Alexis:Late November
Golden light glittered across the Ionian Sea as the sun set in Corfu.
The late November breeze blew through the open French doors with a slight chill, and male voices laughed raucously somewhere in the house. I was lying on my bed.
I hadn’t felt like laughing since I’d received the terrifying gift two months ago.
I can’t believe I go back to that hell tomorrow.
I groaned in frustration because time was passing with disturbing quickness.
Life was a blur of torturous monotony.
Mostly because I was a coward and had opted out of attending the symposia for the last two months.
Every week I starved, suffered from dehydration, cried while running the now freezing circuit, wished I could shower because I felt grimy, and studied until I wanted to die.
This might be worse than high school. Maybe.
Jessica and Tim-Tom had been their own special breed of torment.
Now—stretched out across my bed, graphing the Riemann Hypothesis—I aggressively popped a grape into my mouth.
Classical music played on the radio, tilted against my pillow.
I’d been trying to relax all weekend, but my thoughts kept getting away from me.
One hour of running? One hour of doing push-ups? A one-hour test?
Augustus’s disconcerting threat still haunted me weeks later.
Over the last two months, the professor had given no indication of what he’d meant while he’d carried me over his shoulder like a barbarian.
I rubbed my neck and thigh where his grip had bruised.
Strange nausea rolled low in my stomach, and I breathed deeply through my nose as I waited for it to pass.
Dark butterflies fluttered.
Everything about the man confused me.
He’d made a point of snarling with disgust every time my name was read off first after tests and shooting me a poisonous glare. If looks could kill, I’d be six feet under.
Shouldn’t a professor favor the top student?
The truth of my existence was becoming depressingly obvious: People didn’t like me.
There was something off about me.
I was defective.
Drapes fluttered as wind gusted, and shadows elongated with the setting sun, so I pulled up the hood of my oversize emotional support sweatshirt.
Nyx snored and shifted underneath it.
Someone had left the black garment on the chair in my room weeks ago, right after the box incident, and since the material was ridiculously soft (the nicest thing I’d ever felt or worn), it was now mine.
The skull on the front—which was sticking up its middle finger—had grown on me.
