Chapter 93. Floating

Chapter 93. Floating
I walked back into school on legs that didn’t feel like mine, the north-door glass closing with a hiss behind me. The hallway was mostly empty—third-period classes humming behind cinder-block walls—but fluorescent light still felt too bright, too exposing. My breath stuttered. Every inhale tasted like antiseptic floor polish and the metallic tang of betrayal.
I ducked into the first-floor girls’ restroom. The moment the door swung shut, I braced both palms against the sink. Water blasted from the tap; I splashed my cheeks until the chill bit. Pink hair dripped onto my collar, plastering strands to my skin. When I finally looked up, the girl in the spotted mirror had splotchy eyes and mascara half-moons. A single Sharpie memory flashed—LESBO—and nausea rolled.
Irene.
Morning latte and apology croissant Irene.
Hooded-crew, rest-stop-terror Irene.
My stomach twisted. She’d said she’d show up, ask what I needed. But kidnapping wasn’t protection—it was cruelty wrapped in armor, the kind Diana herself might have worn if she’d had stronger fists. I pressed the damp paper towel to my eyes.
Was it all Irene? The anonymous notes? The creeping figure Diana kept swearing she saw? I tried to recall every timeline scrap, every day Irene had disappeared early or arrived late, and a cold realization unspooled: the patterns matched. But even if some friend had carried pieces out for her, she was still the architect.
A flush in the stall behind me made me startle; I shoved out before whoever it was could see my face, then ducked down a side stairwell. Each step hammered out the questions looping in my skull:
Can I forgive her?
Do I even want to?
Does love always have to hurt this much?
Irene’s words replayed—I’ll wait as long as it takes. The sincerity in her eyes had been real, but sincerity didn’t erase a felony. It didn’t unwrite the fear Diana would carry forever, same as I carried the janitor-closet damp or the chill of a Sharpie point against my skin. Violence leaves stains you can’t scrub.
I walked—no, barreled—down the math wing, barely registering the squeak of soles on waxed linoleum, the slam of a locker someone kicked in frustration two doors over. Anger throbbed behind my eyes like migraine aura. Irene’s voice—_“Em, listen—this is not what you think”—_kept looping, tinny, useless, swallowed by that single ringing word: kidnap.
Cruel. She’d promised no more storms without warning. Promised honesty, small steps, breakfast peace offerings. Yet somewhere between croissants and chemistry she’d hired strangers to grab a girl and dump her on a highway shoulder. How many secrets stacked behind that one? The Sharpie slur, the closet lock, the shadow Diana swore she kept seeing—were those Irene, too? Her and Boris and the rest, plotting justice like it was a group service project?
Anger spiked, but crumbled under something heavier—disappointment thick as syrup, coating every thought until nothing tasted right. The Irene who cupped my chin so gently Sunday night: Did she exist alongside this vengeful mastermind, or were they the same girl wearing two faces? The question clattered through my skull like loose change.
I cut through the foreign-language hall, past the posters of Eiffel Towers and “¡Bienvenidos!” speech bubbles. Words blurred. My hands shook. I kept seeing Diana’s shock-paled face during the interview— mascara streaks, blanket tugged to her chin. I’d hated her. Hated the way she made me feel less than dirt. Yet picturing her alone on a deserted exit ramp made my stomach twist so violently I pressed a hand to it.
Why didn’t Irene tell me? Why keep me outside the circle when it was supposedly all for my protection? Maybe she feared I’d try to stop her. Maybe she knew I’d never condone it. The secrecy hurt worse than the act—no, that’s not true. Both hurt, in different keys: one sharp, one bass. Together they made a dissonant chord I couldn’t tune out.
My mind ricocheted to Lara’s rooftop, the quiet hush of telescope gears. She’d said calm wasn’t betrayal. Was that true? Why did calm feel impossible inside my skin right now?
I drifted into an empty stairwell and leaned against the cool brick, breathing like I’d run a mile. The rational part of my brain tried to assemble pros and cons, but everything blurred. Was Irene irredeemable? People mess up. People learn. But kidnapping? Relocation. God, it sounded like some twisted school field trip.
I remembered Mom’s porch advice: choose someone who supports and loves you. Did orchestrating fear equal love? Protection, maybe—but protection without consent could be another kind of control, couldn’t it? Josh had “protected” me from guys by treating me like property.
Thought spiraled tighter. Irene had asked me to call her out if she slipped back into old habits. Did this count? It felt bigger than a slip; it felt like falling off a cliff she never told me we were hiking.
My eyes stung. I didn’t want to cry in the stairwell, but tears pushed anyway. I clenched the railing until the metal bit my palm. Part of me wanted to march back, demand answers. Part wanted to run home, crawl into bed, block every name in my phone. Another part—a lonely, traitorous corner—wanted Irene to chase me, explain everything, swear change again.
But what if change was a loop we’d spin forever, each promise thinner than the last?
A footstep echoed above; I wiped my eyes and slipped out before anyone saw. The bell rang, doors opened, laughter spilled—normal school noise galloping over my raw thoughts. I kept walking until I wound up in the library, slid into a carrel between world-atlas volumes, and let my backpack slump. The hum of fluorescent lights overhead felt like a heartbeat outside my body.
I pulled out my planner. Lara’s star sticker glimmered on the cover. Calm after the storm. Did calm exist if storms always found me? Or did I make them, choose them, like some moth chasing bright pain? I didn’t want that to be true, but doubt gnawed.
Minutes ticked. I doodled spirals on a sticky note, wrote Finish what? and immediately scratched it out. No answers came. Maybe they wouldn’t today—or ever. All I knew was heaviness in my chest and the echo of Irene’s “Em—this is not what you think” still ringing hollow.
I rested my head on folded arms. No decisions, no grand epiphanies. Just the low throb of betrayal, the confusing residue of love, and a brain looping the same unanswerable questions until the next bell would yank me up again.