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I elbow him sharply in the side but he doesn’t even flinch. Damn it! I should have whacked him with my bag full of books instead, they could bring a grown man to his knees if aimed just right.
With a final smirk, he drops me like unwanted trash and walks away without a backward glance. Face aflame, I grab the edges of my shirt together, duck my head and race back towards my dorm, refusing to let the angry tears that burn the backs of my eyes fall. Fuck him. Fuck the three of them. They are not going to dictate my life here. I’m done giving them power over me.
I stop running and giggle when I catch sight of Zie chasing me with a trouser tent.
“What?” He demands when I can’t stop laughing. Instead I point.
“Oh. Yeah.” He blushes and tries to look carefree, but I can tell he’s embarrassed. “It just happens.”
“Can’t you control it?” I wrinkle up my nose in distaste.
“No.” Oh. I’m sure if I had one I would be able to control it.
“Maybe you just need to practise,” I suggest. Then curiosity gets the better of me. “Does it hurt?”
“Sometimes,” he admits. I pull a face. Yuk that sucks. “But sometimes it feels good too.”
I really can’t imagine it feeling good.
“I think girls are better than boys,” I decide. We’ve argued over this for years. “I know you can pee standing up, and no matter how much you try to teach me I just can’t get the hang of it, but at least I don’t have to deal with that.” I wave my hand in the vague direction of his trousers and laugh.
“Well, I’d rather have an uncontrollable sword than something that looks like a cat that's had its throat slit!”
“How would you know what that looks like?” I demand hotly.
“I saw it once.”
“What? When? Whose cat was it?”
“Old Mrs Creely’s.”
“How d’you know it wasn’t just run over?”
“I saw the people kill it with a knife.”
“Who?” My eyes are saucers.
“You don’t want to know.”
Oh, but I do.
I don’t tell Peony that it was us that killed the cat. I didn’t like the way her eyes shone with interest. I didn’t want to do it but Axel’s dad said it was important that we know what it felt like – taking a life – that it was an important rite of passage or something. Apparently flushing a goldfish down the toilet isn’t the same.
I don’t know. I hated it. I mostly watched. I didn’t even want to do that but as the baby of the group I can never show any weakness. I already have to work harder than the others to prove myself.
I don’t like Axel’s dad. He’s even bossier than Axel. Scarier too. Way worse than my dad. And probably even Kaiden’s. He’s just violent. My dad shouts a lot. But there’s something…dark about Axel’s dad and I don’t like it.
I don’t know why he has Axel making us be friends with Peony or why he wants us to kill things. Sometimes I think it would be easier not to be friends with Axel. But then my dad always pushes us back together or sucks up to his dad for some reason. My dad has started getting into politics and it’s making him even more of a nightmare than usual.
Axel and Kaiden are my best friends. I’m not denying that. But sometimes I can’t help but wonder if they’re the friends I would have chosen for myself, if I could.
Peony was forced on me too, but I have to admit she’s growing on me. If she weren’t a girl, she’d definitely be the sort of person I’d want to be friends with…If I could choose for myself.
