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Rachel skipped school on Monday and Tuesday, and spent the days with her dad instead. He called in sick to work and looked after her. They took a long drive down to Bournemouth to go the beach, starting early in the morning after Imogene made breakfast, toast with cream cheese, pomegranate and walnuts.
Rachel hung bits of herself out of the car window as Harley drove, her head or her feet or her hands, and he let her pick the music.
The days passed quickly, like it was a rough sketch of time, not quite real, not quite present. As she lay her head against the seat belt on the way home, her legs crusty with salt where she’d paddled, her lips chapped from the wind, she felt more like a girl in a summer romance film than a real person.
Except girls in those films didn’t feel like there was something crawling underneath their skin, and girls in those films didn’t need their fathers to keep swatting them to stop them scratching it out.
On Monday night she got stuck, again, on thoughts of her mother and what exactly it was that was inside of her fighting to get out. While her father was helping Imogene cook she crept up to their ensuite and found the bottle of pills in the cupboard, pushing other medication aside to find the one he’d given her on Sunday, the one he made sure she took on top of all the others, twice a day till she felt better.
The bottle said Olanzapine on the side, but the label looked like it had been written by a typewriter, and the corner of the label peeled off a little too easily when she slid her fingernail underneath it. It looked different from the others which came in boxes mostly. Little foil packets with days written on them. Rachel unscrewed the lid and tipped a few pills into her hand. They looked unremarkable, unmarked. They could have been anything.
But whatever they were, they were keeping her mother’s blood at bay. Whatever he was giving her, it was working. Rachel decided she didn’t want to know. Like she didn’t want to remember the car and the river. Like she didn’t want to remember her dreams. She shouldn’t have looked. She didn’t want to know.
On Tuesday night, she managed to sleep. Not the whole night, but enough to convince her that she could handle school.
She had a free period first thing on Wednesday, so she arrived late and didn’t see any of her friends before class. It was Media Studies and she had trouble sitting still. Jiggling her legs, drumming her fingers on the desk. They always did twenty minutes of current events on Wednesday, watching news snippets from around the world and analysing them, but Rachel couldn’t keep her attention focused on one thing. She started up a conversation with Benet, who sat on her left and told her to shut up, she was trying to pay attention. So she turned to Jamaica, on her right, and whispered to her instead.
“Elaine, stop talking,” her teacher hissed. Mr Kingston leaned over her desk, resting his hand next to her exercise book where she was supposed to be taking notes. She hadn’t been; she’d been drawing spirals. She tried inefficiently to cover the paper with her hands. “And take those off,” he said, pointing at her beaded wristbands. “They’re nowhere near uniform.”
“No,” said Rachel, covering one wristband with her hand. They were wide, soft leather bands decorated with spirals of coloured beads and they were the only thing she’d been able to find in her room that would cover the bruises. She’d kept her blazer on too, even though it was warm, but the sleeves weren’t quite long enough to cover the wristbands.
“No?” Mr Kingston questioned. “I won’t have an argument with you, Miss Eos. Hand them over, right now, or you’re out of here.” He’d lost a lot of patience with her, since she’d climbed on his desk last class and he’d had to remove her.
“They won’t come off,” Rachel said, trying to pull her sleeves over her wrists. The blazer wasn’t stretchy enough for this to work. For a second Rachel thought I should have worn bandages, because there was no way he’d make her remove bandages.
But coming to school with her wrists bandaged? Everyone would notice that. Everyone would think she’d tried to kill herself. The idea of wearing bandages again was suddenly painfully funny and she couldn’t stop the short sharp laugh escaping her throat.
“You think it’s funny?” Mr Kingston demanded.
Rachel clenched her jaw together to try and stop herself laughing. How could anyone have thought that laugh was caused by humour? “No. Sorry. Please, I want to be here, I’ll be quiet.”
“I’m not bending the rules for you,” he snapped. “Off with them, or off with you.”
“Fine,” Rachel snapped back, grabbing her bag and her book and pushed back her chair so hard it fell with a clang behind her, which only added to her list of crimes. A couple of people hooted in what might have been support, though they were probably just supporting the disruption, not her.
Tears stung at her eyes as she stormed out of class. “You better head straight to the head’s office or I’ll hear about it!” Mr Kingston yelled after her. Rachel started running, her footsteps loud and echoing down the empty hallway.
She couldn’t go the headmaster’s. No way. She’d have to explain why she got kicked out of class and he’d see her wristbands and he’d make her take them off as well and if she did that he’d see the bruises. They’d really blossomed, since Sunday night, especially dark around her wrist bones where her dad had dragged her across her floor.
Instead she hid in the girl’s bathroom, locked in a stall. She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked, wincing at the sound whenever anyone came in.
I fucked up, I fucked up she thought, with each rock back and forth. She’d wanted to be in class, really. She’d tried. She’d come to school today because she thought she could handle it and she’d failed and been kicked out after less than fifteen minutes. She hadn't been able to make it through one whole class.
She could have been there hours, but she hadn't heard any bells. Time was not her friend. Minutes? Was it break yet? She swatted at spiders crawling up her arm - but there weren't any spiders.
Rachel bit down hard on her lip, and when that didn’t help, she dug her fingernails into the soft flesh of her stomach. Her nails bit between old scars, and she raked them across her stomach, feeling the skin grate away.
Rachel pulled her hands away from herself, staring at her nails. The nails themselves were clean, and bare, but bits of skin collected underneath them. “Stop it,” she hissed at herself. “Don’t do that. Do not do that.”
She put her fingers in her mouth, chewing at them, swallowing bits of her skin. She tasted like metal. You are such a freak she told herself. Super gross disgusting freak.
Go find Danny, said a better voice in her head. Just that: go find Danny.
Rachel winced as she stood up. Her stomach stung. She released herself from her cubicle and stood in front of the mirror, pulled up her shirt. The scratch marks were red against her white skin, and near the middle of some of them she could see raw flesh, but none of them were bleeding. Gross disgusting freak, she thought again, tucking her shirt hard down into her kilt.
Danny, she thought, more deliberately.
She leaned into the sink, splashing cold water on her face. She scrubbed her skin clean, and reapplied her eyeliner,, her lip gloss. There; now she didn’t look quite like she was being shaken apart by this thing inside her. Her cheeks still looked pale, and she didn't have anything on her to hide the shadows under her eyes.
You’re not fooling anyone with make up, she sneered at her reflection. Dark things skittered up the side of the mirror, made her flinch.
Rachel shook her head hard. Danny she told herself, and swirled out of the bathroom to find him. She knew where he’d be; she’d written down his timetable ages ago. He had a class on the other side of campus, but she felt the pull of him like she was a compass needle and he was her North.
There were fifteen minutes left till the bell, and morning break. Rachel sat herself down on the bench outside his classroom, where she could watch the door, and count the seconds till the class released him.
Rachel hung bits of herself out of the car window as Harley drove, her head or her feet or her hands, and he let her pick the music.
The days passed quickly, like it was a rough sketch of time, not quite real, not quite present. As she lay her head against the seat belt on the way home, her legs crusty with salt where she’d paddled, her lips chapped from the wind, she felt more like a girl in a summer romance film than a real person.
Except girls in those films didn’t feel like there was something crawling underneath their skin, and girls in those films didn’t need their fathers to keep swatting them to stop them scratching it out.
On Monday night she got stuck, again, on thoughts of her mother and what exactly it was that was inside of her fighting to get out. While her father was helping Imogene cook she crept up to their ensuite and found the bottle of pills in the cupboard, pushing other medication aside to find the one he’d given her on Sunday, the one he made sure she took on top of all the others, twice a day till she felt better.
The bottle said Olanzapine on the side, but the label looked like it had been written by a typewriter, and the corner of the label peeled off a little too easily when she slid her fingernail underneath it. It looked different from the others which came in boxes mostly. Little foil packets with days written on them. Rachel unscrewed the lid and tipped a few pills into her hand. They looked unremarkable, unmarked. They could have been anything.
But whatever they were, they were keeping her mother’s blood at bay. Whatever he was giving her, it was working. Rachel decided she didn’t want to know. Like she didn’t want to remember the car and the river. Like she didn’t want to remember her dreams. She shouldn’t have looked. She didn’t want to know.
On Tuesday night, she managed to sleep. Not the whole night, but enough to convince her that she could handle school.
She had a free period first thing on Wednesday, so she arrived late and didn’t see any of her friends before class. It was Media Studies and she had trouble sitting still. Jiggling her legs, drumming her fingers on the desk. They always did twenty minutes of current events on Wednesday, watching news snippets from around the world and analysing them, but Rachel couldn’t keep her attention focused on one thing. She started up a conversation with Benet, who sat on her left and told her to shut up, she was trying to pay attention. So she turned to Jamaica, on her right, and whispered to her instead.
“Elaine, stop talking,” her teacher hissed. Mr Kingston leaned over her desk, resting his hand next to her exercise book where she was supposed to be taking notes. She hadn’t been; she’d been drawing spirals. She tried inefficiently to cover the paper with her hands. “And take those off,” he said, pointing at her beaded wristbands. “They’re nowhere near uniform.”
“No,” said Rachel, covering one wristband with her hand. They were wide, soft leather bands decorated with spirals of coloured beads and they were the only thing she’d been able to find in her room that would cover the bruises. She’d kept her blazer on too, even though it was warm, but the sleeves weren’t quite long enough to cover the wristbands.
“No?” Mr Kingston questioned. “I won’t have an argument with you, Miss Eos. Hand them over, right now, or you’re out of here.” He’d lost a lot of patience with her, since she’d climbed on his desk last class and he’d had to remove her.
“They won’t come off,” Rachel said, trying to pull her sleeves over her wrists. The blazer wasn’t stretchy enough for this to work. For a second Rachel thought I should have worn bandages, because there was no way he’d make her remove bandages.
But coming to school with her wrists bandaged? Everyone would notice that. Everyone would think she’d tried to kill herself. The idea of wearing bandages again was suddenly painfully funny and she couldn’t stop the short sharp laugh escaping her throat.
“You think it’s funny?” Mr Kingston demanded.
Rachel clenched her jaw together to try and stop herself laughing. How could anyone have thought that laugh was caused by humour? “No. Sorry. Please, I want to be here, I’ll be quiet.”
“I’m not bending the rules for you,” he snapped. “Off with them, or off with you.”
“Fine,” Rachel snapped back, grabbing her bag and her book and pushed back her chair so hard it fell with a clang behind her, which only added to her list of crimes. A couple of people hooted in what might have been support, though they were probably just supporting the disruption, not her.
Tears stung at her eyes as she stormed out of class. “You better head straight to the head’s office or I’ll hear about it!” Mr Kingston yelled after her. Rachel started running, her footsteps loud and echoing down the empty hallway.
She couldn’t go the headmaster’s. No way. She’d have to explain why she got kicked out of class and he’d see her wristbands and he’d make her take them off as well and if she did that he’d see the bruises. They’d really blossomed, since Sunday night, especially dark around her wrist bones where her dad had dragged her across her floor.
Instead she hid in the girl’s bathroom, locked in a stall. She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked, wincing at the sound whenever anyone came in.
I fucked up, I fucked up she thought, with each rock back and forth. She’d wanted to be in class, really. She’d tried. She’d come to school today because she thought she could handle it and she’d failed and been kicked out after less than fifteen minutes. She hadn't been able to make it through one whole class.
She could have been there hours, but she hadn't heard any bells. Time was not her friend. Minutes? Was it break yet? She swatted at spiders crawling up her arm - but there weren't any spiders.
Rachel bit down hard on her lip, and when that didn’t help, she dug her fingernails into the soft flesh of her stomach. Her nails bit between old scars, and she raked them across her stomach, feeling the skin grate away.
Rachel pulled her hands away from herself, staring at her nails. The nails themselves were clean, and bare, but bits of skin collected underneath them. “Stop it,” she hissed at herself. “Don’t do that. Do not do that.”
She put her fingers in her mouth, chewing at them, swallowing bits of her skin. She tasted like metal. You are such a freak she told herself. Super gross disgusting freak.
Go find Danny, said a better voice in her head. Just that: go find Danny.
Rachel winced as she stood up. Her stomach stung. She released herself from her cubicle and stood in front of the mirror, pulled up her shirt. The scratch marks were red against her white skin, and near the middle of some of them she could see raw flesh, but none of them were bleeding. Gross disgusting freak, she thought again, tucking her shirt hard down into her kilt.
Danny, she thought, more deliberately.
She leaned into the sink, splashing cold water on her face. She scrubbed her skin clean, and reapplied her eyeliner,, her lip gloss. There; now she didn’t look quite like she was being shaken apart by this thing inside her. Her cheeks still looked pale, and she didn't have anything on her to hide the shadows under her eyes.
You’re not fooling anyone with make up, she sneered at her reflection. Dark things skittered up the side of the mirror, made her flinch.
Rachel shook her head hard. Danny she told herself, and swirled out of the bathroom to find him. She knew where he’d be; she’d written down his timetable ages ago. He had a class on the other side of campus, but she felt the pull of him like she was a compass needle and he was her North.
There were fifteen minutes left till the bell, and morning break. Rachel sat herself down on the bench outside his classroom, where she could watch the door, and count the seconds till the class released him.
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no subject
Date: 2014-05-07 03:34 pm (UTC)From:"Whoa," he swerved and went to park beside her, worry written across his face. "Hey," he said, leaning close. "Missed you. You okay?"
no subject
Date: 2014-05-08 12:27 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 04:15 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 11:16 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 11:19 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 11:29 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 11:32 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 11:51 am (UTC)From:"I feel like I'm made of electricity," she said, once they were far enough away from the classrooms. "Or everything else is, maybe. All the other people, zap. Loud noises, zap." She shuddered, not in disgust, but like her body was trying to shake something out of her. Like she's been still for too long, had too many zaps building up inside her.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 01:11 pm (UTC)From:He walked slowly, to make sure she didn't feel rushed. "Do you feel like this a lot?" he asked worriedly.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-10 11:42 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-05-11 12:37 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-05-11 12:53 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-05-11 12:58 am (UTC)From:"Seeing a therapist doesn't always mean you're doing badly though. Sometimes it can just be an outside voice to chat about things."
no subject
Date: 2014-05-11 01:02 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-05-11 01:09 am (UTC)From:"Of course I will," he said, glad she was holding onto him. "I always will."
no subject
Date: 2014-05-11 01:22 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-05-11 01:28 am (UTC)From:"Rachel," he leaned in to kiss her forehead, "no matter what. You're still you. We found out Zoe is a psychic, but she's still Zoe. It wouldn't matter to me."
no subject
Date: 2014-05-11 01:35 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-05-11 01:42 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-05-11 02:03 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-05-11 02:14 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-05-11 02:22 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-05-11 02:25 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-05-11 02:34 am (UTC)From:Although she could be calculating sometimes, couldn't she? Rachel remembered sneaking into the emergency kits to borrow the credit card, and setting up her secret second phone with fake profiles, and all the little things she'd done over the years to steal alcohol from her father.
Rachel frowned as they walked up toward his house. "I don't even know who I am sometimes, don't know if I'd hurt anyone else or not."
no subject
Date: 2014-05-11 02:38 am (UTC)From:"I don't know if anyone ever knows who they are sometimes. I don't." Maybe she meant something else thought.