“No, but they opened an investigation.”
I turned off the showerhead and rung out my hair. “Shit, I forgot a towel. Can you grab me one?”
“Yeah, one second,” Jake said, and I waited naked as the cold slowly crept over my wet body. Moments later, Jake pushed a towel through the opening of the curtain. “Thanks.” I wrapped the towel around me and opened my curtain. Jake was already in his boxers and standing in front of the mirror, squeezing toothpaste over his toothbrush.
I cocked my head over to the entrance of the bathroom to see Ethan standing against the wall. As soon as our eyes met, he turned his head away and adjusted his stance.
Since last year, security presence doubled around campus. A security guard was assigned to each wing, Ethan was ours, and the guards rotated between the mess hall and the community bathroom. I tightened the towel around me and grabbed my toothbrush from the sink. “And I have to wear the looney bin clothes until I can get new everything,” I added, eyeing the tasteless clothes waiting for me on the counter. My old ones, including my “Cute but Psycho” shirt, had been ruined in blood.
Jake spat a mouthful of toothpaste. “Oh, this just keeps getting better and better.”
“Yeah, you should see the underwear they gave me, too.”
He rinsed off his toothbrush before tapping it over the edge of the sink. “I don’t know why you care. It’s not like you’ll let anyone see your knickers, anyway.”
Though I couldn’t see, I felt Ethan’s eyes on me again. I turned my head, and my eyes met his piercing-blue, narrowed eyes. The way he treated me like a child annoyed me, but then he looked at me like this, and I figured screwing with his head a little would help with the day I had.
The few stragglers emptied as the steam gradually lifted. We had half the students here during the summer, and it wouldn’t be long before the community bathroom crowded again, and I would have to start taking my showers in the morning.
“Alright, I’ll see you in the AM.” Jake tousled his blonde hair and high-tailed out as I finished brushing my teeth.
It was just Ethan and me. Turning to face him again, he tensed against the wall; eyes fixed on me, hands clutched to his belt. He wanted to turn away, struggle carved in his features, but a more powerful force kept his eyes trained on me.
I released my towel and it dropped to my feet.
Ethan’s jaw clenched behind his light red stubble, and his eyes scanned up and down my naked body. The rest of him stayed glued against the wall. The thick air swirled around us as we both breathed deep, staring at one another and chests rising in sync.
Finally, a look from him I’d been waiting for—admiration and appreciation.
“Get dressed, Jett,” he finally said from the throat, clearing it afterward. “Please.”
“I never said thank you,” I picked the towel off the floor and towel-dried my hair, “but I’m tired of you treating me like a kid.”
He turned his head away. “Then stop acting like one.”
“Do I look like a child to you?”
“Don’t do this,” he warned.
“No, look at me,” I forced out with a finger pointed at my chest. Ethan dropped his head momentarily. My heart plummeted as I waited, begging to be looked at again—waiting to be appreciated again. The same way Ollie did. “Do I look like a child to you?”
Ethan lifted his head, and his eyes soaked me in as the rest of his face fell. “No, Mia, you’re definitely not a child.”
He slapped the wall behind him with his palm before walking out.
Ollie’s dorm looked like every other room now. It no longer screamed “Ollie” and now had a desk, a lifted bed, and a rolling cart—prepared for the next prisoner, which was me. My notebook sat on the desk, and I took a seat before opening it. Blank pages waited to be filled. It didn’t take long before ink colored an entire page before I moved on to the next. The day became my muse, writing about everything between the sick surprise in my room to Ethan’s gaze in the bathroom to Ollie.
My thoughts always ended with Ollie.
That night, my own screams woke me. Ethan never showed. I kicked off my covers and peeled off my sweat-drenched looney bin sweater clinging to my body and tried to catch my breath.
The days that followed were the same, Ethan avoiding me during the day, and by nightfall, the fear of a terror kept me awake. Some nights I cried myself back to sleep, and some nights, I didn’t go back to sleep at all.
“You still having nightmares?” Bria asked as we sat around the circle during WASA—Women Against Sexual Abuse. We held our support group in the group therapy room before dinner on Thursdays. During the summer, we only had one other girl attend, but I was sure once the semester officially started in just a week, more would trickle in.
“Unfortunately,” I sighed, crossing my legs in front of me. We never sat in the chairs, always took it to the floors. It seemed less official that way. “And it’s like I’m back pedaling because I don’t even know what they’re about. My slate wipes clean every time I wake up.”
“You might have a sleeping disorder. Like sleep apnea, which can prevent you from remembering.” Tyler shrugged.
