“Isis -!”
I hang up, and slither down the corridor with the grace of an oiled sidewinder. Summers’ office is the last on the right, and I crouch and immediately begin assessing my foe. It takes me three minutes of strenuous lock jiggling to find out these locks are much, much sturdier than anything I’ve broken into during high school. There’s no way I’m getting in.
This is where most people would paste a giant GAME OVER in their heads.
Thankfully, Isis Blake is not most people.
I pull as many blood packets as I can out of my pack, and start decorating. I’m halfway through with the janitor calls into the same bathroom for me. My heart jackrabbits around in my throat and I squeeze out the last few words as quick as I can. I hear her footsteps about to turn the corner just as I jam everything into my pack and skid around the opposite one.
She squints, her eyesight obviously bad, but she can’t see the wall I defaced - parallel to the windows - from that angle. She sighs and trudges back the way she came, and I jam on the gas full blast and beat her to the front door, taking the steps two at a time as cool twilight air washes my victorious face.
If she sees it, she’ll get rid of it, and it’ll have been a glorious adventure all for naught. But if she skips it over, then tomorrow –
I smother a laugh and reinstate myself as best in the world at everything. The high is so familiar, so enthralling that all I can think about is it – just it. Just my victory, just my near-busted status, just the retribution a pervy scumsucker like Summers will get if anyone other than himself sees what I did. It might not be proof, and it might not convince anyone fully, but it’ll breed doubt in their minds, and doubt’s the most insidious thing there is.
Tonight, I don’t need any parties to keep away the yawning chasm of silent pain. Tonight I’m high on my own brand of drug – pure immature, stupid, recklessness. I wash fake blood off my hands and head to the nurse’s office for my bandage change, laughing under my breath.
I’m crazy and going crazier, and I don’t know how to stop it.
I don’t know how to stop this horrible darkness from eating me alive, and no one in the world is going to help me.
I’m alone.
Tonight I don’t need any parties, but I go to the Rho Alpha Alpha party anyway, because it’s become habit. Because it’s who I am now, who I always was. Who I used to be. Because once upon a time I was a stupid fourteen-year-old who drank and smoke and spat with the best of them in a desperate attempt to look cool, and I’d do anything to look cool back then, because when you’re huge people only see how huge you are and forget you’re a person with feelings, but if you’re huge and you party you’re a little cooler than not cool at all, letting them make fun of how big you are (whale, fatso, piggy) makes you a little cooler than not cool at all.
I look around at the faces in the party, skinny and tan and glittery with makeup and good-looks, and I know they’d be the first to call me fatso if I was the old me. They smile at me now, Heather and Livy and Tessa smile at me now, but they’d change so fast, become mean and ugly so fast, if I was the old me. They don’t like me for who I am – they aren’t Kayla or Wren, but I’m trying, trying to make them fit in the spaces left behind and I hate myself, I hate that they left me behind -
I hate them. I hate every single person here and I don’t even know them.
Kieran comes up to me, a coke and rum in hand. His frown is obvious, but I smile and take the coke with the practiced grace of an alcoholic marquise.
“Don’t give me that look, Kir,” I sigh. “Do you know how many professor dudes like him get away with shitty stuff? I mean, he was gonna get was coming to him. I just sped the process up a bit.”
“You put a brick on the gas pedal,” He corrects.
“I put a brick on the gas pedal,” I cheerfully agree and sip coke. “God bless America.”
Kieran waits for a lull in the music before he speaks. “My sister used to pull crazy stunts like you.”
“Used to?”
“She’s in a mental hospital, now.”
“Awful place,” I say. “Really sorry. You should bust her out.”
He stares at me, and I shrug.
“Well, if you won’t, I will.”
“You don’t have to save everyone, Isis.”
His words trip me, my thoughts skidding to a halt.
“I’m not saving anyone,” I say carefully. Kieran shakes his head.
“You try to. You try to stop all these injustices, and save people from them. But you never try to save yourself.”
I’m quiet. Kieran slides his hand down to mine, and squeezes.
“What are you waiting for?”
I look down at our joined hands, and whisper.
“Someone else to do it, I guess.”
Kieran leans in and kisses me, tasting like tequila and lime and salt, and for a moment his lips aren’t his, they’re Jack’s, and we aren’t at a sorority house, we’re at Avery’s, and there’s less glitter and heels and experience but just as much booze and swearing, seventeen isn’t so different from eighteen, and this kiss drives away the darkness, makes it scuttle back under the rocks, but then I open my eyes and see Kieran’s green ones and flinch away. I have to tell him. I can’t keep using him like this, but I am, because being with him is better than being alone, and I’m a coward. He looks startled, but before either of us can break the awkward silence, Heather runs up and grabs my arm.
“There you are! I’ve been looking so hard for you! C’mon, I wanna show you something.”
I follow her lead, glancing one last time back at Kieran. She leads me with impressive force up the stairs, and to a room.
“Uh,” I offer eloquently. “What’s in there?”
“Oh no, you just gotta wait in there while I get the stuff,” She hiccups. “But I promise you’ll like it!”
“It’s not drugs, is it? Because frankly, I’m extremely over drugs.”
She buzzes her lips. “Pftt, no! Like I would have drugs. Just go in! I’ll be right back and then I can show you.”
My curiosity wars with my wariness for an entire half-second, and then I push in.
Nameless sits on the bed, smiling.
I back up to the door, but it closes on my butt, clicking with the sure sound of an outside lock. I rattle the knob, desperately pulling at it.
“No,” I whisper. “No no no no no. Heather! Heather, let me out!”
No answer, save for a single high-pitched giggle that fades. I slam the door with my fist.
“HEATHER! Let me the f**k OUT!”
“Relax,” Nameless chuckles. “I’m not going to do anything.”
My eyes dart wildly around and I grab a nail file off a girl’s dresser, clutching it like a knife at him. He just laughs harder.
“Oh, you stupid little girl. I forgot how funny you are.”
I tighten my grip and back up as far as I can into the door. I briefly think of turning off the lightswitch to freak him out, but he’s got a lamp switched on by the beside.
“What do you want?” I hiss.
Nameless stares at me, thinking, and finally he claps his hands, applauding me slowly. Each clap is a bullet that pierces the building hysterical tension in my chest.