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Zoe
“You okay?” Jason settled into the desk beside her. “You don’t look so good.”
She wasn’t good. Far from it. Her head hurt so much that she was worried she had done some real damage. She’d already thrown up in the bathroom. That had helped some, but then the lights in the math classroom, which were made worse by the white walls, were making it almost impossible to keep her eyes open.
She sank even lower into her chair. “I’m fine. Why, what did you hear?” She wasn’t sure what exactly had happened to her the night before. Her mind held still shots, and a few short video clips, but none of them went together, and she knew there were giant gaps in her recall—gaps which could have been uneventful standing around or could have been much worse.
“I didn’t hear anything.” He actually looked concerned. “Why, what happened?”
She didn’t answer him. She didn’t want to answer him. He was obviously a goody-two-shoes, and she didn’t want him to think she was a loser.
“Well, if you need to talk about it, let me know.”
Why was he so nice to her?
“In the meantime, I wanted to invite you to our Bible study.”
She would’ve laughed if she weren’t so horrified.
“We meet on Thursday mornings at Emma Mendell’s house. It’s the big yellow farmhouse right beside the elementary school.”
“Thursdays?” she said because she didn’t know what else to say.
“Yes, at six-thirty. We used to meet on Mondays, but we had to change it because of weightlifting.”
A Bible study and weightlifting conflict. This guy wasn’t a goody-two-shoes. He was something much worse.
And he was waiting for her to answer.
“I don’t think so. My grandmother might make me go to church on Sunday mornings, but I’m not really a Bible girl.”
His smile faltered a little. He almost looked hurt. “Okay. Well, let me know if you change your mind.” Then, even though he’d already gotten his books out and opened them, as if he’d planned to sit there for the entire class, he grabbed his bag and books and got up, moved to the back of the room, and sat down in another desk.
Yep. She’d managed to hurt his feelings.
Her only friend.
Awesome.
She couldn’t do this. She was too sick. She had to find somewhere to lie down. Slowly, trying not to attract attention, she shoved her math book back into her backpack and stood up. The teacher looked right at her. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she mumbled, which didn’t explain why she was taking her backpack, but she couldn’t come up with anything better. Keeping her head down, she scuttled out of the room.
The bell rang, and it felt like a hundred knives to her brain. She wanted to cry but she thought she was too dehydrated for tears. She had to get out of there. She didn’t care what that meant. She didn’t care what happened to her. She just had to get out of there. She had to lie down.
The front door was in sight of the main office, so she couldn’t go that way. The hallways were emptying. Most everyone was in class now. She had to get out of sight, or someone would stop her. She headed toward the back door, but a giant sign informed her that an alarm would sound if she opened it. She didn’t want to think about how much that alarm would hurt her head.
She turned away from the doors. Shoot. Where was she going to go? She tried to think, but her head was muddy. Where would she go if she were in her old school? She would simply slip out one of the many back doors. They had made it too easy. This school was so much smaller, so every move she made was so much more noticeable.
She didn’t know of any other back doors, and even if there was one, would it also be booby-trapped with an alarm?
The gym. The gym had doors leading outside. But the gym was so far away. She raised her backpack strap higher on her shoulder and headed that way, keeping her head down, trying to be invisible, trying to look like she had somewhere to be and had to get there—somewhere she was supposed to be.
She didn’t want to get caught and get in trouble, but more than that, she simply didn’t want to be seen. She didn’t want to have to interact with someone. She didn’t want to have to be, to even exist. She knew this feeling was temporary. She’d been hungover before. She knew how it went. Tomorrow, she’d be good as new. She just had to get through the day.
She entered the cavernous cafeteria. She could sense there were people to her left, but she didn’t look up.
“Hey, stoner,” a male voice said, and the sound of it made her skin crawl. Her skin knew before her brain did who that voice belonged to. When the others at the table tee-heed at the joke, her brain caught up.
Nelson.
She started walking faster.
“What’s the matter, stoner? Got a headache?”
Her eyes burned with tears. That guy was gross. A total loser. She knew that now. And she’d hung out with him. People had seen her hanging out with him. Thank God she hadn’t gone into the woods with him—
Wait.
She hadn’t, had she?
Now she wasn’t sure. With the back of her hand, she wiped at her mouth. She was going to throw up again. She rounded the corner into the gym, which, thank God, was empty. She saw the door that led to the outside, but right across from it was an open room full of people. If she tried to go outside, they would see her.
Whether they would care, she didn’t know, but she didn’t want to take the chance.
She ducked into the locker room, which was blessedly cool and also empty. It smelled bad, but she didn’t care. She hurried to the closest toilet and bent over, waiting.
But nothing happened.
She was empty.
She searched the room for a light switch. She had to turn the lights off. She couldn’t find one. So she gave up and went to the back of the room, where she lay down on the cold, filthy tiled floor. She stuck the backpack under her head for a pillow and closed her eyes. The lights were still too bright so she sat up, took off her sweatshirt, and then laid it over her face.
She lay back down, facing the wall, curled up in the fetal position. There. She’d made it. She would just rest here until the end of the day or until she died, whichever came first. She was almost asleep when she sensed the lights going off. Oh, of course. They’d been on motion sensors. They’d blinked on when she’d come into the room. How had she forgotten that?
She was so stupid.
