Cai’s headlights cut a path through the trees.
I follow.
The time for Boys is over.
Chapter 13: Amara
Ilieonmybed, curled into myself. If I hold my knees close enough, maybe I can force out the cold that’s sunk into my bones. My skin feels the gloves and the hands, the speculum and the hard table, remembers the parting of my knees and the press of eyes on what was supposed to be secret. I want to scream. I want to claw off my own skin and scrub myself with steel wool until I’m clean.
Instead, I lie here, face buried in the scratchy fabric of the pillow, and count. One hundred and forty-two. One hundred and forty-three. One hundred and forty-four.
My phone lights up on the bedside table, casting a square onto the ceiling. I don’t want to look. I reach for it anyway.
There’s a text from Eve.
Are you okay?
I read it once, then again, as if repetition could make it less cruel. The words don’t fit in my head.Are you okay. The question is a trap. There is no way to answer it without lying.
I am not okay.
My thumb hovers. I want to write:No.I want to write:I am falling apart. I want to write:I am nothing, and that is worse than pain.
Instead I write:fine
I watch the little bubble pop up as Eve starts to reply. I don’t wait to read it. I toss the phone aside, ignoring the way it lands screen down on the floor.
My mind is a room with every window locked. My body is a house after a flood—empty, gutted, every surface warped with damage that will never come out. I am supposed to sleep, to let the hours pass, to pretend that the morning will bring relief.
But something inside me won’t let it go. Something dark, new, and sharp, something I barely recognize as mine. It is a small, hot anger, a curl of flame burning in my gut.
I get up.
I move slow, like a sleepwalker towards my room. My limbs are heavy, my head light. I go to my bed, kneel down, and wedge my hand between the mattress and the frame. My fingers brush steel, cold and familiar: the stolen keycard. I took it from my father’s desk, slipped it into my pocket while I was snooping around. It felt like a joke, then—a souvenir of a man who cared more about legacy than about his own blood.
Now, it feels like a weapon.
I change in the dark. Jeans, hoodie, hair back in a low knot. I tuck the keycard into my pocket and slide the door open an inch. The hallway outside is silent. Most girls are asleep, or pretending to be. I slip out, close the door, and walk fast, counting my steps to keep the nerves at bay.
My shoes make no sound on the floor, but every step is an explosion in my chest.
I take the back stairs down, careful to keep my head below the windows in the doors. At the landing, I wait. A security camera blinks above the exit, its red eye tracing back and forth. I watch it, timing the sweep. When it turns away, I push the door and slip into the night.
The air outside is cold and wet, the kind that sticks to your throat and makes you want to cough. I pull the hoodie tighter, hunch my shoulders, and cut across the quad. The grass is slick with fresh rain. It soaks into my shoes, chilling my feet until I can’t feel my toes.
The admin building awaits at the end of the quad, windows black except for a few on the third floor where someone forgot to turn off the lights. The gothic arches over the entrance look less like an invitation and more like a threat. I keep to the shadows, moving quick, until I make it to the door.
The keycard slides in with a mechanical whine. For a second, nothing happens. Then, a green light winks on, and the lock clicks open. I duck inside, exhaling for what feels like the first time since I left my room.
The hall is chilly, but I keep moving, finding the elevator and jab at the call button. It opens with a groan, the smell of bleach and steel mixing with the odor of my sweat. I step in, let the doors close, then press the button for the basement.
Records.
The doors open onto a world of concrete and echo. The only light is from flickering bulbs in the ceiling. The floor is a mess of shadows and stains. To my left, a locked cage with metal shelves; to the right, an office with the glass wall papered in sticky notes and crumpled memos.
At the far end is the records room. A steel door with a code lock.
I take out the keycard, swipe it, hoping it works. The lock clicks.
