Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 84072 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84072 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
She scoffs. “Like you don’t touch me?”
“That’s different. No one else is going to touch you.”
“They cut my fucking hair off!” Wren yells, making me pause.
Her words sink in slowly. “What are you talking about? Who cut your hair?”
Angry tears build in her eyes, threatening to roll down her cheeks. She blinks them away. “I don’t know who. I fell asleep in class, and someone cut off my braid,” she explains as I look at her, stunned.
“I thought you cut it yourself,” I say, dumbfounded.
“Well, you thought wrong. Someone else did. I would have never cut my hair.”
“Well, that was fucked up, but cutting hair and killing someone are two different beasts. I wouldn’t worry about the note. It’s probably just a prank.”
“Probably?” Wren is less than convinced and neither am I, at least not fully. “Fuck, I’m late to my next class,” she says, already walking away from me.
“Forget the note and be ready for me tonight. I’m coming to see you,” I call after her as she walks away from me without an acknowledgment.
I watch her disappear around the corner, still holding the note in my hand. I look down, reading it over again. This has to be a joke. No one actually wants to kill her. At least that’s what I tell myself.
21
WREN
“Isn’t this stupid?” Letting out a shaky laugh, I finish going through the dresser drawers to make sure nothing is left behind. “It’s not like I ever really liked living here, but I’m sort of sad to leave.”
“Then don’t leave.” Maya zips up the suitcase she loaned me to help with the move. I brought everything here in trash bags and don’t want to show up at the dorm the same way. People already think I’m enough of a joke.
“I really don’t have a choice.” I hate the way that sounds, but it’s true. And it’s a waste of time for me to think otherwise. Every time I tell myself I’m going to get out of this somehow, or that Briggs can’t possibly want anything else to do with me, he finds a way to prove me wrong. All I am doing is breaking my heart. He’s already determined enough to do that for me. I don’t need to help him.
“This is all wrong,” she insists. “What aren’t you telling me? You know you can talk to me, right? You can trust me, no matter what it is.”
“I know. It’s not easy to talk about.” When she won’t stop staring at me with all sorts of expectations, I confess, “It’s Briggs. He’s behind all of it. This is his idea.”
“What? I thought you told me everything. All about what he’s doing to you, how cruel he is. I get it,” she adds in a dark tone that is so unlike her usual bright, sunny voice. “I know what those guys are like. But why would he force you to do something like this?”
I’m so weary all of a sudden. Maybe I have been all this time, but I’ve been forcing myself to ignore it. Her questions are innocent and friendly, but they have the power to break down some of the resolve I’ve built up around myself. I sink to the bed, now stripped and bare, resting my hands in my lap with a defeated sigh. “He wants me there so he can do whatever he wants to me, whenever he wants to.”
“What are you talking about? What haven’t you told me?” There’s fear in her voice, and I hate to hear it. She sits next to me, tucking her blonde hair behind her ears with trembling hands. “You can tell me.”
So I do. What’s the point of pride? Secrets don’t help anybody, anyway.
I tell her everything. The things he forces me to do. What happened at the party. In the classroom, with his asshole friends, all the humiliation, all the fear, it all comes out of me at once. On one hand, it sort of feels good to open up.
On the other, I feel like shit when I see how horrified Maya is by the time I’m finished. Her face is pale when she asks, “How have you been going through this without… I don’t know, totally losing your shit?”
“I don’t know.” Staring down at my folded hands, I whisper, “So long as you don’t think I’m, you know. Not worth being friends with because of this.”
“I would never think that!” She throws her arms around me in a tight hug. “Not ever, so don’t even think that. I won’t accept it.”
“Okay.” I pull myself together once she lets me go, rolling my shoulders back, taking a deep breath and blowing it out all at once. “Well, now you know.”
“You don’t have to accept this.”
I almost want to laugh, but I stop myself because I know how it feels to be laughed at. Even though I wouldn’t mean it in that way, it could come off all wrong. She’s the last person who would ever deserve that. “I don’t think I have a choice,” I remind her instead. “Every time I tell myself I have some control over my life, he finds a way to prove me wrong.”