The Sky is Everywhere

Chapter Sixteen

It's only another five or ten minutes before Nurse Barrett wakes up, and I make sure I'm curled up on the bed, pretending to be asleep, when she comes out of her office. Her movements sound unsteady, lurching, and I'm reminded of how groggy and disoriented Taffy usually is the morning after taking these pills. I'll have to mimic that when I pretend to wake up.

But I won't be doing that for a while. I don't know how much time I spent in Records, but Nurse Barrett thinks I took one whole pill, which should put me out for four hours. It doesn't have to be exact, but she will definitely notice if I'm up an hour or two before I should be.

I have to play this next part very carefully.

If Nurse Barrett has ever taken those pills before, she will recognise the after-effects of them and know that something is wrong. If that's the case, if she suspects that she has been drugged, then I am the only suspect, the only person in a position to carry this out. And if she thinks that, it is absolutely imperative that I make a good show of being drugged too. That's the only thing that will save me if she is suspicious – she can't think I'm responsible for drugging her if I'm drugged too, right?

If she has never taken the pills, then I'm hoping she'll just think she fell asleep.

She mutters something under her breath, and I can tell that she's close to me. I keep my whole body limp and relaxed, my breathing even, which isn't easy when everything inside me is drawn as tense and tight as a wire.

I half-expect her to say my name or shake my shoulder, testing me to see if I really am asleep, but luck is smiling on me. The nurse's footsteps move away from me, back into her office, and I hear a kettle boiling.

It takes everything I have not to breathe a sigh of relief.

I've got away with it, haven't I?

If Nurse Barrett thinks, even for a second, that she was drugged, she wouldn't be making herself another coffee as if nothing had happened.

Unless she's trying to lull me into a false sense of security?

That's a definite possibility, and so I stay very quiet and very still, concentrating on deep, even breathing, while in my head I try to count off each minute. I don't think I can have spent more than forty minutes in Records, which means I have to pretend to be asleep for at least another three hours.

It's going to be a very long wait.

I lie there for another three and a half hours in the end, deciding it's better to be safe than sorry. Taffy often has trouble getting up in the morning but it's worse if she's taken the pills, so I can assume Nurse Barrett won't think it's strange if I oversleep a bit.

When I get to the last twenty minutes, my skin feels like it's itching with impatience and frustration. Lying here, unable to move, my brain has been frantically churning, going over and over everything I've learned today, as well as endlessly worrying about everything I haven't learned – I never realised that thinking could be so exhausting.

I want to get out of here.

Finally I'm at the last few minutes, then seconds, and I count them off in my head, sternly reminding myself that I have to be careful waking up; I can't just jump out of bed like I haven't taken a strong sleeping pill.

Three . . .

Two . . .

One . . .