It was so nice of them. They were so nice. But God, all I wanted was to be by myself.
‘Where are you going?’ Marija said. ‘You haven’t even come close to giving us all the goss yet.’
‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ I said. ‘I’m just going to the bathroom.’
I stumbled blindly into the hallway, desperate for a moment of quiet. ‘… thought for sure she’d be in the final two,’ I heard Jess D say.
‘Me too,’ Parisa said. ‘He liked her a ton. Plus, that’d give them that perfect boy-choosing-between-two-besties story. Production’d cream their jeans over that.’
Were they right? Would I have got a necklace at the ceremony, if I hadn’t made Romeo-Dylan send me away? Would I be curled up in a too-small bunk with Dylan right now, her fingers playing gently with my hair?
Oh God. What had I done?
I started opening doors blindly. Maybe there was a way out. Maybe I could leg it back up to the Juliet Villa. It was dark, sure, but I knew how to solve the maze. I could do it in the dark.
And then what would happen?
I’d get caught, that’s what would happen. Murray wouldprobably chain me up in the basement. I didn’t know if the Convent had a basement, but he’d make do.
Or I wouldn’t get caught. I’d sneak back out before anyone was awake, back down through the maze. Then up again the next night, and again, and again, and—
And then, ‘Dylan Gilchrist, your heart is the other half of mine,’ Romeo-Dylan would say, and ‘Dylan Jayasinghe Mellor, your heart is the other half of mine too,’ she’d say, and even though neither of them would mean it, it would still bereal.
‘Whyyyyyyy,’ I heard someone moan.
My fingers stilled on the doorknob. I squinted into the dark room.
It was a laundry. One of the other women was sitting on top of the washing machine, curled into a ball, head buried in her knees.
She looked exactly like I felt.
‘You too, huh?’ I said, the words spilling out of me before I was even really conscious of saying them.
She looked over at me. It was Cece, the woman I’d Mummy Mandie’d so hard on the first night. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Nice to see you again, Cece.’
‘You too.’
I felt awkward as hell, standing there in the doorway. ‘Sorry for barging in on you. I thought this was the bathroom.’
‘No. That’s upstairs. First door on the left.’
I wanted to leave, but I didn’t. Once you’d decided to become someone’s metaphorical mum, maybe you couldn’t stop.
Or maybe sometimes the lure of other people’s problems was a temptation you couldn’t resist, especially when there was no way you could fix your own.
‘You look like I feel,’ I said.
‘Like shit?’ Her words had hard edges.
‘I was going to say miserable, but “like shit” works,’ I said, forcing a smile I hoped looked kind. ‘Want some company?’
Cece hesitated. Then, ‘Sure.’
I closed the door. The room fell into darkness, lit only by the moonlight streaming in through the window. It wasn’t the same as being alone, but it was quiet, almost peaceful. Definitely better than being out there, having to listen to everyone talk about the inevitability of Dylan and Dylan.
I sat beside Cece on the washing machine. ‘Do you sleep in here?’ I asked, pointing to the mess of bedding on the ground.
