Page 85 of Noxious Boys (Groveton College)

“If you hurt her again,” she whispers, dark and threatening, “I’l-”

“I won’t.”

Not unless she wants us to hurt together.

Emma’s dark eyes narrow the tiniest amount, squinting at the inner corners, the skin tightening and then she smooths out her expression, nods, glancing back over her shoulder at Poppy, the girl I can’t stand to look at yet.

“I’m gonna come back later, sweetie,” Emma says softly, waiting.

Chin over her shoulder, her gaze on Poppy. My own focusing on the top of the wall over her head of thick braids. When she waits a few more long seconds, eyes still on Poppy, and still gets no response, inhaling deeply, she sighs, turning back to me.

“I’m right across the hall,” she glares at me as she says it, low and slow beneath her breath, a warning I grit my teeth at, but I’m nodding all the same, wanting to get fucking rid of her.

I don’t move, barely breathing as the two girls from the dorm opposite leave. I wait for the door to click closed at my back, the tapping of their soft footsteps across the corridor, whispering as their own door opens and closes.

There’s silence, the drumming of my heart loud in my ears, but I can still hear her breathing, the soft, low sound of it. Slow, even inhales and exhales of air and my eyes drag to her without permission.

Poppy sits atop her bed, her body upright, leaning against the wall in the corner of the room. Her mass of thick hair curtained around her face, forward over her shoulders, knees drawn up to her chest, but she doesn’t cling to them. Her arms lie limp, one in her lap, the other at her side, palm up on the bed. She stares off towards the other side of the room, side onto me where I still hover just inside the center of the room, door at my back.

“Poppy?” I whisper unintentionally, my voice cracking, I lick my lips, moving closer, my eyes only on her.

My insides swirl, sickness like a razored lead weight in my gut, as I get a clearer look at her, the bruising on her beautiful face, the red marks around her wrists. I edge closer, holding my breath, watching, waiting for her to react, to see me. To tell me to get away. To scream. To do something. Anything.

I reach out, fingertips just brushing her inner elbow and she flinches so hard her shoulder thuds into the wall.

I retract my hand, letting it hang at my side, her eyes on me now, arms crossing tight in her lap, to her chest.

I don’t know what to do, how to stand, what to feel. Let alone know what to say. I hover, it feels like, between time and space. Indecision warring inside of me as she continues to stare, unblinking, unseeing. The tips of my fingers burning like I was singed by her skin when I touched her.

I take a step back, licking my lips, holding her gaze, but it’s as though she looks right through me. As though I’m not even here.

Sweat forming beneath my arms, I feel uneasy, hot, cold, goosebumps rippling my flesh. I could walk away, say nothing, leave her the fuck alone. It’s probably what Ishoulddo, but, instead, I shuffle towards the end of her bed, leaving her at the top end, me sitting at the foot of it. I clasp my hands, lacing my fingers together, elbows to my spread knees. I stare at the carpet between us, a glow from the little twinkling lights around the window cast my shadow long, my eyes tracing the silhouette of myself, her shadow not beside mine, her body too curled up in the corner to reveal her.

I think about telling her I’m sorry, it’s what I should start with. An apology. But it just feels wrong. Not authentic, pointless. I don’t have any way of showing her how sorry I am. I just want to explain to her. Not so sheunderstands,just so she knows. I just want her to know what happened, why I did what I did.

That it wasn’t her.

You did nothing wrong, beautiful girl. It was all me, me, me. I’m the one that’s broken.

I’m fucked up.

I ruin things.

People.

I wanted to keep you.

“When I was fourteen, I drank beer for the first time.” I think back to that, Raiden’s dad held a family barbecue, all the neighbors came. “We snuck some cans from the ice buckets, drank them down the side of the house in some bushes.” I glance up, looking at her still looking through me. “I hated it,” I shrug, “but that didn’t stop me from always joining in. It was Hendrix who smoked first, King was never into it, he just cared about sports. And I just wanted to make sure I always fit in. So I did both. Whatever either one of them did, I made sure I did it too.”

So they couldn’t leave me behind.

I shake my head at myself, thinking of all the stupid shit I’ve done because I wanted to fit. I spent all my life attempting to fit in with people who never needed me to. I fit with them because they liked me for me. Loved me.

“Senior year of high school was when I really started partying, hard liquor, hard drugs. I thought it was like social smoking. Thought I’d just get high on the weekends, Fridays, Saturdays. I was more fun, people wanted to hang around me. I was popular, it was… heady, I guess, which is dumb, cause I never really gave a fuck about popularity. Then I got here and it was the same, but free-er. Drugs were now Wednesdays after eleven because I didn’t have class on a Thursday, only hockey practice at seven and I could get high all night, sleep it off for a few hours, drag my ass to practice.”

My brow furrows a little, staring into the shadowed room, my bed, I’ve slept in twice, pushed flush against the opposite wall, my crinkled sheets still in a ball, untouched from the last time I slept here. It makes me think of last year, how I was never in my own bed then, either.

“When I started bursting into my classes at the wrong times on the wrong days, sleeping in random houses, cars, abandoned buildings.” I swallow. Hard. “I wanted to die,” I whisper the words into the room, “I tried to,” I swallow, “I switched pills forneedles and hoped an accidental overdose would take me out. And when that didn’t work, I cut myself open, trying to end it all, but Rex found me.” Focussing on my shadow, climbing the opposite wall with the soft orange glow at my back from her lights around the window, a sliver of light slicing in from the streetlamp beyond it. “What does…” I trail off, thinking about my question. Words hushed, “What does it feel like for you, getting high?”

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