Page 64 of Forget Me Twice

I’m in control.

Nobody knows just how in over my head I am.

I can stop at any time.

The lies we tell ourselves on a daily basis. Anything to get through the day. Through to the next fix. Next hit. Next shot.

The tremor in my left hand, and the sweat now carving a trail under the collar of my Academy-issued polo shirt, just serve to emphasize how ridiculously shaky that self-deceit is.

After Apollo dropped me off outside the dorms, I spent the rest of the weekend both recovering from the effects of the taintedAsphodel, and seething all over again about handing the Prefects the edge in the first place.

With the looks I’ve been getting this morning, it’s actually more probable that the vast majority of the senior class now know my secret. I should have expected it to happen sooner. Rox Academy is a viper’s pit of bored, vindictive young adults, after all.

What it means is that I’m no doubt going to be the hot topic of conversation once again, and my job as a recruiter is going to be that much harder.

To make matters worse, my ambush on Saturday night meant that I failed in the task I had originally entered that room for, and now I’m on day three of depending solely on my flask for moral support.

To say I’m ahot messwould be putting it mildly.

Twenty four plus hours of withdrawals hasn’t stopped me from penning the mental shit-list of students that I needed to craft revenge plans for, however. I’m still able to be creative, even with a raging headache and wicked cottonmouth.

The harsh clang of a metal locker right next to my ear yanks me out of my melancholy, reminding me that I’m standing in the middle of the girl’s locker room, still covered in sweat from my late-morning Gym class.

Groaning, I bend down stiffly and retrieve a change of clothes and my toiletries, before shuffling my way towards the showers. As I round the corner to where the shower stalls are, I’m relieved to see that I seem to be the last girl left. A damp mist hangs in the air, but I can’t hear any running water, or see any silhouettes still getting dressed.

Choosing the shower at the end of the line, I drop my things on the bench seat and hurry to crank the tap on for the hot water. The tiled stalls are all open door, with only a shoulder high partition separating them. It means I have to be especially careful while getting undressed. The steam makes a good cover.

I begin to strip, suddenly keen to wash away both the perspiration from my grueling athletics session and the flop sweat of my ongoing detox. Just as the last of my sports gear comes off, and I’m about to turn my back to the scalding water, I hear a low whistle of appreciation.

“Nice ink,” a feminine voice that I don’t immediately recognize says from behind me. I freeze.

Fuck.Fuck.This isexactlywhy I’m supposed to be on my guard. But even though there hadn’t been nearly enough steam in here yet to hide me completely, I’d thought I’d been alone.

I didn’t physically check all the stalls though did I? The other locker bays before I left to shower?

No. I didn’t.

I’ve slowly been losing more and more of my edge since I got here.

Christ.Who am I fucking kidding? This startedwellbefore I got to Roxborough. I’ve just always had my Crew to step in and stop me before I could manage to royally fuck things up.

I should have seen this coming. Now that I’ve been forced to fend for myself, the cracks in my discipline and training are simply becoming more pronounced. It was only a matter of time before I lost my grip on those last vestiges of self-control and someone else paid the price for one of my failures.

Grudgingly, I turn and findZoe Elizabeth Nguyen, 17. State volleyball team. Scholarship student. Two older siblings, both graduated from Rox Academy and employed by the City.

She’s standing in front of my stall, fully clothed, phone in one hand. Her dark hair is wet and combed back from her own shower. She must have been bent over, getting dressed somewhere out of sight and why I didn’t see her on my piss-poor survey of the room.

I have no idea what’s possessed her to walk all the way down the line to my shower, but her round face appears open and guileless. Most likely she simply heard the gossip about Saturday night and came over to gawk at Sloane’s latest victim.

On the off chance that she’snothere with an ulterior motive, then it’s just extremely poor timing that has given her an unobstructed view of the sprawling tattoo that covers most of my back, shoulders and upper arms.

Zoe’s eyebrows lift as I simply continue to stand there naked, internally raging at myself. She’s obviously waiting for me to stop staring her down like a psychopath and respond to her compliment like a regular human being.

But she has no idea the steaming pile of shit she just stepped us both in.

A pile of shit of my own making.

“Can I help you?” I ask instead, my head tilting to one side. Expression carefully blank.

---