Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 146548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 733(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 733(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Farrow only smiles more and flips a page in the comic. “Let’s go, wolf scout, show me how great you are at quizzing me.”
I meant to give him something, and this is a better time than never. I straighten the deck of flashcards and put them down. I capture more of his attention when I reach for my backpack with my good arm.
I already stressed the fuck out of my shoulder muscle earlier today. I tried to lift a stack of medical texts (study prep material), and now my collarbone thumps like stereo bass is blasting inside the bone.
Anyway, I’m not as concerned about my injury. Not lately. I’m more worried about Farrow after the rooftop. I’ve seen him hyper-vigilant before but never unresponsive and spaced out, and I knew it was serious.
We talked about it for a long time the past few days. Inside our steaming bathroom after a shower, he was towel-drying his bleach-white hair, the roots recently dyed, and I was brushing my teeth at the sink. And he called them intrusive memories.
“It’s happened before,” Farrow said. “When I was five and six.”
I spit in the sink and rinsed my mouth a couple times, the mirror fogged. So I looked over my shoulder multiple times, but he was relaxed, tying his towel around his waist. I listened carefully to him.
And he explained, “After my mom died, I only had one memory of her.”
I remembered. “You heard her calling your name.” I put my toothbrush in the mirror’s cabinet, and then I turned around, my gray towel tied on my waist too. And I neared my boyfriend and scraped my wet hair back with my fingers.
Farrow nodded, looking me over with a small smile. He leaned a shoulder on the misted shower door and reached out for my hand.
I drew closer before I grabbed hold. Our pulses slowing in the fucking heat, and there was comfort passing between us. Some kind of solace in the steam, and he looked at ease. I know, I know—Farrow Keene is always at ease, but more so than he has been in recent days.
He whispered, “I’d hear my mom saying my name at random times. I wasn’t thinking of the memory, but it’d surface involuntarily. It’s more of a sensory thing, and my father had his colleague speak to me. I was a kid, so I was confused.” Farrow held my gaze. “But he told me to focus on whether there could be a trigger. A time of day, a feeling, a sound.”
“Was there one?” I asked.
“Yeah.” His eyes trailed over my cheekbones. “A bed.”
Farrow explained that every time he’d crawl into his single-bed as a kid and pull the covers up to his chin, he’d hear his mom say his name. And instead of avoiding the bed, he returned to it every night. “I tried to ground myself to something else. Another sound, another feeling, and after a while, the memory fell back.”
It made more sense why he immediately told me, “it’s the rain,” on the roof. He was identifying the trigger, and he wasn’t panicked. He’s been mostly angry that it’s happening at all.
So recently, my aim is to take more stress off him. Make his days lighter and better. In any way.
Now that I have my backpack in front of me, I unzip the main section. Farrow is watching from the yellow beanbag with escalating interest.
He scrutinizes the tower of flashcards I put on the coffee table. “Quitting early isn’t going to win you high marks,” he tells me, ditching the comic and reaching backwards for a hacky sack from a bin.
“This is called a fucking break,” I tell him.
“A break,” he repeats. “That doesn’t sound like the Wolf Scout way.” He tosses the blue hacky sack, and I watch his fingers wrap around the crocheted ball. He stares into me. “I must’ve really loosened those laces…” he trails off as I pull out a gallon-sized baggie from my backpack.
Farrow crunches up to me, shoulder-level, and he takes the baggie from my hands. Inspecting the contents through the clear plastic. His brows keep rising and rising at me like what did you do?
“This is for the first day,” I explain, my elbow on his knee and hand on his thigh. “I have another one for the second day.”
Step 3 is a two-day exam. The first day is seven hours, and the second day is nine hours. Only a forty-five minute break during each day.
It’s brutal—or so I’ve read—even if it’s the easiest of all the step exams.
Each baggie contains two protein bars, crackers, mixed nuts, grapes, a whole apple, and two turkey sandwiches.
“It’s important you’re not hungry during the exam since it’s long,” I tell him. “At least that’s what people say on the sdn forums.”
His smile slowly expands wider and wider, overtaking the whole damn room. He’s not saying anything, and I don’t know. It makes me fucking nervous.