She turned the key, cranked the starter, and pumped the gas until the engine turned over and she could back out of her parking space. If she ran back in and called for help, two horrible things were for sure going to happen. One, she’d definitely run back into that bitch Mrs. Cummings. And, two, it would take much longer for her to get to the orange bottles that held an assortment of pills that had been prescribed for her assortment of problems—including her head—that the accident had left broken.

“Ten minutes, please, brain. Just give me ten minutes to get home.” All her meds were lined up on the dresser she shared with Eileen in their bedroom. The sooner she got home, the sooner she could try to chemically ward off the seizure starting in her head.

Clare took another deep breath and gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make her hands sweat and her knuckles turn white. She could do this, she told herself as she accelerated out of the parking lot and took a right onto the street.

Ten minutes later, her vision blurred by lightning strikes of pain, tears rolled down her cheeks as she pulled the car onto their driveway. Forgetting everything except her need for the cool dark of her room, Clare managed to at least put the car into park before she pulled herself out of the driver’s side door and made her way to the front stoop with her eyes squeezed shut and her temples pressed hard between the heels of her hands.

“Clare?” Eileen’s voice broke through the electric currents pulsing across both hemispheres of her brain. Clare heard the screen door open and felt hands on her upper arm and back guiding her up the stairs and into the house. “Mom!” Eileen shouted, sending a fresh shock wave from Clare’s ear to the base of her skull.

“What’s wrong?” their mom asked from somewhere nearby. Clare kept her eyes squeezed tight.

“Oh! Again? Get her to her room, Eileen. I’ll get some water for her pills.”

As her sister guided her down the short hallway, Clare dragged her hand along the wall to help keep herself steady. Once they were through the bedroom door, Clare dared to open one eye the thinnest of slivers. Light pouring in from their south-facing window made her clasp one hand over both eyes. “The drapes,” she croaked.

Eileen helped lower her onto her bed, and then Clare heard the sound of the plastic drape hooks sliding along their metal runner as her sister pulled the cord until the heavy blackout fabric met in the center of the window and transformed the room into a cocoon of darkness.

“Grab her pills,” her mother said as she entered the room with a glass of cool tap water.

“Which one?” Eileen asked, picking up two bottles to inspect the labels.