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Guilt threatens to swallow me whole that I’ve allowed her space to be able to hurt herself.
“Are you?—”
“Abs, there you are,” Liv calls, giving me little choice but to drop my hand from Abigail’s arm. “I thought we were meeting out the front of— Oh hey, Elliot. You cheered up yet?”
I cringe at her question.
“It was cold and?—”
“It’s all good. Shall we go?” she asks, looking between the two of us as if she expects me to argue.
“Yes,” Abigail says without any hesitation.She steps away from me and quickly turns her back ready to walk away.
“Okay, well. Have a good day,” Liv says, offering me an unsure smile.
Lifting my hand to rub the back of my neck, I force myself to look at Liv instead of focusing on Abigail and giving myself away—not that I really think I’m fooling anyone with how I really feel about her.
“Y-yeah, you too. See you later, Red. Stay out of trouble, yeah?”
19
ABIGAIL
“Psst,” a voice says from beside me.
I glance up from the curtain of hair shielding me from my desk mate and frown.
“Can I borrow a pen? Mine’s decided to dry up.”
My frown deepens as I try to place him. He’s obviously in my class but I don’t recognise him, not that I’ve been paying much attention since classes started back after the Easter Break.
Everything kind of blurs into one lately. The teachers’ voices, the constant din of chatter in the hall as I move like a ghost from class to class, the sea of faceless people around me.
I’m barely going through the motions so it’s hardly any surprise I can’t place the boy currently staring at me with a mix of expectation and mild curiosity.
“So can I?” he whispers with a conspiratorial smirk, and my brows knit tighter. “A pen?”
“Oh, yeah, here you go.” Fishing a pen out of my pencil case, I hand it to him.
“Thanks, I’m Ethan.”
“Abigail,” I murmur, trying to focus on the presentation.
“I know,” he replies.
I cast him a furtive glance, a trickle of apprehension going through. But he adds, “I was sorry to hear about your dad.”
“I… Thanks.”
A fresh wave of grief rises up inside me, but I tamp it down with the breathing exercises I’ve been trying to implement.
My default setting of late seems to be to panic in the face of my overwhelming and tumultuous emotions. Like they’re too big for my body. Too powerful to contain.
I used to do that a lot right after the accident. The memories of screeching tyres and metal crunching and rubber burning would hit me out of nowhere and I would become completely and utterly paralysed. My therapist back then taught me all kinds of breathing exercises. Exercises I haven’t done in a long time.
They help a little but a different beast prowls under my skin now. One that requires more than just a few slow inhales and exhales.
“If you ever need to talk…”
