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Students shoved past me when I moved down the steps to the professor’s desk. I stumbled more times than I could count, feet darting out more than usual to trip me. Students took off at Professor Ansi’s glare.
“How badly do you want to be at this University?” Dr. Ansi’s voice thundered before I even made it halfway down.
My voice wavered. “Badly. More than I ever wanted anything.”
Every late night at the library, studying like my life depended on it. Every resume booster I suffered through in high school to get here. The demons I’d faced, internal and external. I fought through all of them to make it here, and I was going to stay, no matter the cost.
“Then you need to act like it,” Dr. Ansi said. “Next time I hear about you and the Reaper’s relations, you’re expelled.”
“Understood,” I said, dismay gripping my worn-out heart.
* * *
Mother had blownmy door off its hinges. Splintered wood lined one side of the hallway to the other. Trepidation coiled low in my stomach.
Mother brooded, ominous and foreboding, in the corner of my room. She blocked the window like a vengeful specter, and tremors coursed through her body, navy-blue shadows writhing in unsettling jumps.
“Do you want this to be you? Never in control, never free?” Smoke seeped around the room with every word. “Unable to contain your anger? Bursting into black with every emotional outburst?”
The smoke snaked around my waist, lifting me up like a tentacle.
“You’ll never reach your potential if you continue down this path.” The tentacle constricted, compressing my chest, making it impossible to draw air.
“Mother,” I gasped.
“Don’t talk back to me,” she said, voice low.
“Mother, if you kill me, I’ll just go back to the Reaper anyway,” I rasped out. She released me at once, and I landed on my side. Yelped, feeling a future bruise already.
The pain radiated, making me curl up in a little ball on the floor in fetal position.
Was that how I felt in the womb, too? Trapped? Scared?
“You are already a liability, just from looks alone. Houses won’t even let you in if you look weak. Have you applied your medications today?” She grabbed a wet wrap I fixed around my arm.
“You wore a wet wrap to class? This shouldn’t leave the house!”
Wet wraps helped lock in moisture so my skin wouldn’t dry out. I applied it hastily this morning to heal the worst of my skin before my mother showed, and upon realizing I didn’t have time to let it soak before class, I decided to just keep it on throughout.
“It’s not like it’s a secret. I have hideous skin, Mom! People have already figured out I’m splotchy!”
“You look as malformed as you are on the inside when you go out looking like that. Only lazy people show their ugly on the outside.”
My arm dropped to my side. Her words hurt worse than applying alcohol directly to freshly opened skin. Shadows shrunk within me, wounded by her acrid judgment.
“I cannot love a disappointment, Luna.” She used a shadow tentacle to lift my camera from my book bag. “Is this what motivated all this? A quest for fame? For notoriety?”
With a cruel and deliberate twist, it shattered on the floor, exploding into pieces.
“Mom!” I cried. I fell to the floor, grabbing bits of reel, hopelessly trying to salvage the individual pieces. There was no point. It was ruined.
Books soared off the shelf into mother’s open arms. “Demons Resembling Men?” She scoffed, and a wave of her power shredded the entire shelf into dust.
All my favorite books, including my childhood copy ofPride and Prejudice, fell like dull confetti onto the floor.
“Where’s Gaksi?”
“You can’t destroy me, you crazy hag,” Gaksi growled from my doll.
