Page 24 of Ladybirds

Her professor’s voice makes her jump. “I’m sorry. Am I boring you, Miss Bennett?”

Yes, she thinks, but the heat crawling up her neck and the weight of her classmates’ stares makes her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth. Awkwardly, her fingers fumble for the power button. “Sorry,” she mutters, “I was just turning it off.”

Mr. Kent looks down his long nose, this thin face pulling into a sneer. “Phones should be turned off before class. Not during.” How he manages to still sound toneless even while his expression screams irritation is a mystery.

“Sorry,” she echoes, shrinking in her seat. Mentally, she adds ‘professor is a total dick’ to her list of reasons why this class might be just as bad as British Literature.

There’s a voicemail waiting for her when she gets out of class.

It’s still probably just a telemarketer call (they seem to be the only ones that bother with voicemails anymore) but she decides to listen anyway. Part of her is just curious to see what the latest scam is—it’s been a while since she got the one about the car payment she didn’t have being overdue. Longer still since anyone’s called about her “home warranty”.

She brings the phone to her ear, dodging the other students as she fights her way through the narrow halls. The voice that plays isn’t a recording, but it’s unfamiliar—an older sounding gentleman.

“Miss Bennett? This is Dr. Hastings from Valley Creek Medical Hospital. I need you to give me a call back as soon as you can. It’s in regards to your grandmother.”

The chill she gets is instant, heavy on her chest and shattering the breath in her lungs like glass. She’s frozen. Students move around her, shoulders checking hers as they dodge her.

Sara doesn’t feel any of it.

She doesn’t feel anything.

CHAPTER TWELVE

She runs up her apartment steps, shoes slapping painfully against the aged tile. Sara doesn’t care. Her heart is hammering in her chest; a war drum in her ears. A blistering combination of worry and fear that leaves her lungs burning and her skin flushed. In her bag, she feels her cell phone slap against her thigh with every lunging step.

She just needs her car key—run in, run out, drive. It repeats, a mantra to keep her steady. Her hand shakes as she fits the key into her lock, and she nearly breaks it off with how hard she turns it, but she doesn’t care. She shoves it open, the adjacent wall saved only by the twang of the doorstop.

The car key should be in the kitchen—it’s always in the kitchen, hanging on the hook just beside the fridge.

From his—no, her wingback chair, Seth’s voice reaches her. “Well now, that was dramatic.”

Taunting. Always taunting.

Her blood freezes, face paling. She hadn’t even considered the possibility—she hadn’t had the time to—but there he sits, elegant and poised, and now she wonders how she could have ever overlooked it.

“It was you.” A statement. A fact. She won’t let him convince her of anything else.

He scoffs, but the teasing glint fades from his eyes. “Was it now?”

“How could you?” The words are breathy, barely audible between her heaving gasps, but the edges of each syllable are serrated—Sara hopes they cut him to the bone.

His stare is wary, eyes flitting between her clenched fists and her barred teeth. Slowly, he stands. Sara finds a small amount of satisfaction in the careful way he approaches her—as if she were wild. As if she were dangerous. “Princess, I haven’t the faintest idea what you're on about.”

It’s too much. Him pretending not to know is worse than him denying it, and all the fear and anger she’s harbored since receiving the call increases tenfold—burning her chest and spilling down her cheeks. The instinct to hurt him is overwhelming.

Her fist flies.

She knows it will pass through him, knows that it won’t inflict the pain she wants it to, but her eyes are blurry and the pain in her chest is only coiling tighter. She just wants him to hurt. Wants to seek whatever shred of satisfaction she might find in watching her fist pass through his stupid face.

Her knuckles meet flesh—cracking painfully against his jaw—and he staggers. His eyes, as wide as her own, are open in ways she won’t let herself notice. The wounded expression—the shock parting his mouth—it’s either her imagination or a trick and she won’t be lured in by it. She won’t.

He flees, between one blink and the next, and Sara stands alone in her living room with aching knuckles and a hammering heart. Her knees fail her, exhaustion cresting over the anger, and she slides to the floor.

She hates that, even in the midst of her hiccuping sob, she keeps thinking back to the dismay that shone in Seth’s eyes the moment before he blinked away.

It takes half an hour before she feels safe enough to drive.

When she puts the key in the ignition, she can feel the hysteria begin to bubble—a pressure in her throat, a hiccup in her lungs—but she forces herself to breathe through it.

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