Page 79 of Quiet Obsession
His throat bobs as he pulls his phone out, staring at the dark screen. For a second, I think he wants to show me something, but he just spins it between his thumb and index finger.
“He recorded her.”
Fuck. My mind springs into action. Someone hurt her. Somefucker abused her and recorded the whole act.
“For months,” Hyde adds. “She was assigned to tutor him. The popular rich boy with a God complex,” he spits the words out.
“He’s been humiliating her for months, and no one told her. The whole fucking school watched him live-stream their study sessions, then his mockery after she’d left. Everything she said, everything she did... he turned into a spectacle. Trashed her art, her looks, her intelligence. Turned her into a laughingstock and she had no idea.”
He looks at Millie, jaw tight. “She was falling for him. The charming, polite, well-behaved version of him. Four hundred kids go to that school, Creed. Four hundred. I’m not saying they all watched, but most of them must have, and no one intervened until he tried to live-stream them in bed.”
He squeezes his phone. “Someone started texting when that fucker left to grab a condom. She looked at the screen, eyes wide, panicked, then glanced around the room and spotted the camera.”
I’m sick to my stomach.
I can see from Millie’s details, pinned to her bed, that she’s seventeen, two months off her eighteenth birthday. She looks so delicate.
There’s something seriously fucking wrong with this world. The internet might be the worst of plagues. These days, so many teenagers take their lives over bullying, harassment, and most of it happens online.
My neighbor’s kid hung himself in their attic last year. Suicide rates are sky-high, the schools try fighting it, but they can’t be everywhere. Not when it’s online twenty-four-seven and so fuckingeasy to set up a private website.
I did a lot of questionable shit in my teenage years, still do, but there are limits. Throwing fists is one thing, humiliating someone, using them for shits and giggles, is something entirely different.
“She just wanted someone to talk to,” Hyde mutters. “If I’d answered her call, she wouldn’t be here.”
But she is, and we both spend hours at her bedside, my eyes on his sister while Hyde vents about their childhood. My eyes on his sister when he falls silent. My eyes on his sister until I have to head back to Washington for Greta’s husband’s funeral.
Millie wakes up the very next day, and Hyde’s parents ban all visitors except family.
25
Millie
The library smells like citrus polish, old paper, leather spines, and rain. A few windows are open, airing the space after the cleaners have done their thing.
I’m wrapped in my blue sweater but still shudder as a damp, earthy breeze slithers between the bookshelves. There’s a storm coming. It’s been brewing since I did the walk of shame to the student health center this morning.
It only occurred to me when I woke up that Creed hadn’t used protection, and no way am I risking pregnancy.
Thankfully, the nurse was very understanding, and after half an hour, I left with contraceptive pills and Plan B.
I hid in the corner of the cafeteria for the rest of the afternoon, avoiding Abby. But this time, I texted her my whereabouts. I didn’t want a repeat of last night when she put out an APB on me, reaching out to Dash when shecouldn’t find me.
Hyde barged into the gym close to eleven at night, tearing my headphones off, his mouth set in a hard line. He’s done that twice again today, checking in on me every couple of hours while I’ve been organizing my class notes, pretending I can’t hear people making bets, or see money changing hands.
The whole campus is buzzing about tonight. Anticipation and excitement fills every nook and cranny.
Dash stopped by, asking if I wanted to watch Creed fight, but after the eighteenthno, he finally got the message.
I’m not willingly getting in his way. I don’t trust myself to keep a level head around him. He makes me forget everything I promised myself, and that’s not safe.
I rush through the library, spitting my hair out when another gust of wind whips a few stray locks into my mouth. A few students are here, apparently not interested in watching men throwing fists in the derelict theatre basement. Most sit at the long communal table, hunched over chunky tomes or laptops, earbuds in.
I move past them,drifting toward the back. I prefer the dimly lit reading nooks there, tucked between shelves. With velvet armchairs and loveseats, it feels like I’m in a private library.
Noah’s there, jacket draped over the loveseat, no chessboard in sight. Instead, he’s got his feet on the table, a book in hand.
Ever since he found me here, he’s been showing up atrandom. I spend most of my time in the library, even though I’m neither a bookworm nor an academic overachiever. I like the quiet, and I don’t have much choice while my room’s occupied.
