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I knew what that meant. Not only had she smashed my laptop, she’d logged into my cloud account and deleted my Rosmerta research off there to ensure I didn’t have any backups.
Luckily for me, I could remember most of the information I’d written down, and I hadn’t mentioned my source by name, meaning that Jensen was still safe. Hopefully, Zara just assumed that I’d received most of my information from Rosie’s old notes on the subject.
I sighed and set the broken pieces on my desk. “It’s okay. I’ll figure something out.”
Zara patted my shoulder. “I’ll pick up a new laptop for you this afternoon.”
“Thanks,” I murmured.
She glanced at her watch. “It’s only eleven, so if you get dressed right now, you can make the rest of your classes for the day,” she said. “You really shouldn’t miss any more, because you need to keep on top of things and make sure you’re prepared for the next time you take the SATs.”
I inwardly snickered at the faux concern over my education. As if Zara had any intention of letting me attend college. If she had her way, I’d be locked in a room somewhere four weeks from now, waiting as the baby inside me grew bigger and bigger.
“Get your uniform on while I get some makeup from the bathroom,” she went on, eyes lingering on my forehead. “We need to cover up that bruise. Otherwise everyone will stare at you.”
I trudged into my walk-in closet and got dressed. When I returned to the bedroom, Zara was perched on the end of my bed with a tube of concealer, a powder compact, and a blender brush. She patted the duvet to signal for me to join her.
I sat down next to her, and she hummed as she worked away on my forehead, gently dotting concealer over the worst parts of my bruise and sealing it with powder. When she showed me my face in the compact mirror a few minutes later, I almost gasped. She’d done a great job. The ugly purple and red bruise in the middle of my forehead was almost invisible now.
“Thank you,” I murmured, hating the fact that I had to be polite and civil to this woman. This imposter.
“You’re welcome.” She beamed and stood up. “Let’s get you to school.”
I stared out the window as we drove down Cliffside Drive. It wasn’t just the Prescott house that was bothering me now. It was this whole damn neighborhood. Everything about it was creepy and disturbing. The dark, towering mansions looked like giant prisons, and all the trees without their leaves looked like skeletal hands clawing at the sky.
A wave of nausea overcame me, and I almost retched. Zara glanced over at me. “Are you feeling sick?”
I nodded. “I’m a little nauseated.”
That was an understatement. It was the worst nausea I’d ever experienced. I felt like I was going to keel over and vomit at any second.
“That’s normal. You might feel it for a while,” she said. “It’s from all those painkillers they had you on at the hospital, plus the aftereffects of the concussion.”
“Yeah, I know,” I murmured, looking out the window again. I couldn’t let Zara know that I knew the truth—that the nausea was morning sickness.
I swallowed the bile rising in my throat as I thought about the embryo inside me. Right now, it was only the size of a kidney bean, but it was going to keep growing bigger and bigger with every passing day.
A lot of people described pregnancy as a joyful, magical period in a woman’s life, but I felt like utter shit. Maybe it had something to do with the fact this pregnancy was forced on me. I honestly couldn’t think of anything more violating. In fact, I was fairly sure that forced pregnancy was actually considered to be a crime against humanity under the Geneva Convention.
I made it to school about ten minutes before the lunch period was due to end. The halls were packed with students, all of whom stared at me with wide eyes as I walked past. I expected to hear whispered gossip or straight-up insults on my way through, but no one said anything bad at all. Instead, they looked scared.
I figured they were probably worried that I’d attack them if they got too close to me, because of my rumored ‘problem’ with hard drugs. That was fine by me. Being feared was better than being bullied.
As I drew closer to my locker, I spotted Jensen standing by it, working away at the metal with what appeared to be a paint scraper. When he saw me coming, he stashed it in his blazer pocket and stood up straight. “Hey,” he said, eyes flashing with concern. “I was hoping you’d be back today.”
I dipped my chin toward his pocket. “What’s that?”
“Nothing.”
I looked at my locker. It was covered in small red flecks. “Someone wrote something, huh?”
“It’s fine. I handled it. Don’t worry about it.”
I sighed, shoulders slumping. “It’s okay, you can tell me,” I said, wearily rubbing the side of my head. “What did they write?”
Jensen shifted uncomfortably in his spot. “It said ‘crackwhore’,” he muttered. “I had to borrow a paint scraper from the art class to get it off.”
“Assholes,” I said, rolling my eyes. I briefly turned my head to look around the hall. Everyone in our vicinity was staring at us. “Thanks for getting rid of it.”
