. “Should we stay? Do you need us?”
Ms. Grayson’s hands flutter around her throat. “Goodness, I don’t suppose so. You told the paramedics everything? Simon … took a drink of water and collapsed?” Bronwyn and Cooper both nod. “It’s so strange. He has a peanut allergy, of course, but … you’re sure he didn’t eat anything?”
Cooper gives me my phone and runs a hand through his neatly cropped sandy hair. “I don’t think so. He just drank a cup of water an’ fell over.”
“Maybe it was something he had with lunch,” Ms. Grayson says. “It’s possible he had a delayed reaction.” She looks around the room, her eyes settling on Simon’s discarded cup on the floor. “I suppose we should put this aside,” she says, brushing past Bronwyn to pick it up. “Somebody might want to look at it.”
“I want to go,” I burst out, swiping at the tears on my cheeks. I can’t stand being in this room another second.
“Okay if I help her?” Cooper asks, and Ms. Grayson nods. “Should I come back?”
“No, that’s all right, Cooper. I’m sure they’ll call you if they need you. Go home and try to get back to normal. Simon’s in good hands now.” She leans in a little closer, her tone softening. “I am so sorry. That must have been awful.”
She’s mostly looking at Cooper, though. There’s not a female teacher at Bayview who can resist his all-American charm.
Cooper keeps an arm around me on the way out. It’s nice. I don’t have brothers, but if I did, I imagine this is how they’d prop you up when you felt sick. Jake wouldn’t like most of his friends being this close to me, but Cooper’s fine. He’s a gentleman. I lean into him as we pass posters for last week’s homecoming dance that haven’t been taken down yet. Cooper pushes the front door open, and there, thank God, is Jake.