*Watty's 2021 Shortlist*
Samantha Roberts and Ben Evans have one thing in common - they both attend Sir Robertson's School for the Gifted, an elite boarding school for the children of the world's wealthiest. Both scholarship students, they gravitate...
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My head is pounding.
My shoulder aches (probably from where I hit it on a table when I fainted), my eyes feel like they're full of sand, and my head is pounding.
It's all a bit of an overreaction, really. So I fainted. So what. I'm fine.
"So you have no idea what happened?" Sam's angry voice filters through the curtains around my bed and I sigh. She's been berating that poor nurse for the past fifteen minutes.
I can't hear the response, but I know it will just be a repeat of what they've been telling her since she showed up, Anthony in tow.
(And there are a whole lot of things about that that I hate.)
They'll tell her that it was likely dehydration, a combination of the stress of training and not enough sleep and just generally not taking care of myself.
It happens to students every year, they'll say. The stress of finals gets to them. Except it's not even finals yet, and apparently, I'm already losing it.
Yippee.
Sam pushes back the curtain and comes through. I'm sitting on the side of the cot, jacket draped over a chair and an I.V. in my arm. Yeah, that was fun to get in.
At least my headache seems to be abating.
"You know I'm fine, right?" I say, to break the awkward silence.
Sam won't meet my eyes. There's something written across her face that I hadn't expected to see: guilt.
"What's that look for," I say, trying to catch her gaze. "Sam. Hey. Look at me."
"I'm sorry," she mumbles, which makes no sense.
"What?"
"I—I should've known that something was wrong. You're my best friend, and you just collapsed in the freaking library, and some girl found you there—"
"Katelyn is her name," I say. "We were meeting up—"
"For a project, yeah," Sam says. She's on a roll now, and I know the signs well enough to know not to interrupt her. "And then Anthony says you had a migraine the other day, bad enough to leave class, and you didn't tell me!"
"I'm sorry," I say, feeling bad. "I didn't want to worry you. It was nothing."
"Clearly it wasn't nothing, Ben!" she yells, gesturing around us.
There's silence. I rub my face with one hand, and she looks away. "I can't do this," she says softly. "I can't go on pretending like there's nothing wrong, because there is. You've been acting differently—don't argue, Anthony has noticed it too—and now this?"
I shake my head. "I can't believe you've been talking to Anthony about me."
"What is your problem with him?" Sam yells. "You guys used to be besties, and now this?"
