Collide by Megan Hart Page B

Or, God forbid, the flu? You should take that…what’s that stuff called, your cousin told me about it. Oscillating something. Like a fan.”
    She meant oscillium. “I’m okay. What’s first?”
    She didn’t follow up with that, and I paused again. My mom never just let something go. If she even had a hint that there might be something wrong with me, she shook it to death like a puppy with a stray sock.
    “You have all the ingredients?”
    “Yep.”
    “Shortening?” My mom sounded suspicious. “Eggs?”
    “Yes, Mother.”
    “Because, Emmaline, you know you can’t make cookies without eggs.”
    As once I’d tried. “You’ll never let me forget that, will you?”
    “Never,” my mom said. I heard the smile in her voice. I heard the love.
    I sniffled but put my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone so she wouldn’t hear. I didn’t want my mom to worry about me. Then again, I didn’t want her to not worry about me, either.
    She walked me through the measuring and mixing as she kept me up-to-date with family gossip and stories about our neighbors. Her neighbors now, no longer mine. She told me about running into old school friends I hadn’t even spoken to in years aside from the casual Connex wall post.
    “You spend more time with my old friends than I do,” I told her as I finished scooping the last blob of dough onto a baking stone and slid it into my embarrassingly clean oven. I licked the spoon.
    “You’ll get salmonella,” my mother warned.
    “How did you know?”
    “I know you, Emmaline. I’m your mother. Oh, I have to go! My show’s about to come on. Bye, Emm. Love you.”
    She hung up before I could even ask her what show she meant. The fact I had no idea proved all the more how much had changed since I’d left home. And that was a good thing, I reminded myself as I disconnected the call and set the timer on the oven. The last few months between my decision to take the job in Harrisburg and move out on my own and the day I’d moved had been horrible.
    Most mothers and daughters I knew had weathered their share of arguments. Daughters had to grow away from their moms. To go to school. Move out. Become women. I’d become a woman under my mom’s watchful, too-protective eye, and had chafed at it even as I knew I had no choice. When my doctor had declared me seizure-free for more than a year and thus able to drive, instead of getting better, my mom’s concerns had grown worse. I didn’t blame her for them. I understood why she was so nervous. I’d been effectively disabled by the injury to my brain, and there was no cure. Only treatment. Only fingers crossed and prayers said. Only hope.
    Even so, it had been unbearable living at home for those few months after I accepted the new job and before I was able to settle on and move into my house. She’d hovered, scolded and worried me nearly to madness. We’d fought harder and longer than we ever had during my adolescence. There’d been more than one night when I went to bed fuming and woke still angry, and I’m sure she felt the same way. She was afraid to let me go, and I was afraid of never being able to stand on my own. Now, here in the house I could only afford because of all the years I’d lived rent-free when my friends had been paying out to landlords, I wanted to call my mom back and tell her how sorry I was for being so snotty every time she’d worried about me.
    Instead, I licked cookie dough straight off the spoon and dared salmonella to find me. It tasted extra good for being licked in defiance of everything my mom had ever told me, and because I knew I really shouldn’t eat cookie dough when my pants were already a little too snug. I was a rebel with a spoon.
    By the time the cookies finished baking my kitchen smelled gorgeous and my stomach felt a little queasy. I sipped at some ginger ale and laid the cookies out on a pretty plate I’d picked up at the Salvation Army for a dime. It had roses on it and gold around the rim,