Free Levitating Las Vegas by Jennifer Echols Page B

tonight?”
    Elijah let a bitter puff of laughter escape. He and Shane and Rob worked second shift, which moved their bedtimes and mealtimes a few hours later. Normally Elijah didn’t mind making Tuna Helper for the three of them at 11 p.m. He was used to cooking dinner for himself because his mom had always worked at night when he was a kid.
    However, amid the torture of going crazy, cooking was the furthest thing from his mind. Shane watching the Tuna Helper on the stove would not alleviate the delusion that Elijah could read people’s minds. But Shane was only trying to help. Elijah could sense that from across the room by reading his mind . Jesus!
    “No thanks,” Elijah said. “I’ll do it, unless you’re afraid I might stab somebody with my serving fork. Besides, it’s mostly made.” He slammed the drawer shut and opened the next one, which was full of knives. There was no reason he would have dropped one of his pills in the knife drawer during the past four years. He dumped the knives onto the counter anyway with a metallic crash and gingerly scooted them around, looking for his gold pill.
    He jumped. As several knives flew through the air and clattered onto the counter, he realized what had startled him. His phone was ringing in his back pocket.
    Shane was thinking he should take Elijah to the emergency room.
    “Don’t you dare!” Elijah yelled over his ringing phone.
    Shane looked up at Elijah in surprise.
    “I know what you’re thinking.” Elijah cringed. He’d just admitted his delusion to Shane. Maybe it would pass for a figure of speech. “I have a doctor. I’ve been diagnosed. All I need is my medicine. If you take me to the hospital, they’re liable to lock me up in a mental institution.”
    Shane was thinking that might be for the best.
    Elijah didn’t answer this time. Repeated verbal protestations of his friend’s imagined thoughts would only land him in the loony bin sooner. He pulled his phone from his pocket, glanced at the screen, and clicked it on. “Hi, Mom. How’s Key West?”
    “Don’t you hi Mom me,” she growled. “You were at the casino pharmacy tonight.”
    “I was,” he acknowledged.
    “And at noon,” she said. “And this morning. And last night. You’ve been in there so many times that they just called me on vacation to ask me if you’re having a flare-up.”
    “Of course I’m having a flare-up.” Suddenly self-conscious, he glanced down the hall to make sure Rob’s bedroom door was still shut. He lowered his voice. “The pharmacy’s out of my medicine. They’re expecting a shipment.”
    “Then you just pipe down and wait for the shipment,” his mom seethed. “Let them call you when it comes in. Pitching fits all over the casino won’t get it there any faster.”
    “I haven’t been pitching fits all over the—” He stopped when Shane’s eyebrows went up. Elijah had raised his voice again.
    “You can’t let the whole casino know you have MAD,” his mom insisted. “What are you trying to do, get me fired and get yourself trapped at the Res? I struggled to get out of the Res. You never lived there. You don’t know how good you have it. Blah blah blah Res blah blah blah.”
    As always, Elijah tuned out when his mom brought up the reservation. He was so ignorant of the customs of her Native American family that these threats never had the effect he thought his mom intended. But they’d certainly had the effect of driving him out of her house the second he graduated from high school four years ago.
    “Res Res Res blah blah blah,” she went on. “And can’t I leave town for a vacation without you stirring up trouble?”
    Elijah did feel bad about this. It was unfortunate his medicine had gone missing during his mom’s trip, and worse that the pharmacy had disturbed her. But his MAD was hereditary, and if his mom didn’t want a crazy son, she shouldn’t have hooked up with his crazy dad. Instead of mentioning this, he repeated, “How’s Key