The Rains That Fell Before Us

012 | Phone Call She Wasn't Ready For

She let it buzz.

Three times. Four. Then it stopped.

Hana and Caiden were both looking at her from across the cafeteria table.

"Mom," she said by way of explanation.

Neither of them said anything.

She picked up her chopsticks and ate something and didn't taste it and stared at the tray in front of her and thought about six months and her mom calling Sora and the doctor's appointment that had apparently happened without her knowing about it. The phone stayed quiet in her bag for exactly four minutes before it buzzed again.

"Just answer it," Hana said quietly.

"I will. Not here."

She finished enough of her lunch that Hana wouldn't say anything about it and when the bell rang she told Caiden she'd see him later and took the long corridor to the bathroom near the gym, the one that was almost always empty during class time. She stood at the sink and ran cold water over her wrists for a second, which was something the journal said she did when she needed to slow down, then looked at herself in the mirror and called her mom back.

It rang once.

"Nora."

"Hey." She kept her voice even. "I saw you called."

"I was just checking in. How's your day going?"

"Sora's back."

Silence on the other end. Long enough to confirm everything.

"Mom."

"Nora, I can explain."

"You called him," she said. Not loud. Not angry yet, just stating it. "You called my ex-boyfriend, the one I broke up with for reasons I was careful enough to write down in detail, and you told him about the deterioration and asked him to come back."

"I was scared." Her mom's voice was tight and thin. "I was so scared and I didn't know what to do and the appointment was bad and I came home and you were just sitting there eating breakfast and reading your journal like everything was fine and I couldn't."

"You couldn't tell me."

"I didn't know how."

Nora leaned against the sink. Outside the bathroom door she could hear the distant noise of the school returning to class, doors and footsteps and someone's bag zipper. She let it settle around her before she spoke.

"I need you to tell me things," she said. "Even when it's hard. Especially when it's hard." She paused. "You know how my system works. You've watched me do it every morning for two years. Leave me a note. Write it in the journal yourself. Put a sticky on my mirror. But don't go around me to someone else because you don't know how to say it."

"I know." Her mom's voice broke on the second word. "I know. I'm sorry."

"I'm not angry," Nora said. And she meant it, mostly. "I understand why you panicked. I just need you to understand that going around me makes it worse. It means I'm walking around with wrong information and I don't know it's wrong."

Her mom was quiet for a moment. "The timeline," she said carefully. "Did Sora tell you."

"Yes."

"Nora, I was going to tell you. I was trying to figure out how."

"Six months," Nora said. She needed to say it out loud. Needed to hear it in her own voice so she could write it down tonight and it wouldn't be abstract. "That's the new number. Six months, maybe less."

"Nora."

"I'm not falling apart," she said. "I just need to say it so I can write it. So tomorrow-me knows and it's not a surprise." She paused. "Okay?"

Her mom was crying quietly on the other end. She could tell from the breathing.

"Okay," her mom said.

"I'll see you at dinner," Nora said. "We can talk more then."

"Okay. I love you."

"I know," Nora said. "I love you too."

She hung up and stood at the sink for a while doing nothing. The fluorescent light above her hummed its single note. The water was still running and she turned it off and dried her hands and looked at herself in the mirror one more time.

She looked like herself. Which she always did. Which she supposed was the thing about this condition, it didn't change how she looked from the outside. She looked completely fine and was going to walk out of this bathroom and go to class and take notes she would use tonight to write an entry that would give tomorrow-Nora enough to stand on.

She had six months.

She was going to make them worth reading about.

She pushed open the bathroom door and walked straight into Sora.

He stepped back immediately. "Sorry. I wasn't following you. I was looking for you, which I know is different, but I wasn't."

She looked at him.

"I need to tell you something," he said. "And I need you to hear it before you decide to walk away again."

She stood in the corridor with her hand still on the bathroom door and looked at him and thought about the journal entry that said walked the other way and thought about the six months that were now sitting in the front of her chest like a stone she was learning to breathe around.

"You have two minutes," she said.

He nodded. "Your mom didn't just call me to check on you," he said. "She asked me to come back. And the reason she asked me to come back is because the doctor told her the deterioration is accelerating. It's not just the timeline that changed. It's the rate."

She stared at him.

"What do you mean the rate," she said.

"The forgetting," he said carefully. "It's going to get faster. Not just the daily reset. Other things. Recognition. Language sometimes. The doctor said it varies but." He stopped. "It's not just six months until the end. It's six months before things get significantly harder."

She stood very still.

The corridor was empty around them. Everyone in class. The school quiet except for a teacher's voice through a door somewhere down the hall.

"My mom knows this," she said.

"Yes."

"And she told you before she told me."

He didn't say anything. Which was its own answer.

She felt something move through her that wasn't quite anger and wasn't quite grief. More like the specific feeling of finding out the floor is lower than you thought it was mid-step.

"I have to go," she said.

"Nora."

She was already walking. She pulled out her phone and her hands were steady, which surprised her, and she opened Caiden's contact and typed four words.

I need you now.

His reply came in eight seconds.

Roof. Side stairwell. Go.