Page 10 of Irrevocably

I come out of Professor Bright’s office, the balloon in my chest already at max inflation. It feels as if it’s jostling all my organs and pushing against my heart, shoving it into my ribs.

I was lucky to get an appointment with her so quickly, merely a couple of days after getting that grade, and I should be thankful that she’s allowing me to redo the assignment. But all I feel is a terrible, crushing anxiety. She’s only giving me a week to do it, and with all my other coursework bearing down on me, I don’t know how I’m going to get everything done.

I’m supposed to be smart, like my mother, but clearly, I’m not as smart as she was if I have to redo an entire assignment.

It’s the end of the day, and the corridor outside Professor Bright’s office is empty of students. Most people have gone home. I don’t have a library shift today, which means I should go straight to the study hall and start doing this damn assignment again. But there’s a bathroom nearby. And I’m walking toward it before I can think, the pressure inside me a constant ache that only one thing will get rid of.

The bathroom is mercifully as empty as the corridor, so I take the first stall and bang the door shut then lock it. I put down the toilet lid and sit, reaching for my little knife in the pocket of my backpack.

The cut I made two days ago is still healing, so I extend my other arm. There are lots of little white lines across my wrist there, too. The scars of past cuts, but they’re very faint. Faint enough that no one ever notices them.

I used to cut a lot in high school, after Wolf dropped out, joined the MC and ghosted me, but I made myself stop once I graduated. I was able to get through the first year of college okay, but this year the pressure has upped, and I feel it like a weight on my back.

The pressure is all coming from me and I know that. I’m a perfectionist and a people pleaser, which isn’t a great combination. Dad wouldn’t care if I failed, even though he’s paying for my tuition, but that’s kind of my problem. I want him to care. I need him to care. Yet whenever I talk to him about my workload or how I’m struggling, he doesn’t seem to know what to say except, “Your mother would know what to do.” Then he gets upset and I hate that, so I just don’t talk to him anymore.

Really, I wonder if Dad’s difficulties with me are due to me looking like Mom, so every time he looks at me, he sees his wife and the decision she made that killed her.

I push up my sleeve, lay my arm on my thigh, and place the blade carefully against my skin. Then I cut, clean and smooth, and the pain flows through me, washing everything away, grounding me in the here and now.

It’s fucked up that I need this, but if it gets me through the rest of this year, does it really matter? Scars heal and your body makes more blood.

The balloon in my chest is deflating, but not quickly enough, so I make another cut just below the first, shuddering as another white-hot burst of pain floods through me.

I sit for a moment with my eyes closed, letting myself float in the small agony of the cut, and all the anxiety in that fucking balloon, in my entire body, dissipates.

No, I can do this. I can do this assignment, and I’ll get an A for it at the very least. I’ll get my other assignments done, too, and I’ll rock my midterms, and everything will be fine. Everything will be absolutely fine.

Finally, I clean myself up and, still holding my knife, I let myself out of the stall. There’s no one in here, so I can rinse the blade without anyone looking at me weirdly.

I go to the sink, my pale face looming in the mirror above. I have a blue scarf wrapped around my neck, though the cold isn’t the only reason I’m wearing it. The wool has slipped, revealing one of the dark bruises that stain my skin.

I stare at it, unable to look away.

The morning after the party on the beach, I woke up to find a ring of black bruises around my neck. The marks of Lucien’s fingers from when he almost choked me. I studied them for what seemed like hours, remembering the peace that flowed through me as the pressure increased and the oddly gentle way he increased it. Then the wave of hot shame that engulfed me afterwards.

I managed to hide what had happened from Wolf, God knows how, but I did. I stood beside the bonfire laughing like nothing was wrong, while my throat throbbed and the back of my neck prickled. That’s how I knew Lucien hadn’t gone, that he was watching me from somewhere in the darkness.

Who is he and what does he really want? Something to do with the Hellhounds, obviously, and he targeted me because I’m Wolf’s friend. Probably because he thought I’d be easy to get information out of.

“Playing with me is a very bad idea, Tinkerbell. Especially when I could break that pretty neck and toss your body into the sea.”

He would have done it, too, if Wolf hadn’t arrived.

I touch the bruise on my neck gently, the silver chain of Mom’s star necklace bright against it, remembering the press of his fingers. So strong, yet warm, too. A complete contrast to his cold blue eyes and the clinical look in them, as if he was only mildly interested in how I would die.

He said he would see me “around” and if I knew what was good for me, I should have told Dad the second I got home. But he was watching TV, and all I could think about was that peaceful feeling, that surrender to the darkness, and what would happen to Dad if I died. Who would look after him? Who would cook when he needed it, and who would do laundry? Would losing me break him completely? Or would he not care?

I couldn’t face that conversation, so I turned around and went straight upstairs to bed.

Coward.

I tear my gaze from the mirror, turn the tap on, then rub my aching chest. Yeah, a coward is exactly what I am. I’m more terrified of admitting to Dad that I can’t deal with my own goddamn life than I am of a stranger’s hands around my throat. That the thought of dying at those same hands feels like a lucky escape, not the nightmare is should be.

Mom died so I could have a life, which means I have to make the most of that life. I can’t fail. Nothing less than total success will do.

I run the blade under the water, rinsing off the blood, then carefully wipe it with a paper towel. I glance in the mirror once more to check that the scarf is hiding my bruises, because I’m not explaining those, not to anyone, and meet a pair of cold eyes staring back.

Shock sweeps through me like an avalanche, and for a second all I can do is stand there, frozen in place, staring at the man reflected in the mirror.