“Tarryn put it online,” Bekka answers, looking miserable. “It’s not on any porn sites or anything.”
I hand her phone back, wishing I could teleport back in time a few minutes. Back to the blessed freedom of ignorance.
But there’s no way to un-ring this bell. “Could you send me the link?” She nods and I hear my phone buzz in my pocket a moment later.
Once it does, I rise from my seat, walking towards the exit, feeling that nervous prickle across my shoulders, the trauma response I once hoped to shake. Now it seems certain it’s only ever going to get worse.
“You want company?” Rowena asks, so much compassion in her voice that I nearly break down, weeping.
“No, I…” My voice chokes to a stop as I stand in the lobby, looking back at her. “I’ll catch up with you tomorrow, okay. I just need some time to process this by myself.”
She nods, face pinched with concern as I turn and hurry along the corridor to the safety of my room. As I unlock the door, I see Seb striding into the lobby, in a group of his rugby mates, laughing and jostling each other the way athletic boys do.
Then I’m inside, slamming and locking the door, hurling myself onto the bed. I curl into a ball, doing nothing but trying to breathe. It takes ten minutes before I can unwind myself enough to pull out my phone, another few to turn it on and click on the link.
I have my eyes closed more than open the first time through. Even though it makes me nauseous, the moment it finishes, I force myself to click it to start again. This time, my eyes wander from the footage, scanning over the comments underneath.
No! Don’t read them. They’ll do you far more harm.
A nice thought but since my brain is already sorting, storing, cutting clippings from the worst of them to paste together in a summary of the worst of the worst, it’s already a bit late.
…back that arse up for me and…
…run a train on…
…pause at fifty-seven seconds in, that expression is…
…wipe the come off my screen…
Halfway down, Seb has responded to a comment. Just an emoji but it’s him. Farther down the page, he’s written a few words in reply.
He knows about it. Not only knows about it, he’sjokingwith his friends about it. Taking the glory of a conquest while venom gets spit at me.
My mind breaks into paranoia. Nothing is safe, even this tiny room where the slight claustrophobia of its tight fit is like a comforting embrace holding me secure.
Worthlessness drags at me, an unknown lecturer drones inside my head, listing my moral failings.
And then I’m inside the bathroom, cowering in the corner, behind the shelter of a cabinet door. Would be inside the cabinet if only I could fit. Knees to my chin, hands linked over my bowed head, rocking, rocking, rocking.
My nails dig into my palms. One hand tugs at my nape, winding the soft hairs there around my finger and tugging, closing my eyes as the shrieks of a hundred hairs being pulled loose soothes my overactive brain.
But it’s not enough.
I’ve been here before. So often I already know there’s only one remedy. The thing I promised myself I’d stopped, that I’d never do again.
The first day at my counselling session, I signed a promise that I wouldn’t harm myself. A piece of paper so useless I still don’t understand the point.
I’ve held myself to that standard but now I realise that’s only because I had enough of a safety zone around me, I didn’t think I’d ever need it again.
Now it’s erased. Every terrible memory in my brain has spotted a weakness in my security protocol, and is banging against the lid of the crate, prying up the nails through sheer force of numbers, each one of them vying to be free.
I burrow in the cabinet drawer, pulling a tiny pair of scissors from the first aid kit there. Designed to cut through gauze or bandages, useless for anything stronger.
The grips are so small even my tiny fingers barely fit through the holes.
I’ll just hold them. I don’t need to use them. I’ll just hold them and pretend.
But that does nothing to calm my jittery nerves, my increasing pulse, my straining lungs. Holding them isn’t enough.
