“What was the question you were asked?”
I jolted out of my panic with a start, flinching when Paris leaned close and blew sharply on my face. Her breath smelled of ice mint.
“Hello…” she’d stretched out the word with a tone of irritation. “He’s been asking you a question for like–I don’t know how long.”
I turned to her like she was the crazy one when I’d found her eyeing me like I was the freak. It was only then that her words floated into my mind with meaning. Thankfully, they mistook my flinch for Paris’s intrusion and nothing else.
Facing Ajax, he fixed his face into a passive expression. “I said, what was the question you were asked?”
I opened my mouth to speak, forcing that frozen facade I’d grown accustomed to. “What question?”
I stopped tapping my foot that I’d only then realized I was doing. I didn’t need these people to think I was crazy, on top of everything they’re not telling me. “The question on the paper you’d written to get admitted.”
I thought back to the packet my English teacher at a nameless high school in New York had given me. I hadn’t meant to stay solong, but the spring was suddenly too hot to think far, and I hadn’t faced any trouble. It was a big city with more abandoned buildings than I could count and tourists with heavy pockets. “Uhm… They asked: If I were able to start a civil war in any country of my choosing, which country would be most prone–and how would I do it?”
Ajax raised a surprised brow before pushing out his bottom lip in contemplation. “So, they basically admitted a sociopath into Castle Hill based on his ability to create global chaos. It isn’t exactly too far off the mark of admittance requirements."
He scoffed and looked to Paris like she would, in a moment of rarity, agree, but she was too busy admiring her nails, a beat passing before she asked, “And what did you write?”
Chapter Six
Alexandr Miroslav
1982
I don’t remember much, but I do remember mumbling something about feeling sick and slipping away. Paris’ screeching about wasting their time sounded faintly in the back of my mind, but I don’t think I paid her much attention.
I only came back to a vivid level of presence when I stood soaked in the middle of my dorm. I didn’t find myself there in the blink of an eye. No, I was sure I was well aware of how quickly my body moved in the rain, how my key, sharp and cold, felt in my palm when I took it out to unlock my door. I was even thinking about how cold I was, and how much I wished I’d stayed for dinner.
But there was also another thread of thought stirring somewhere deeper; if I delved into the fissure I hadn’t known existed in my mind, maybe I’d find it.
It spoke in harsh tones and spikes of fervor, rather than words. Betrayed by Mr Browne, angry at the apprehension I’d have to wear like a second skin because of Rain Atlas Jett, but most of all, afraid of what the next few months would shape to look like.
As if a marionette, I moved to the bathroom where I’d stripped and entered the shower. It wasn’t the stained-yellow tiles and lowwater pressure shower I was used to, and yet I couldn’t find peace in the upside change. The tiles were stark white and practically glowing from how clean they were, and the drain didn’t hint at the possibility of cockroaches making their way out.
I dried myself and changed into the loungewear I was provided with when I finished, only then did I notice the embroidered ‘CH’ in cursive along the top corner. I forwent rolling my eyes and found a towel to clean the puddle of water in the middle of my room.
Watching the soft, white texture soak up the rainwater made me feel guilty for using something that clearly wasn’t bought at a big-box store and didn’t deserve to be used to wipe down the floor.
It was dark before I’d noticed, the rain having stopped somewhere between the start of my shower and the end of it. The Victorian lamp posts outside illuminated the dark path to campus and sent faint yellow light through the interstices of my window.
For a moment, I felt like I’d been sucked into a Dostoevsky novel. The eerie and quiet atmosphere caused a small chill to slither down my back, and I half expected to find a dark figure standing under the glow just outside my window before disappearing into the fog. Leaving me to scratch at my throat and force out the strangled breath.
I was a few floors up, of that I was grateful.
Only, not by much.
I think it was a fit of arrogance that led me to open the window. The icy air that seemed to fall over the slight hill we were on, assaulted me before I’d thought of adding an extra layer. But Idecided against it, risking the cold for just a moment of peace.
How contradictory.
I reached for the pack and lighter I’d hid behind the bedside drawer last night and pulled out a cigarette. Lighting it and breathing in the nicotine like it was my first proper breath since I’d gotten here.
In a way, it was.
I sat on the ledge of the open window and watched the slightly illuminated lawn, freshly mowed of course, disappear under the low fog. It wasn’t envy I was feeling, of the life these people around me had lived and will go on to have. I accepted the cards I'd been dealt a few years back. In fact, the life I was living was a constant reminder. Only, I didn’t know if I wanted to keep on surviving.
Why would I?
