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Aguard sits with me in Headmistress's office while she walks my parents out of the building. I don't know why the asshole beside me just won't go ahead and get it over with. He could've already taken me to the one known as the Butcher. From what I understand, that guy's the one who really runs this place, not Headmistress Graves. But the guard doesn't move. He doesn't even say a word to me. I'm only certain he's alive because he's breathing, a sharp whistle sounding from his nose on each exhale. Otherwise, he just sits there on the leather chair like a human seat cushion.
I sit in the chair on the opposite end of the row, leaving the one in the middle empty.
I'm tired of sitting here. I want to find Gabe and tell him every glorious detail about how I finally stood up for myself, how I made my parents face what they've done to me, but who knows when I'll be able to see him next? Even if I had his number, my phone is still in my dorm room unless Gabe's friends, Saint and Kill, did something with it too.
I don't care what the scary doc does to me at this point. The look on my mom's face when I pinched her fat and made her confront her own worst demons was worth whatever he tries. I'll replay her shriek whenever I feel like I'm going to break in the hole. It will make me stronger and get me through whatever else these fucks throw my way.
Who knows what they have left at this point?
Since I first arrived, I've doneeverythingthey asked of me. I weighed in every single day. I met with the headmistress once a week. I attended cognitive-behavioral therapy, group therapy, and nutritional counseling. I took my meds and watched as the staff weighed my food before and after every meal. I even sat in my designated spot, lumped together with the rest of the eating disorder students. I stayed in my lane. Well, except for when Gabe kidnapped me, but whatever. That is not my fault.
I don't care anymore. Whatever they throw at me next won't break me and certainly won't fix me. No one can cure me, not even Gabe, but at least he reminded me what it was like to look in a mirror and not hate myself. He gave me hope when the world took it away, and with him, I don't calorie count with every bite or hear my mother oinking at each meal.
I sit there in the leather chair, waiting and listening to the whistle of the guard's breath, until finally, Headmistress returns.
The guard startles like he's been asleep with his eyes open. It wouldn't surprise me at this point. Nothing would. She walks into the room and around her desk, the stained-glass window behind her throwing bursts of color across the stone floor. Her black hair is more salt-and-pepper than true black today, but her spine is still as ramrod straight as ever as she begins digging in her top right-hand drawer.
"Henry," she barks at the guard before she tosses him something, "help me."
A blink later, Headmistress is at one side of my chair and the guard is at the other, each of them zip-tying me by the wrists to the wooden armrests.
What the fuck?
"Stop," I say as they both tighten the zip ties simultaneously, so hard that the plastic band indents into my skin, digging against my bones.
Ow.
"What are you doing?" I ask, looking down at the ties and trying to lift my arms. I barely get my elbows three inches off the armrest before everything starts to go numb below the zip tie, and I have to stop.
"We're doing something I should've done a long time ago," Headmistress barks at me. She looks up and over me to the guard with a beer belly and the whistle as he breathes.
"Henry, you may leave," she tells me.
"Ma'am." He nods before he walks to the door and leaves the room, closing the heavy wooden door behind him.
I swallow down the prickling fear that's needling up my throat. Something is different about Headmistress today. Sure, she's angry, but this is more than anger. She's always been . . .off, but right now with her gaze wide and slightly unfocused and her hair a little messy, she nearly looks manic. It's odd for a woman who never looks anything but pristine.
"I will not be made a fool of by a student," she snaps at me, shaking her head violently enough to throw off mud. She makes no move to go back around the table. "I especially won't be embarrassed by a weak little brat who's afraid of her peas and carrots."
Well, I've already had enough of this today, and it's probably a bad idea, but I'm all out of good ones. I'm going to need to go ahead and get this over with.
"I'm not afraid of peas and carrots," I say, cocking my head at her and not blinking when she stares right back at me. "But you are a fool."
My comeuppance for the insult is damn near instantaneous. The bitch slaps me across the cheek so hard that the whole chair shakes like it's afraid of her too. The imprint stings, sending prickles and needles bolting up my forehead and down to my jaw. Tears spring to my eyes, but I blink them away.
I won't cry because of her if I have any say in it.
"I don't know what your plan was, Miss Bardot," she hisses, showing teeth too small for her smile, "but I will not have you sully the name of our Academy. No one ever pulls their students out of my school. Do you understand me?" She laughs dryly, and the sound carries in the large room, echoing a little, but it's the look that solidifies that she's gone batshit crazy. She's wide-eyed, pulling at her hair, and muttering to herself.
A thought barrels into the station as the pieces come together, interlocking in my head.
She didn't give my parents free tuition to appease them or even as a way to apologize for losing me for four days.
No, she gave it for one reason. She's got irrefutable proof in case word gets out that this is all one big misunderstanding, just like she claimed to the police. It can't be that bad—can it?—if you still leave your only child enrolled.
"It would've been easier if you had died in the woods," she says, peering down her hooked nose at me. "At least, I can explain that. But you tucked yourself away in your little hidey-hole on campus grounds, and it's downright embarrassing. You made a mockery of this place and of me."
Her second slap is worse than the first, but that's probably because my face is still on fire from the last one. This time, tears fall from my eyes no matter how many times I blink as the pins and needles spread like tumbled dominoes across my cheek and down my jaw.
