Page 13 of Queen of Nothing

So I hear it. Loud and clear.

The kind of heave that reaches all the way down to her gut.

The splash of sick hits the toilet water, and a grimace turns down my mouth.

I slap my hands to my ears and rush for the front door.

The rules are not to go out if we don’t need to and never leave the room without telling the other. But I grab a jacket, pull it on, and tug the hood as far over my face as it’ll go.

I step outside, out into the fresh air and the quiet of the sullen carpark, peppered with old, beaten cars.

Sinking back against the doorframe, I fold my arms over my chest and stare at the sedan parked opposite me.

Mud cakes the grooves of the tyres. Streaks are dragged all over the windshield. Rust flaking along the edges—and I hate it.

I hate everything about it.

I’ve seen cars like this, but only ever in passing, from the window of the Royce, the Range Rover, the Bentley—and if I’ve been travelling with the Sinclairs in their cars, the Maybach, the Aston.

I have passed these deteriorating cars on foot as I wandered cities. I never paid them more attention than a glance.

But now I stare, because that is my future.

Rusted cars, and fast food so greasy that it stains the paper bags it comes in, and coffee so stale neither one of us could finish it, and dusty motel rooms that haven’t been properly cleaned in decades.

Serena played me.

Asta’s words ring in my mind.

‘Serena is out for herself. If she’s cosying up to you, there is a reason for it.’

And it goes beyond my engagement to Dray.

Serena wanted more than to position herself as the bestie of Dray’s wife.

And Asta made sure to let me know that, just as she made sure to let me know how little Serena likes me, and how poorly she stands alone.

I was lured into a trap—and it’s bitterly ironic that Asta was the one who tried to warn me.

I run my hands down my face, feeling my cheeks tug under the pressure.

The evidence of Asta’s attack on me lingers. It hurts to apply too much pressure to my face.

I drop my hands to my sides with a sigh.

Because if I like it or not, I’m in this now.

Serena pounced on me with her proposition when I was at my weakest, my most vulnerable, my most hurt.

I wonder if she waited for that exact moment, the moment I unravelled completely before she came to me with her plan—a way out.

It takes me back to just months ago, back to the start of the first semester, when she began her lame attempts to befriend me.

Those might have been strategy to ally herself with Dray’s future wife, acting on a suspicion that wasn’t yet a reality.

But it grew from there.

It evolved when she found out she’s pregnant.