Page 72 of Spearcrest Knight

A look of panic crosses her face. She bites her bottom lip nervously and shakes her head, slowly backing away from me.

“No, you don’t. You’re just bored and lonely because everyone’s away and I’m the only person here.”

“I didn’t kiss you just because you’re here,” I snap, sitting up sharply. “I didn’t make you come just because I wasbored.”

“Look,” she says, raising both hands like she’s trying to calm me down. “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it. I guess I also kissed you just because you’re here, and we were both, well… clearly, we both needed to relieve some tension and—”

“I kissedyoubecause I fucking wanted to kissyou.” To my complete and utter mortification, my voice breaks as if I’m about to cry. But I’m not upset, I’m angry. “I made you come because I want to makeyoufeel good. You can make whatever excuses you want for yourself, Sophie, but you can’t make excuses for me.”

“You wouldn’t be saying any of this if you weren’t drunk,” she says, shaking her head. “And you’re going to regret everything that’s happened tonight when you sober up tomorrow.”

“This isn’t fucking Literature class, Sophie! You can’t make up your interpretation of someone else’s actions and explain it into truth. I know exactly how I feel becauseI’m feeling it, so stop trying to explain my own feelings to me.”

“I’m not explaining anything,” she says, slowly inching away. “I’m, I’m—” she holds her face in her hands like she’s trying to work out what to say, and there’s definitely more than a little panic in her eyes. “I’ve made a fucking mistake, alright? I shouldn’t have let things get this far. I’m sorry I did.”

She could have smashed the empty bottle of wine into my face and hurt me less than her words do.

I watch her, speechless with shock, as she straightens herself, pulls down her sweater to cover herself and smoothes back her hair.

“I apologise for my actions tonight,” she says stiffly.

“Why are you apologising?” I say, scrambling up to my feet so I can face her. “You actually did something you wanted to do for once. I’m not fucking sorry, so you don’t have to be either.”

“I didn’t want this,” she says, blushing so intensely the red spreads from her cheeks to her forehead.

“Don’t lie to me,” I say, stepping towards her. “You wanted every second of this, my hands on your tits, my mouth on your pussy. You wanted to come on my tongue—you wanted it so much you fucking begged for it.”

She takes several hasty steps back, putting distance between us. Her face is so red I can almost feel the heat exuding from her cheeks.

“I didn’t want this,” she repeats. “I—I like somebody else, okay?”

Her words fall like a bomb down the well of my mind. The bomb falls and falls for ages, leaving me completely still and speechless. Then it drops and explodes, and my mind is obliterated by flames, and then it’s completely blank.

And then, like the fucking coward she is, Sophie runs out of the room like a murderer fleeing the scene of the crime.

22

Networking

Sophie

Runningawaytomyparents’ house to get away from Evan is like trying to escape a dragon by hiding in an ogre’s cave.

Even though I’d made up a vague excuse about being homesick and wanting to see them over Christmas, my parents still lectured me about leaving Audrey’s house and “giving up on important opportunities”. Christmas day is tense and mostly unpleasant.

The rest of the holiday becomes one long lecture about how being homesick is one thing, but ultimately everything I do now will have a domino effect on my life as an adult, and why am I not making more friends at Spearcrest, these connections will one day come in handy, and so on and on,ad nauseam.

In the end, I give them my word to make more of an effort to socialise and network when I return to school, and then things calm down a little. We even manage to last the rest of that evening without Spearcrest being mentioned once.

But for the rest of the holiday, in between what happened with Evan—which I’m refusing point blank to relive or think about or mentally address in any way, shape or form—the crushing anxiety I generally feel around my parents and the week I wasted not being able to work, it’s basically impossible to relax. The only escape is inside the pages of books, but even reading becomes stressful when your brain is trained to analyse every sentence for meaning.

On the last Sunday of the holiday, when I finally return to Spearcrest, I'm actually glad to be back. Even though I’ve brought my stormcloud of worries with me, being here is still better than being back at home. After I’ve unpacked my things and put everything away in its proper place, I pick up my books and head straight for the sanctuary of the study hall, which is blissfully empty.

And end up spending almost an entire hour staring blankly at the pages of my workbooks, crushed by the terrible feeling that I have massively, disastrously fucked up, and that nothing is going to be okay.

After an hour of this, I let my face drop to the desk with a sigh.

Anxiety is pretty familiar to me, but it’s unlike me to be so easily crushed by a defeat or mistake. If there’s one thing I can do, it’s take a punch. But it’s getting harder and harder to get back up these days.

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