These Deadly Games(30)
“Do you need some water?” Akira asked. Matty waved her off, shaking his head. But his face was going red.
“I’ll get you some,” I said, slamming my laptop shut. I had to get away. An0nym0us1 was everywhere. Everywhere.
I bolted upstairs to the kitchen. Dots the color of mud blinked into my vision, blinding me, and I gripped the edge of the granite counter. My heart raced so fast I thought my rib cage might burst. Caelyn’s kidnapper was watching, always watching, in reality and in MortalDusk. They didn’t just want me to play their twisted game. They wanted to scare me. To torment me.
Akira pounded upstairs, looking distraught. “Are you getting that water or what?” she asked, then noticed my expression. “Are you okay?” She knew I had panic attacks every so often, sometimes for no reason at all. So if I ever slipped away, she’d come check on me. Last time it happened, she lay next to me on the carpet, letting me grip her hand even though I was crushing it, waiting out the waves of tremors that racked my body. Sort of like when I noticed she wasn’t eating more than an apple each day at school, how her face went gaunt and her eyes dimmed, how she shivered in warm rooms and clutched at nearby surfaces when she stood, dizzy, unfocused. I’d convinced her to tell her parents, held her hand as she did, told her she was safe and wasn’t alone every day. We secretly soothed each other’s pain when it seemed nobody else would understand.
But this time, she hadn’t come upstairs for me. Without waiting for a reply, Akira spun and grabbed a glass from the cabinet. “Something’s wrong with Matty.” My blood ran cold as she filled the glass at the sink. I followed her back downstairs. Matty was hunched over, coughing into his hands, face beet red, the game forgotten. Randall’s and Matty’s laptops were shut—the fastest way to end the livestream. Akira passed him the glass. He took it but couldn’t stop coughing long enough to take a sip, and water sloshed over the edge. As she took it back, Zoey and I exchanged a worried look.
“Are you choking on something?” I asked, frenzied, ready to leap into position for the Heimlich maneuver, like Mom taught me.
“No…” he croaked, then kept hacking. Shaking his head, he jabbed a finger toward his backpack. That’s when I noticed the round, reddish bulge on the back of his hand. There were two on the back of his neck, too. Were those hives?
“Oh, God. His EpiPen. He needs his EpiPen.” I dived at his backpack and searched inside for the bright orange case.
Randall gripped Matty’s shoulder. “He’s having an allergic reaction?”
“I think so,” I said.
“But from what?” asked Akira.
“The brownies?” Zoey pointed to the half-eaten tray.
I froze, and my chest tightened again. “No, that’s impossible. I baked them myself … there were no nuts in the recipe…”
“Are you sure?” Zoey asked.
“Yes!” I kept digging through Matty’s backpack with shaking fingers. “We don’t even have nuts in the house.” Mom kept the house nut-free since Matty came over all the time, much to Caelyn’s chagrin—whenever she went to Deja’s or Suki’s houses, she gorged on Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
The veins in Matty’s neck bulged as he wheezed between coughing fits, gasping for air. The EpiPen would shut down his allergic response, reducing the swelling and relaxing the muscles that were keeping his lungs closed. One time, Matty’s mothers corralled us all in their living room so Mom could teach us how to use it—remove the cap, place the tip against his thigh, swing, and push it in, and it’d auto-inject. It was supposed to be so easy, Matty could do it himself.
But it could only be easy if you could find the damn thing.
I frantically fished through each compartment. “I can’t find it. Matty, are you sure it’s in here?”
He managed a nod.
“I’m calling an ambulance.” I grabbed my phone, dialed 911, and held it to my ear, biting the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted metal.
Randall raced over and turned the backpack upside down, shaking it vigorously. Notebooks, pens, pencils, gum, and var ious school supplies went flying everywhere, but there was no sign of the orange case. “Where the hell is it?”
Akira knelt at Matty’s side, rambling reassurances, but Zoey stood back, cheeks shining with tears of fear.
Dylan perched on the edge of the couch, gripping his mouth and staring at his laptop. “Yup,” he said suddenly, “anaphylaxis can set in within three to thirty minutes.”
Why didn’t I hear ringing? I glanced at my phone screen again. It wouldn’t connect the call, and after another moment, it gave up and went back to the home screen. “My phone … something’s wrong with my phone. Someone call 911!”
Randall dug out his phone and placed the call. “Yeah, hi, we’re at…” He looked to me.
“Five-five-two Radcliffe Drive,” I said. Matty had his head between his knees now, violently coughing and clutching his throat.
Randall repeated my address. “We need an ambulance, fast. My friend’s having an allergic reaction. He can’t breathe!”
Why could Randall’s call connect when mine couldn’t? I was pretty sure we had the same service provider, and I never had signal problems at home. I checked the screen—yep, full bars. So why couldn’t I call 911?