Page 107 of Queen of Nothing

My stomach doesn’t just rumble anymore.

It churns.

The closer we get, the more I squirm on the seat, even though we’re moving through the nostalgia of the village, with cobblestone and mossy stone walls and the smell of rich fields seeping into the car, and villagers out for twilight walks with their dogs and families.

Again, I feel home.

I feel like I’m going back to where I belong.

But my fingers are tangling on my lap.

My fingernails cut into my skin, and I watch the village fade into free-to-roam fields.

The red post box passes by the window first, then the bus stop a few moments after, and I startle at the sight of them.

Those were a huge part of a whole other life.

In that other life, I chased Eric Harling to the altar. I snuck off to that post box in the rain to mail letters in secret, because I was sure my correspondence was being read at home.

And the bus stop was my escape hatch.

But it was a hatch that opened to nothing beyond a steel wall.

Because I knew that each time I ran off to that bus stop, Mother would come and make me feel better, make me feel loved, then she would convince me to come home.

Except the last time, she wasn’t warm, and she did not make me feel better at all.

I saw Mother without her mask.

I wonder what face she will wear for my return home, if it will be tolerant or true or false.

My hands press to my gut, as though I can soothe the coiling in there, and the car pulls onto the estate’s private road.

The gates are open and waiting for us, and once we’re through, they shut behind us.

Tyres roll over packed dirt—and the noise is so familiar, so overpowering, that it’s a blow to the gut.

Such a simple thing.

But it almost unravels me.

The panic lurches through me.

I fold over and bury my face in my hands.

My fingers thread through my scraggly hair, attacked by a comb in the jet bathroom, but still not smooth.

Mother will notice.

She will notice everything wrong with me now.

The way I move, the way I speak, the way I act.

I’ve been among the krums too long. In small towns, doing hard labour for work—

Oh gods.

I hope she doesn’t find out I had a job!