Page 22 of Dark Ink

Students began to look around at one another. He’d said to leave, but no one wanted to be the first to stand. To be the proverbial lightning rod, should this still be some sort of disguised lesson about the stubbornness or tenacity of art itself. No one wants to be the first gopher to pop out of its hole when the blue-eyed hawk is circling.

I didn’t engage in this social anxiety. This twisting in chairs. This spreading of whispered questioning. This licking of lips and slow book gathering and checking once more if anyone had dared to actually leave. I kept my focus on Rian. I could see the tired slope of his shoulders, the slight tremble of his hands. He was just as tired as me. Just as exhausted. We were parasites to one another. So why did we persist? Why couldn’t we just stop? Admit we were no good for one another and part ways? Why did I have a pit in my stomach, fearing, no, knowing that this would never be the case?

“Leave. Now.”

It was easier now for a handful of students to risk standing halfway in their chairs. Glancing at Rian. Hesitating but a moment. Seeing that the coast was clear and stuffing books and paper and laptops into bags. Heading toward the exits. And once those daring few made the jump, others invariably followed. The auditorium filled with the sound of scraping chairs, hushed conversations about early dinners or extra library studio sessions, and shoes shuffling across wood floors.

I’d love a nap in this spare time. But I knew I wouldn’t sleep. Not when there was more to do. Always more to do, and wasn’t that what I was always begging for? More time? I’d call Noah for an extra shift at The Jar. I’d get started on assignments for next week. I’d tackle a few more post-graduation job applications. I’d call that free clinic about Stewart. I’d grocery shop, cook, scrub the toilet. I’d maybe even shower. Probably not. If I went home, I’d probably have to let Stewart talk through what was a very traumatic experience for him. I’d have to make him tea, switch out his bandages. I’d get him to sleep again. I’d—

“Everyone but Ms Brady.”

The backpack slinging, the line shuffling, the low conversation humming all stopped. Most of the class was congregated around the two exit doors. Myself included. I stood in a crowd of forty, pushing for the gift of a free period. Rian’s words sliced through them all like a knife. Eyes turned to me. I could feel them. Shifting in their sockets. Scanning face to face. Landing on me. Settling on me. Weighing on me.

Professor Merrick spoke again. “Out. Everyone. Ms Brady…you stay.”

There was no need for uncertain restraint this time. The first snicker came fast. The anonymity of the throng of students gave the culprit courage. The first nasty look followed quickly on its heels. A girl I didn’t know with a snarl. Her eyes trailed up and down my body as I clutched my books timidly. The disapproving click of a tongue. It sounded like the first shifting pebble of a landslide. It was the first shifting pebble of a landslide.

My classmates filed past me and every jammed shoulder was sharp as stone. Every gaze was cold as marble. Whispers twisted and turned round me, filled my ears, my eyes, my nose like rising dust. I stood in the midst of it all like I was pinned down. Like I couldn’t move.

Why her? Did she suck his cock? Was her pussy that tight? Was it for a grade? Would he share, dirty, filthy Professor Merrick? I could hear their thoughts as easily as if they were saying them, spitting them in my face. I would never lower myself like that. What kind of nasty things do you do with the ole prof, sweetie? Why hide under that big, baggy sweatshirt if you give it all away to a teacher?

I thought my imagined thoughts couldn’t hurt worse than anything actually said aloud, but the last girl out whispered to her friend, “Whore.”

I knew then why I hadn’t moved. I was tied down by my past, bound by the cruelty of a man who never loved me, the insensitive repetition of a brother who used me. I didn’t move because I’d been told all my life that they were right. I was a whore. I was a slut. I tried to do good, stick up for my brother, love my father in his eternal grief, but my nature was rotten. Wicked. Debauched. So where did I have to go? Who did I have to turn to?

When the door clicked shut behind the last student, silence seeped in from the crack like water. It pooled round my petrified ankles. It rose too quickly. I couldn’t breathe.

Rian climbed the shallow steps toward me with the careful movements of a man approaching a wild animal. It took too long for me to mentally pry the cold ghostly hands off my feet rooting me to the spot.

I had to run. To stop this. To break the cycle. Rian wasn’t going to do it for me.

I lunged for the door. But I was too slow, too transparent with my intentions, too fucking hesitant to actually run from him.

I was his obsession.

But he’d also become mine.

He caught the door first. He slipped between me and it and my way out was gone. Would I have actually left? Had I been faster? Had I not hesitated? Would I have proved my father wrong? Could I have?

Or was it all just pretence? All just show? Something to help me sleep at night: I tried. I tried to escape. I tried to run. I tried to be better. More chaste. Sweeter. More innocent. Was it my intention all along to wait to be caught? Linger just a little too long. Allow Rian to climb one stair too many.

Did I ever really have a chance at freedom? Did I ever really want it?

Was I serious when I said in a whisper, “Let me go”?

Or did I really mean, “Never let me go.”

Rian

“Let me go.”

I knew she meant more than just out of the auditorium. She wasn’t just asking me to step away from the door I blocked, stay back as she walked into the hallway. Eithne, my little Raglan Road girl, wanted free of me. Free of the binds I was weaving around her, free of the snare I was trapping her in, the dark and toxic world I was dragging her into.

Didn’t she know? I was far from free myself. She was asking me to unlock her chains, but I never had the key. She could scream against me, rail against, fight and buck and kick, but our ankles, wrists, and necks were bound with the same rope, weighed by the same anchor. We were sinking together. I could no more let her go than she could me.

Despite the fire in her eyes, the tremble in her white knuckles gripped over the edges of her books, the unwavering strength of her voice, I think she knew this.

It wasn’t a demand. It was a plea. One I could never ever grant.

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