Page 43 of Our Secrets and Scars

So, to share them with someone else, especially unwittingly, should make me feel unsettled or even angry. At the very least uncomfortable. But I don’t. I don’t feel any of that. All I feel is concern for Violet and what has made her so upset.

Without thinking, I fly out the way she left, down the stairs, and out into the night air. I spot her on the other side of the street, crouched down over her knees as she frantically sucks in air. Her head turns to the sky, and she lets out a silent scream, yet I can still hear the anguish in it.

I want to run to her, hold her, kiss away her tears, and take away whatever it is that has caused her so much pain. But I don’t.

Instinctually, I know that’s not what she needs right now. She needs time to breathe on her own, to work through whatever has happened without me interfering or overwhelming her with my concern.

So, I stay back as she walks back to her dorm, keeping a distance between us so as not to alert her of my presence. And it’s not that I’m being creepy or nefarious by following her home. It’s just that I spent four years of my life trapped in the same building with the very dregs of humanity, and because of that, I know of the monsters that lurk in the dark.

I follow her home only for the reason of making sure she’s safe.

She’s so wrapped up in her distress that she wouldn’t be in any kind of way to protect herself if she needed to. She’s so oblivious to all that’s around her right now that it would be unthinkable of me to let her walk alone at this time of night.

When she finally lets herself into her dorms, I exhale my relief into the fall wind and find my way back home.

She may need tonight alone, but that’s all I’m giving her.

Tomorrow, I’ll find out what’s upset her, and I’ll do what needs to be done to make it right.

She doesn’t answer the first time I knock. Nor the second. After ten minutes of no response, I realize I’ll need to up my game if I want her to answer the door, so I go to the on-campus coffee house and order one of those ridiculous pink drinks she likes.

“Violet?” I call through the door when I return, holding the drink up to the peephole that she’s pretending not to be looking through. “I got you something.”

The door cracks open, and her hand slithers through the gap, reaching around aimlessly until she finds the cup. Her arm retreats back into the room as she goes to nudge the door closed again, but my foot shoots out to catch it before it can slam shut.

“Oh no, you don’t.”

She catches my eye through the gap, wide and slightly panicked. My own narrow in confusion.

“Isla in there?” I wait for her to shake her head before slipping uninvited into her room.

It’s easy to work out which bed is Violet’s. It’s the only one in the room that’s been made despite being the only one to have been slept in last night. Her bedsheets are a kind of dusky rose color and are dusted in little daisies as if someone’s taken a box of dried flowers and spilled them across the bed. Leaning against the pillows is a faded toy elephant. I pick it up and turn it over in my hands.

“It’s my sister’s,” she says, though I didn’t ask.

“Okay.” I put the little guy back down and take a seat on the end of her bed.

“Why are you here, Holden?”

I raise my eyebrows at her standoffishness and how her arms are folded across her chest as if trying to shield herself from me.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Act like I don’t have a right to be here right now.”

“You don’t.” Her response is instantaneous and makes me scoff.

“So, we’re just gonna pretend that you didn’t run out of my apartment last night like you’d seen a damn bear?”

She shrugs.

“Or how about the fact that you were crying the whole fucking way home?”

Her eyes finally snap to mine, wild and suspicious. “How would you know that?”

“I followed you.”

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