* * *
The hallway is narrow, floorboards warped by decades of footsteps. Katie’s room is at the far end. When I push the door open, the space is so dense with personality it nearly pushes me back out again. Polaroids tacked to the walls: friends in graduation robes, a dark-haired girl kissing a red-haired girl’s cheek at what looks like a music festival. A bookshelf stuffed with marine biology textbooks and dog-eared paperback romances. A single bed beneath a Velux window with a cuddly shark toy.
I give it a pat, pick up the towel and the toothbrush, and nip across the landing to the bathroom. As I’m brushing my teeth, Scottie and his mum’s voices drift up the stairs. My brain is too tired to make out anything they might be saying. Doesn’t really matter anyway, I’m so grateful they gave me somewhere safe to crash.
As soon as I’m done, I head back to Katie’s room, slump onto the mattress, and pull out my mobile. The screen glares in the dark as I open the app. Nevin. Last online 00:19.
He is awake. I suppose that’s good, and no one’s going to prison anytime soon.
My thumb stalls over his name. His profile picture is us from the Rebels’ launch party in summer. His hand is on my back, already knowing where to press to make me stand straighter.
Not anymore.
I tap, scroll to the bottom, and tap the block button. The confirmation box pops up. Block ‘Nevin Neely’?
I press ok. And then I go and block him everywhere. Email, Instagram, TikTok.
It’s done. A digital amputation. I chuck the phone onto the bedside table beside Katie’s battered copy of Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. I read it in school. Tough story, but great.
I crawl under the duvet and curl onto my side, shark toy in my arms. The pillow breathes out lavender and sea salt as I close my eyes and wait for the adrenaline to dissolve.
* * *
The nightmare doesn’t have monsters. It has a room without doors. The walls – made of polished mirrors – are closing in. I’m in the centre, on pointe, and I have to hold a perfect arabesque. If I wobble, the walls crush me. Nevin is the room. The mirrors reflect my face, but it’s wrong. My mouth is sewn shut.
The walls touch my shoulders.
I’m woken by a scraping sound in my windpipe. A high-pitched intake of breath that releases as a choked cry. I scramble upright, tangling in the duvet, and grab my mobile from the bedside table. 03:33.
The room is painted in shades of grey by the moonlight filtering through the skylight, but the terror is pulsing behind my eyelids. My ribs take a battering from the inside that shakes my whole frame.
Knock. Knock.
The sound is soft, but there is an urgency to it that cuts through my hazy panic.
‘Ava?’ Scottie’s voice is muffled by the wood.
I force the sob back down. ‘Come in.’
The door pushes open. Backlit by the landing, his dark silhouette fills the frame. He is wearing a T-shirt and boxers, and the moonlight catches the broad angle of his shoulders.
‘I heard…’ He crosses the threshold and closes the door behind him. ‘You screamed?’
‘I did? No, it’s fine.’ The reassuring-reflex is instant. ‘It was only a dream. Don’t worry. Go back to sleep.’
Scottie doesn’t even acknowledge the fib. He drops onto the edge of the mattress and the bedframe creaks. ‘You’re shaking, Ava.’
‘I… The dream. It was…’ I can’t articulate the horror of it, so I deflect. ‘Jesus. It’s freezing in here.’
‘The radiator is on full blast. It’s just not very good at blasting.’ He reaches out, and his hand covers mine where it’s clutching the duvet.
‘Breathe,’ he says. ‘Do it.’
I inhale. It shudders on the way down.
‘Again.’
The panic seeps out of me until there’s nothing left behind it but exhaustion.
