Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 46398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 232(@200wpm)___ 186(@250wpm)___ 155(@300wpm)
In this house, there’s a picture window in the living room. It’s not some bullshit prison privacy glass. It’s a normal window I can see out of, with curtains that I can close if I want. If I don’t, I can let the sun in. I could break that window with my bare hands, if I wanted, because it’s not safety glass.
In this house, I don’t want to break the window. I don’t need to. None of the people who run the school exist anymore.
Is this a daydream?
Guess it doesn’t matter.
In the daydream, or whatever it is, I sit down on the sofa in my living room and watch the sidewalk outside the house. People walk by. Little kids and teenagers and parents. All kinds of people.
And then she’s there.
She’s so fucking beautiful.
She’s beautiful even at this school, but in the sun, she looks incredible. Everything’s better in the sun. We’re older. Just old enough that no one can force us to be where we don’t want to be.
The girl must feel me watching, because she stops on the sidewalk and looks in. She meets my eyes and waves.
If I wanted, I could go out to her. I could talk to her. Nobody can punish me for that here.
I can do whatever I want. And none of this happened. I never learned the rules so I can look her in the eyes and it’s okay.
I could touch her, even. I could find out what her skin feels like under my hands. I could find out how warm she is. They couldn’t stop me. Nobody could stop me.
Somebody shakes my shoulder. Violently, in a bruising forceful way.
“Fucking pay attention when I speak to you!” he screams and it’s then I feel the blood on my lip, wait no, my nose. My nose bleeds and the pounding in my head gets worse.
Fuck, it hurts. I’m going to throw up.
I don’t answer. It doesn’t seem like he’s talking to me. Where am I?
Eventually, I move my eyes and look at his face. Mr. Jay glares at me like I’m the one who kept us in here for so long.
He scoffs. “You’re done.”
I don’t bother to hope. I know he doesn’t mean that I’m done here at the school. They’ll never let me out. They’ve made that clear. I’m too worthless and stupid to be let out of this place. I’ll never tell them exactly what they want to hear, so they’ll never send me anywhere else.
“Done?” I ask. My mouth feels tacky and dry.
He leans in close, his eyes nearly black with anger. “Done for the night. You’ve wasted enough of my time. Get up you fucking animal.”
I can’t. My stomach is in knots. My legs feel weak. In some faraway part of my brain, I’m still in the neighborhood. I’m still looking out at the girl through my front window. For once, it’s not a cage. She’s outside in the sunlight, and I can look at her as much as I want.
Mr. Jay’s fingers dig into my arm. He escorts me through the hall—dragging me, really, and muttering things under his breath.
We stop outside the staff bathroom. He bangs in through the door, leaving me in the hall.
When I first got here, I might have seen this as an opportunity to try to run away. Now I know there’s no point. I won’t get to the front doors. Even if I did, there’s miles of empty land between me and the nearest place I could go for help.
The teachers would find me.
I turn my head, and there she is.
For a few seconds, I think I’ve gone back into my daydream. Maybe my mind really has split off and I exist there now.
The girl sits in a chair with no desk in front of it, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes bright despite the lack of light in the hall or in the room.
That’s the room they take people to for punishment. When they want to hurt somebody so bad there’s no record of what they’ve done. That’s the room with no cameras.
I stare at her face, hungry for the sight of her.
Her dark hair is a mess on one side, like she hasn’t brushed it in days. Her skin is pale, even her lips. She doesn't look like she did. She’s sick now like me. Fuck. Everything twisted in knots inside of me get tighter. Not her.
I stare at her but she doesn’t look up. She doesn’t see me.
She’ll never see me.
I can’t stand the thought. She has to see me. I almost say something. I swear there’s a whisper of a question: what’s your name? On my lips.
I’m breaking rule number one, and I’ll pay for it. If Mr. Jay steps out of the bathroom behind me, he’ll take me back to the room we just left. He might even punish me in front of the girl, in the room with no cameras.