Run. Tried that. Guess it didn’t work.
The backs of my eyes burn with unshed tears and my nose turns stuffy. This was never meant to happen. The expense of Kingswood College, a debt my parents will drag out of me until I’m twenty-one, was meant to keep him from my door.
No wonder he knew how thin the walls were.
I blush, remembering the toy. Had he brought it because he’d heard me, with my fingers, when I thought I was alone in my room with nobody the wiser?
No. That’s not possible. Surely, that’s not possible. The walls are thin, but they’re not made ofpaper.
But my mind connects the dots and insists it must be the truth.
When Seb finishes his recitation—a soliloquy I don’t retain a single syllable from—Mr Barker’s eyes scour the room for his next volunteer. They briefly rest on me but my panicked glance back at him makes him pause, then move elsewhere.
Thank God. I can’t understand words right now, let alone read and recite them.
The class drags. I’m so aware of everything happening around me, each scrape of a chair, each rustle as someone changes position, that time appears to slow down while I process.
Rowena continues to frown at me. I can see the expression from the corner of my eye, but I don’t turn, don’t move, don’t do anything except keep my body rigid and stare straight ahead.
When the bell goes, I lurch from my chair, flying across the room, wrenching the door open and fleeing along the corridor to the nearest restroom, diving into the furthest stall from the entrance and locking the door so no one can follow me.
My shoulders shake but I don’t afford myself the luxury of tears. I know Rowena will be hot on my tail. I have to get a grip, have to wrestle my emotions under control.
Sure enough, barely a second passes before the bathroom entry swings open again and I hear her familiar footsteps edging inside. “Esme?”
“Just a second,” I blurt in a ridiculously cheery voice that would alert her something’s wrong if that wasn’t so fucking obvious already. “I’m just feeling sick. You go on to your next class. I’ll be fine.”
She hesitates and I want to scream. All I need is a few moments to myself, to fall apart before I slap everything back together in time for my next subject. It’s history and just down the hall but I need a moment. I need the space to quieten my mind. I need her not to care, not to check on me, not to ask.
“Okay,” she eventually says. “I’ll catch up with you at recess, yeah?”
“Yeah. Yep. Sure.”
Anything. Just go.
I hear her reluctant footsteps leave the room and wait until the door gently closes before I let out my breath, most of it coming forth on a sob.
Not again. I can’t do this again.
I pull out my phone, turned off for class, and wait with gritted teeth as it goes through its wake-up routine, finally landing on the home screen. My brain needs mindless scrolling, pictures of chunky cats or a good thirst trap.
Anything to distract me and unlock this frantic scurrying inside my brain.
It beeps with a message, and I open it up, grateful for the distraction. Then realise it’s my test results back from the clinic and feel an ache as my mood plummets again.
Positive for chlamydia.
Not from Joseph. Not when his request to start fluid bonding came complete with a clear results panel.
I wouldn’t have suspected him, anyway.
He wasn’t the one having sex with other people. The slut he accused me of being.
I close my eyes, but visualise the disease crawling through me, nosing into my cells, squirming into places it shouldn’t be, and I open them again, pulling at the chunky necklace around my throat, the one hiding my bruises.
There’s a digital prescription along with the text, and I forward it to the nearest pharmacy, blinking back tears of embarrassment that I’ll have to collect it under my name. The woman who works the till there will know.
It shouldn’t matter that the same person who rings up my purchase when I’m trying to ward off a bad head cold will now know I picked up a dose of the clap.
