Chapter 32 Thirty two
Chapter 32 Thirty two
Zara
"So you are just going to sit there and stare at your food?"
Mia's voice cut through my thoughts, I looked up from the tray of french fries I had been pushing around for the past ten minutes without actually eating any of them. Clara was watching, her eyes were also full of worry.
"I am not hungry," I said.
"You are never hungry anymore," Clara said. "You just push food around your plate and make sad faces and jump every time someone walks past our table. It is getting old, Zara."
"Sorry if my existential terror is inconveniencing you."
Mia stole a fry off my tray and pointed it at me like a weapon. "Your existential terror is inconveniencing all of us actually, we have to sit here and watch you fall apart while pretending that everything is fine, and it is not fine, we know it is not fine, but you will not talk about it and you will not do anything about it and you are driving us crazy."
"I talked about it yesterday."
"You mentioned Becca's name and then changed the subject," Clara said. "That is not talking that is avoiding."
I opened my mouth to argue, but the words died in my throat. I saw him walk through the cafeteria doors, tray in hand and dirty-blond hair falling across his forehead, and my stomach dropped.
"Fuck," I whispered.
Mia followed my gaze and groaned. "Oh great, here comes Ethan as if this day was not already terrible enough."
"Do not look at him," Clara said, grabbing my hand under the table. "Pretend you do not see him. Maybe he will just grab his food and sit somewhere else for once."
But I could not pretend, could not look away, Ethan was not heading toward the food line like a normal person, he was heading straight toward our table with that smile on his face that made my skin crawl.
"Zara," he said when he reached us, his voice cheerful, like we were old friends and not two people who had spent the past year in a cycle of rejection and obsession. "I have been looking for you all day."
"Clearly not hard enough," Mia muttered.
Ethan ignored her. His eyes stayed on me, fixed on me, there was something different about the way he was looking at me today.
"What do you want, Ethan?" Clara asked, her voice flat. "She does not want to talk to you. We have told you this like a million times."
"I just want to give her something." He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. "I wrote you a letter. Read it when you are alone. I think it will explain a lot."
I stared at the letter in his hand "I do not want your letter, Ethan. I want you to leave me alone."
"Just take it." He held it out toward me. "Read it or throw it away, I do not care. But at least take it."
"Take the letter, Zara," Mia said through gritted teeth, "so he will go away."
I reached out and took the letter from his hand, careful not to touch his fingers the moment it was in my possession he smiled wider.
"Thank you," he said. "That is all I wanted. I will leave you alone now." He turned and walked away.
"What the fuck was that?" Clara asked, leaning across the table to look at the letter in my hand.
"I do not know." I turned it over, but there was nothing on the outside, no name, no return address, just a blank cream-colored envelope with my name written across the front in handwriting I did not recognize. "Should I open it?"
"Obviously," Mia said. "Open it right now. I want to know what kind of creepy shit he wrote in there."
I slid my finger under the seal and unfolded the paper, the handwriting inside was small and neat and cramped, like he had been trying to fit as many words as possible onto a single page.
"What does it say?" Clara asked.
I read it out loud, my voice shaking.
"Dear Zara. I have been watching you for a long time. Longer than you know. I have seen the way you look at him and the way he looks at you and I know what you are hiding. You think you are careful but you are not careful enough. Other people have noticed too. People who want what you have and are willing to take it. I am not your enemy, Zara. I am the only person who actually cares about you. But if you keep pushing me away, I will not have a choice. I will have to do something. I will have to tell someone and once the truth is out, neither of us will be able to take it back. Think about that before you ignore me again. Yours, Ethan."
I looked up from the letter, Clara and Mia were both staring at me with identical expressions of horror and disgust.
"That is a threat," Mia said. "That is literally a threat. He just threatened you in writing."
"It is not a threat," Clara said, but her voice wavered. "It is... it is a warning. He is saying he knows about you and Kane."
"He is saying other people know too," I said, and my voice came out empty and small. "He is saying Becca knows and God knows who else and they are going to do something if I do not..."
I could not finish the sentence.
"Do not what?" Mia asked. "Do not ignore him? Do not reject him? What does he want from you?"
"He wants me to choose him," I said, and the words tasted like ash in my mouth. "He wants me to pick him over Darren and if I do not, he is going to ruin both of us."
Clara grabbed the letter from my hand and read it again, her lips moving silently, her brow furrowed. "We need to keep this," she said. "This is evidence. If he tries anything, if he actually goes to the dean or something, this letter proves he was threatening you."
"Does it, though?" Mia asked. "He did not actually say what he knows. He did not actually name names. He just said 'I know what you are hiding' and 'people want what you have.' That is vague. He could deny it."
"He will deny it," I said. "He is not stupid. He knows exactly what he is doing. He wrote this letter so he could scare me without giving me anything I could actually use against him."
Mia slammed her hand on the table hard enough that a few people at nearby tables looked over. "So what are we going to do? We cannot just let him get away with this. We cannot just sit here and wait for him to ruin your life."
"We are not going to do anything," I said, folding the letter and shoving it into my pocket. "I am going to keep this letter somewhere safe, and pretend like nothing happened, I just hope that Ethan is all talk and no action."
"That is a terrible plan," Clara said.
"I know."
"You cannot just hope a problem goes away, Zara. That is not how any of this works."
"I know that too."
Mia leaned across the table and grabbed my arm, her nails digging into my skin. "Then what are you going to do?"
I looked at the cafeteria doors where Ethan had disappeared, "I am going to talk to Darren," I said. "Tonight. I am going to tell him everything."
Clara and Mia exchanged a look.
"Finally," Mia said. "Took you long enough."
I did not smile...could not smile. All I could think about was the letter in my pocket, the threat hidden between its line
s and the fact that my life was slowly turning into a nightmare I did not know how to wake up from.