The need to bolt churned at the back of my mind. But I suppressed the tremble in my hand instead and reached for one of the crumpled sheets, the paper thin yet rough against my palm.
Like whenever I logged into the school portal at the end of the year to check my performance overall, hoping I hadn’t flopped and lost my scholarship, my heart raced as I unfolded the paper.
And there it was, a sharp scrawl in red ink.
‘Kill yourself, why don’t you?’
There was a sting that threaded a path through my chest, but I pretended not to feel it. I must not break. Not when all eyes were watching, waiting for me to.
I took in a deep breath and crushed the paper back into a ball, tossing it across the room.
I searched through my rucksack for the pack of pocket wipes I always carried around. But somehow, I seemed to have left it at home.
My gaze dropped on my arm warmers. They were dark grey, the stain would show. But the material was woolen, great for absorbing a mess such as this. So I bent over my desk and began to wipe the table. And to my dismay, the stain wasn’t leaving. If anything, it got worse, smearing further.
They used permanent markers, so I wouldn’t be able to clean it. So the words would stare at me every single second I sat on that desk.
My head felt heavy, my chest constricting again. I felt like I was suffocating and everyone was watching me die, waiting for me to die already.
This was too much to bear.
Tears stung my eyes. But I blinked them away. I didn’t pick my bag to run even though I desperately wanted to. I sat down instead, placing my book on the desk, waiting for the teacher to walk in.
Several minutes passed with words flying over my head and the door finally swung open. But it wasn’t Rowan McRae. It was a teacher I didn’t know, never met before.
Reality hit me again. Rowan had been replaced. Rowan lost his job. All because of a lie I told.
???
The sharp scent of grass and sweat clung to the air, mixed with the echo of shouts and laughter of boys charged with adrenaline.
I didn’t step onto the field. I sat there by the terracing which was cold beneath me, but I barely registered it. My arms rested on my knees, my fingers twitching, scratching, pinching.
There were no tears. But my eyes burned, red-rimmed, and unfocused.
Kenzo didn’t notice me. I had been here for the past ten minutes after I bolted out of math class.
No one noticed me. No one ever did unless they needed something I could offer.
Then, someone finally did. One of Kenzo’s teammates, Gerald.
He had briefly glanced at the stand and spotted me. He frowned, confused, then nudged at Kenzo before throwing a small nod in my direction.
Kenzo turned, confused at first. And when the realisation hit him, the soccer ball in his hand rolled off, abandoned on the grass.
He jogged over to me, his movements quick and urgent. He stood near me now, winded after running. But I didn’t react. I didn’t move.
I had my arm warmers rolled up, my nails digging into the unhealing scar, scratching, pinching, tugging at the blemished skin around it. I wanted to carve it off, this skin, this body.
A tremor ran through my fingers, my lips pressed tight to keep them from shaking.
Kenzo breathed a curse, then muttered,“I’m coming.”
In a second, he was back on the field again. I watched as he jogged to his team, speaking animatedly to them. And before I could blink, he was back again, lifting me up and leading me away from the field.
“Home?” he asked.
“No, Rowan’s.”
