"Slow down there, cowboy," Sarah said with a little laugh, bare feet padding softly across the kitchen tiles as she slid into the chair next to mine. "The food's not going anywhere."
She leaned in close, and I caught a wave of her shampoo—something fruity, peach maybe, with this lazy sweetness that somehow made my brain glitch for a second. My senses were still all out of whack from whatever the hell happened yesterday afternoon with my teacher and Madison, and everything felt… sharper. Louder. Closer.
Then her finger was under my chin, tilting my face up gently like she was checking if I'd caught a fever.
"You look different," she said, squinting a little. "More… alive. Like you actually slept instead of pulling one of your 'up till 4 AM doing god-knows-what' routines."
