*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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Everything I drew I stuck up on my wall and yes, I know that's not necessarily a healthy coping mechanism and some might say that staring at my nightmares might just make them worse, but it helps, okay?
It does.
Seeing them all laid out like this—the wires, the tubes, the white rooms, the beds—sorts everything out, and I can start to see a pattern emerge. And the pattern is this:
Sam and I. The two of us together, or even separate: Sam laying in a hospital bed, skinny and pale. A younger her clutching a stuffed toy, eyes huge. Sam in bare feet on the tiles, Sam with blood dripping down her face, Sam with needles in her arms, Sam unconscious.
Sam, alone.
And I know—the people around us populate our dreams. Except that, no one else that I know is there. Just Sam. And it doesn't make sense. Sam has to be involved in whatever this is.
She has to.
And, it's like—I know that Sam doesn't tell me stuff. Obviously. She's a girl, and she's going through some stuff. We both are.
But it's never been like this before.
Maybe I've been avoiding her. And I can't do anything about that, not now, but I can do this:
I can talk to Anthony. And maybe I've been avoiding him. Maybe I've been avoiding the conversation I need to have with him—because I know that he knows more than he's letting on.
I mean, there was the whole thing with his phone. And other things, too, things I can't quite remember but he was protecting me, wasn't he? And I walked in on him—arguing—with someone. I don't know who, but it was—
There was something, and Anthony knows it, and he wasn't supposed to interfere. Someone had told him he wasn't supposed to interfere.
Interfere with what?
I need answers. Sam needs answers. And Anthony needs to stop lying to us.
Of course, I can't find him anywhere, and finally Jordan, who's eating some horrible smoothie concoction in the kitchen, tells me that Anthony left for school this morning and hasn't been back yet.
I try his phone, and get the answering machine. Okay. So, he's off the radar somewhere, but I send him a text asking to meet up anyway.
I can't shake the feeling that something important is happening, that whatever Sam and Anthony are hiding from me is going down right now, while I'm sitting here doing nothing.
While I'm sitting here alone.
It's just past five, and we're in that awkward lull where school is over but it's too early for dinner. The common room is packed, and it's far too claustrophobic to hang out there for any period of time.
I'm feeling anxious and jittery and I know I need to calm down, I know I need to breathe, but everything's just really overwhelming right now and I don't know what to do.
