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Ifinish the side salad on my tray, skipping the lump of spaghetti with a dinner roll beside it, and eye my mandarin oranges in a plastic cup. The rest of the eating disorder students at the table are avoiding the spaghetti and rolls too and instead poking at their salads and orange slices with their silicone forks. I look over at the table where Gabe normally sits, but he's still not there.
He said he was getting a surprise ready for me, but what is it?
No one ever surprises me with anything. My parents send me money at Christmastime and on my birthday, but it's always the same amount each year.
I'm actually kind of excited, and that's dangerous for a girl like me. I survive by not getting attached. No connections, no names, and no regrets.
Stop it, Avery.
You can't get all excited because a hot guy tells you he has a surprise for you. He's a psychopath with a fire fetish, which means it could be a bad surprise like a box of ashes, a severed finger, or, even worse, his dick in a box. For Christ's sake, you're in a mental institution, and he is crazy! Stop thinking about him!
Move. On.
You know where this leads, and it's a one-way street to rejection and pain.
You are leaving this place!
I suffocate the treasonous thoughts and swallow hard, pulling back the plastic lid on the mandarin oranges.
One slice in its own juice, five calories.
I plop one into my mouth and chew. I've eaten more at this meal than I have eaten in a long time, but I have an appetite for once, which is weird. I thought it had withered and died with all of my lady bits. I'm only ever hungry anymore when I'm about to pass out and hit the floor. Maybe his touch restarted that fire inside of me too.
Stop. It. Avery.
"You," a guard barks, coming up behind me, "walk with me. Headmistress wants to see you."
I stand as another guard takes my tray away to be weighed. My gaze immediately flicks to his table again, but his seat directly across from his probably-a-serial-killer friend is still empty. This time when I look, I catch the eyes of the only girl who ever sits with them, the one who wears the leather collar. Willow, I think her name is.
A smile haunts her lips as she looks at me, her laughter at something her creepy boyfriend has said dying in the cavernous room. She doesn't look disgusted by me, though. If anything, her gaze flicks from Gabe's empty seat to me and then back again. She just looks sort of sad as she does it, like she wishes he was there for me too, like she somehow understands why I'm looking for him. Is that what she feels for the boy who's currently playing with her collar? Does she crave his presence? I shouldn't care, just like I shouldn't crave the creep's touch, but I do.
Stop. It!
"Come on," the guard pushes, grabbing me by the elbow and steering me away from the table.
"I'm coming," I tell her, and she releases me, letting me walk beside her as we leave the dining room and start toward Headmistress Grave's office. It doesn't take long to get there, seven or eight minutes maybe, and then we're in the room that smells like moth balls again. There's an old lady behind the long desk that stretches across the space, her blue-tinged hair in a tight bun atop her head. She frowns at me as we walk inside.
"Name?" she asks.
"Bardot," the guard answers for me. "Headmistress said to bring her here immediately."
The old lady walks around, her foot hitching on the floor with a limp I don't remember her having before. She swings open the built-in door in the desk and steers me down another hall. We walk the distance to Headmistress's office, and I knock on the door.
The ancient woman side-eyes me. I guess she wanted to do that.
"Come inside," Headmistress barks from the other side.
I swallow the knot in my throat and resist the urge to wring my fingers together in front of me as I open the door and walk into the room. I wanted this, right? Surely, my father is taking me away from here and sending me somewhere else, far away from the creep with bottomless, inky eyes and sparks of fire in his fingertips capable of setting my skin ablaze.
Her office is just as it was last week, a large, cold tomb. The door shuts behind me, and Headmistress gestures to the leather chairs in front of her desk.
"Sit," she tells me. "Now Avery."
Well, this can't be good.
Normally, by this point, the administration is already being sickly sweet to me and arguing with my father about why he can't have his money back.
I take a seat, and Headmistress drags her office phone across her desk to her. The buttons on the phone light up like traffic lights flashing in the dead of night, blinking all at once.
