Page 13 of Tyrant

SERAFINA

I wake the next morning,so groggy it takes me a few seconds to remember where I am. I’ve slept on top of the covers in my regular clothes. As I look around the room I tell myself this cannot be my home. Only it is my home.

I don’t know why but I have this sense that someone has been in my room. There’s zero evidence of it. But I just feel…

I hear a gentle knock at my door.

“You awake?”

It’s Lia’s voice.

“Yeah,” I call out.

I walk to the door and unlock it. When I open the door, Lia has coffee for me. I can practically kiss her.

“You look ragged,” she says. “How much did you take?”

“Like a droplet,” I say.

“You’re a lightweight.”

“What is that stuff?”

“GHB,” Lia says casually.

For some reason I know those letters. I think about the way it made me feel. So tired. So loopy. The way I just crashed on the bed, over the covers, not moving for anything. Or anyone.

“Is that…”

“Yeah,” Lia says. “It’s okay.”

“That’s the stuff people warn us about. Guys slip that into drinks.”

“You drank it on your own,” Lia says.

“Please, call me when you wake up naked and don’t remember how you got that way!” Naya’s voice calls out from the kitchen.

I smell eggs. And bacon. Lia motions with her head and I walk to the kitchen where breakfast has already been prepared. Naya didn’t cook. Neither did Lia. I’m getting the sense that the kitchen is just for show.

“Eat up,new arrival,” Naya says.

She flicks her wrist and a blob of tinfoil flies toward me. It’s a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich on a bagel. That and the coffee bring me back to life. Back to the reality that just hours ago I was kidnapped from my bed and brought toSinners Academy.

“So what did you do?” Naya asks. “No dancing around it. Just tell us. It’s no big deal.”

“Truthfully? My horrid stepmother has probably wanted to send me away since my father died. She found her opening. I got drunk and lit some stuff on fire.”

Lia and Naya look at each other. I can tell my story isn’t the most thrilling. I open my mouth wanting to know what they’re here for but there’s a knock at the apartment door. We all look at each other.

“Not for me,” Naya says.

“Same,” Lia says.

I rise up from the couch and walk to the door. By the time I open it, whoever had been there is gone, but there is a box waiting. With my name on it. I see Olivia’s name in the upper left corner. The box is a little heavy.

I drag it into the apartment and open it to find some stuff from my now old bedroom. Pictures that I took. A few oldnotebooks of thoughts and poems when I would write stuff down. Not exactly diaries, but close enough. Some of my favorite clothes too.

“That’s your only package,” Lia says. “Nothing else is allowed.”

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