Page 43 of Knox Academy Omnibus
“She’ll be fine, now fuck off, vagitarian.”
I wave to Elsie all whilst Onyx starts dragging me off again.
“Hey, that was rude,” I snap.
“So what? You have blood dripping from your chin and you are worried about her feelings?”
“What is her name?” I push.
“Vagitarian.”
“Heractualname?”
“Why the fuck do I care?”
“Ugh,” I groan because I know that I won’t win this one with him. I let it go, stop fighting, let him drag me to Christ knows where. Anything for an easy life. Get in, get fixed, get out again.
After being dragged halfway across campus and into what I am presuming is his dorm building, he stops at a room and opens the door, no key required.
Slate is seated at a desk, laptop open, staring at the screen.
“We need to have a chat with Kalen before things get too f…” he stops talking when he swings his chair around and notices me standing next to Onyx. “What the fuck did you do to her?” he growls, stopping his previous statement mid-sentence when his eyes drink in the state of me.
“She started it. Don’t just blame me,” Onyx grumbles, but there’s a definite whine to his tone.
Slate gestures for me to sit on his bed and slides a first aid kit from under his desk.
“I kicked you in the shin for a small advantage,” I defend myself. “I didn’t want to be a rotten egg.”
“She also kicked me in the nuts.”
“Please, your big brother taught me self-defence. That wasn’t a kick, more of a love-tap,” I laugh. That is what he gets for making me bleed.
“Sounds like you deserved it, bro.”
Onyx tells his brother where to go and pops in their en-suite bathroom for a shower.
“Are you magic?” Slate whispers in awe, and I shake my head no. “He’s never nice to anyone.”
“I’m sure your father is making you all be nice to me, but I’m not complaining. It’s nicer than being dragged off and pinched.” He looks down, ashamed, at my reference of that day in the library. “Maybe you’ll all get to know me and realise I am not the enemy here, the she-bitch is a mutual issue for all of us.”
“So, things really are that bad between you two?”
“If you call a mother who drank and took too many pills leading up to her leaving ‘bad’, then yeah. Also, let’s not forgetthat she’s a mother who ditched her eight-year-old daughter and eleven-year-old son.”
“That’s not that bad,” Slate mumbles.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m just saying, as an adopted kid, your story isn’t that unique.”
I turn away from him, gently lift my hair out of the way, and slip my shirt down off my shoulder to reveal three small triangular scars on my shoulder blade.
“What’s that?” Slate asks. He reaches out to touch the raised, puckered skin. I haven’t looked in a while, but these old scars haven’t faded with time. They’ve just changed. No longer red, raised, angry welts, the scars are something you can now only feel or see when the light catches them in the right way. They’re so pale and silvery that they’re almost luminescent.
“You see the really bad one?”
“Yeah.”
