Chapter 38 Thirty eight
Chapter 38 Thirty eight
Zara
I woke up to sunlight streaming through the curtains I had forgotten to close, and for one blissful moment I did not remember, did not feel anything except the warmth of my blankets and the sound of birds outside my window. Then I turned my head too fast and my cheek brushed against the pillow the pain shot through me like a punishment, like my own body telling me that I could not forget, could not escape, could not pretend that the past two days had not happened.
My phone was buzzing on the nightstand, message after message lighting up the screen, I reached for it with a hand that was still shaking slightly, still weak from lack of sleep and the constant low-grade terror that had been in my chest since I walked out of my father's house. Clara had texted me at 6am, then at 7am, then at 7:30am, mostly just checking in, making sure I was awake, making sure I had not done something stupid in the middle of the night when I was alone with my thoughts and the memory of my father's hand against my face.
Clara: We are coming over at 9. Do not argue. You need to eat and talk, you need to stop being alone with your thoughts before they eat you alive.
Mia: I am bringing bagels and coffee. If you do not open the door I will break it down. You know I will.
I smiled despite myself, a small broken thing that barely lifted the corners of my mouth, but it was something, it was the first something I had felt since I left my father's house that was not pain or numbness that scared me more than the tears did.
Me: I am awake and the door is unlocked. See you soon.
I forced myself out of bed, into the bathroom, forced myself to look at my reflection in the mirror even though I did not want to see what was looking back at me. The bruise on my cheek had darkened overnight, shifting from red to purple, it spread from my cheekbone down toward my jaw like a stain I could not wash off no matter how hard I scrubbed. My eyes were puffy and red-rimmed, my hair was a tangled mess, I looked exactly like what I was, which was a girl who had been hit by her father and accused of being a slut and was slowly falling apart.
I splashed cold water on my face, pulled my hair back into a messy ponytail, and then I made my way to the living room to wait for my friends.
Clara and Mia arrived at 9:am, Mia carrying a paper bag that smelled like sesame bagels and cream cheese, Clara carrying two large coffees in a cardboard tray and a look on her face that was equal parts concern and determination. They let themselves in, of course they did, I had left the door unlocked and they had been here a thousand times before. There was something about seeing them walk through my door that made my eyes sting with tears I had not cried yet this morning.
"Okay," Mia said, dropping the bag on my kitchen counter and pulling out bagels, a tub of cream cheese and a handful of napkins that she spread across the surface. "We are going to eat, talk, and figure out what comes next, and you are not allowed to say 'I do not know' or 'I am fine' or 'do not worry about me' because we are your best friends and it is literally our job to worry about you and help you figure things out when your life is falling apart."
Clara handed me a coffee and wrapped both of her hands around her own cup. "How are you feeling?" she asked, her voice was gentle, careful, like she was afraid I might shatter if she spoke too loud.
"How am I feeling?" I laughed, it was not a happy laugh, was not even a bitter laugh, was just a sound that came out of my mouth because I did not know what else to do with the pressure building behind my ribs. "I feel like someone took my life and threw it in a blender and pressed puree. I feel like I have been crying for two days straight and I still have more tears left somehow. My father looked at me and saw a slut instead of his daughter and decided that anonymous letter was more believable than anything I had to say. I feel like I am standing in the middle of a room that is on fire and I do not know which way the door is."
Mia handed me a bagel, shoved it into my hands like it was medicine I needed to take, and pointed at the couch until I sat down. "Eat," she said. "Before you pass out. You cannot fight your battles on an empty stomach, Zara, and whether you like it or not you are in a battle right now, and you are going to need your strength."
I took a bite of the bagel because she was right, the cream cheese was too cold and the bagel was slightly stale and I did not taste any of it, but chewing was something to focus on, something that kept me from falling back into that spiral of fear and shame that had been dragging me down since I left my father's house.
"We need to talk about Kane," Clara said, sitting down on the couch next to me, close enough that our shoulders touched "I know you do not want to, I know you are scared, but he needs to know about the letter, Zara, he needs to know that someone is targeting both of you, and he needs to know that your father is now involved, whatever happens next is going to involve him whether you want it to or not."
I put my bagel down on the coffee table my stomach had started to turn at the mention of his name, not because I did not want to see him but because I was terrified of what he would say, what he would do, how he would look at me when he found out that my father had hit me. "I know," I said, and my voice was barely a whisper. "I know I need to tell him. I just... I do not know how. I do not know what to say. I do not know how to look him in the eyes and tell him that my father slapped me across the face because someone sent him an anonymous letter calling me a slut and that our secret is not a secret anymore, that other people know and they are using it against us."
Mia sat down on my other side, sandwiching me between them her voice was softer than usual, gentler, like she was talking to a wounded animal. "You start at the beginning," she said. "You tell him what happened with your dad. You show him the bruise on your face if he does not believe you. He loves you, Zara. I have seen the way he looks at you. He is not going to run away because things got hard. He is going to fight for you."
I wanted to believe her, wanted to believe that Darren would stand by me no matter what, but there was a part of me that was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, still waiting for him to say that I was not worth the risk, that the trouble I brought with me was too heavy and the price of being with me was higher than he was willing to pay.
"What about Ethan and Becca?" Clara asked. "What are we going to do about them?"
"We cannot prove anything," I said. "Not yet. The letter to my father was anonymous. There is no way to trace it back to either of them and even if I went to the dean or the police, what would I say? 'I think two students are threatening me because they know I am sleeping with my professor'? That would ruin me before it ruined them."
Mia nodded slowly, her brow furrowed, her lips pressed together in a thin line. "So we do not go to the dean. Not yet. We watch them the way they have been watching you. We gather evidence and we wait for them to make a mistake."
"And in the meantime?" Clara asked. "We just let them keep threatening her? We just let her father believe she is a slut? We just let everything fall apart while we sit here eating bagels and waiting for something to happen?"
"No," I said, and something in my voice made both of them turn to look at me. "We do not just wait, we fight back. We start by telling Darren everything, like you said. Then we figure out what Ethan and Becca want and we find a way to take it away from them. Then we protect ourselves however we have to."
Clara smiled, the first one I had seen on her face since all of this started. "There she is. I was wondering when you were going to show up."
"Been here the whole time," I said. "Just had to remember how to stand up."
Mia reached over and grabbed my hand, squeezing hard. "We are with you. Whatever you need, whenever you need it. We are not letting you go through this alone."
I looked at my two best friends, at the fierce love in their eyes and the way they had shown up for me without hesitation, without judgment, without asking for anything in return, I felt something inside me, something that had been broken start to mend, just a little.
"Thank you," I said the words were not enough, would never be enough, but I said them anyway because they were true. "I do not know what I would do without you."
"Good thing you will never have to find out," Clara said.
For a few minutes, sitting between them on my beat-up couch with my coffee growing cold and my bagel half-eaten and my cheek still throbbing with the memory of my father's hand, I almost believed that everything was going to be okay.
Almost.
But the fear was still there, lurking at the edges, waiting for me to let my guard down and somewhere out there, Ethan and Becca were still watching, still planning, still waiting for their moment to strike.