Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 101796 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 509(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101796 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 509(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
This time, she doesn’t keep me waiting. Another text comes through right away. I’m pretty sure you don’t actually want to know what I wish you would do right now.
What is it going to take? All I can do as I go to my room and hope the girls meant it when they said they would help bring her around. I will do whatever it takes to get through to her—but first, she needs to stop wishing me dead. Otherwise, I might as well keep talking to doors for all the difference it will make.
TWENTY-TWO
Elliana
I’m actually kind of surprised he let me sleep through the night without kicking the door in again or doing something else to terrorize me. The house is silent when I wake up on Thursday morning.
It’s almost eerie. Right away, questions hit me from all sides, and it’s exhausting. I just opened my eyes, and my mind is already spinning. There’s no way to get a break from it.
Is he going to school today? Or is he going to shadow me around? I know he doesn’t really care how I feel. He’s scared I’ll retaliate. That’s why he won’t leave me alone. He has to think I’m stupid if he wants me to believe anything different.
I’m not sure how I would retaliate; unless I told our parents, which I would definitely not do. For one thing, it would be too humiliating—I can’t even imagine how I would explain it. Why he had those pictures in the first place. Why I didn’t say something a long time ago? I could have ended all of this before it started by going straight to Paul and telling him everything.
So why didn’t I? Because I was trapped. None of this is my fault—I can’t blame myself for anything I did, the choices I made. If I told Paul, Carter would have found a way to get back at me, obviously. And it would’ve been brutal. Worse than things already are.
Only now I have to show my face sometime, right? So it’s not Carter’s bullying I have to worry about. It’s everybody else.
It’s almost funny, the way my phone rings while I’m imagining the misery I know I’m going to face once I step foot out of the house. I don’t even want to answer when I see it’s only Wren calling. As much as I need kindness, I don’t know if I have the energy to handle it. Of course, that makes me feel like the most ungrateful person in the entire world, but I can’t help it. I never knew it took so much energy to be pitied.
“Hey, you.” All right, at least she doesn’t sound like she’s choosing every word carefully in case I break down. That’s a good start. “We thought we would give you a ride to school today, me and Maya. Carter already knows. You won’t even have to sit in the car with him.”
So they’ve been talking about me? I can’t even think about that right now. Not when the idea of showing my face at school is almost enough to paralyze me. “I don’t think I can go today.”
“You can’t skip again. It will end up tanking your grades.”
Like I care about grades. Like I care about anything. “I just don’t think I can handle it. You know how it’s going to be.”
“But if you stay home again, they win. You get that, right? Everybody who wants to put you down wins, because they’ll think you’re running away and hiding.”
“They wouldn’t be wrong.”
“Do you really want to give them that power? I’ve been where you are now, or close to it,” she reminds me. “I know how it feels when all you want to do is forget everything. You want to keep yourself safe.”
“Yes, I do.”
“But that’s not really safety. Please,” she urges. “Don’t do that to yourself. This will pass. And you’ll have Maya and me with you.”
Not always. We don’t have class together. But she has a point, too. I shouldn’t let these assholes hold me back. I’m not going to wreck my college education because of them. I can’t give them that power.
“Fine,” I decide with a sigh. “Thank you. I’ll be ready in half an hour.”
“Great. We’ll be there.” She sounds relieved as we end the call. I have to remind myself how much sadder and grayer my life was before I found a friend who actually cares. I still don’t quite understand why, but then she understands what it’s like. I can’t forget that. She and Maya both get it.
And somehow, they were able to forgive the guys who bullied them. I don’t know if I have that in me. Forgiving and forgetting. I never would’ve considered myself somebody who holds a grudge—I mean, I wouldn’t open myself up to friendship with any of the people who hurt me back in high school, but that’s because I would know they didn’t mean it. They would only be trying to trick me into letting my guard down.