Legends of Mirandis Academy

Chapter 56: Wash and Rinse and Then Repeat

Iridia's hands, lately, were much drier than usual. Her knuckles were pale and ashy, her fingertips were rough and sore. But there she stood, in the gender-neutral restroom of the theater, hands in the sink and eyes avoiding the mirror at all costs. The nail brush she was using to scrub was harsh against her skin, and the water did almost nothing to soothe it. It wasn't supposed to. She could still feel the blood on her hands, between her fingers, under her nails, and she needed it gone.

In pulsing vision, her palms were not the brown color they were supposed to be. The warm light above her turned to the cold, dim light of a full moon. The sweat in her hands wasn't sweat, it was dark and sticky and awful. The red looked more like black, but when the moon and the stars caught the liquid in her palms, it was a vibrant red and Iridia was covered in it.

The cold water felt the same now as it did back on that night. Her vision pulsated once more and she was at the hospital again, the water was almost dry in how useless it was at cleaning the nightmare away. Luna was a few rooms over, being poked and prodded and sliced and put back together the way Iridia tried to do but never could. Iridia wanted to fix it, save it, prevent it, but she was there all over again. She was there in the parking lot with the guts of a dying girl between her fingers. She was there in the hospital bathroom scrubbing her skin until it was all gone and down the drain.

It had started with just her nails. The brown that got underneath them looked like blood clots lingering, stuck on her. She scrubbed until it was all gone, nothing beneath her nails, nothing in the crevices or hiding with hangnails; it felt better, but it wasn't enough. Then her first knuckles; they were so close to the nails, it was accidental, but then she found remnants residing in the cracks of her drying skin there too. The blood, the stains from Luna's wound that never disappeared. It was everywhere. Soon she was scrubbing her knuckles, all of them. Her fingertips and palms and over calluses that opened from the torture of the brush, but it still wasn't enough.

It was always there, and the more she scrubbed to get it off, the more visible it became—it was her skin scrubbed raw, she knew that's why it was pink. Rationality didn't make her clean. No, despite her brain's best effort, the color lingered. It always lingered.

A sudden, sharp pain shot through her nerves like lightning. Iridia hissed, winced, and dropped the brush; it clattered in the porcelain bowl before drowning in the water that kept flowing. She clutched one hand with the other, fingertips hard over the source of pain. She turned her hand over and froze.

It was bleeding.

She didn't rush to clean it, she didn't grab toilet paper or paper towels to cover it like a sensible person would. No, she just stared—she hadn't even noticed how aggressive she was until the tough bristles impaled her. She watched as the drops of blood bloomed from the wound and quickly flowed through her cracked skin as if it were a river coursing in a canyon. She kept watching as it dripped on the floor. Drop. After drop. After drop.

"Iridia, hurry up! I left my bag in there!" Brielle called, audibly distressed that she was taking up the single-toilet room. Iridia didn't respond, not even as she rapidly knocked on the door. She couldn't. "Iridiiiiaaaaa?"

Drop. After drop.

"Okay, I'm coming in to get it, cover yourself." She didn't stop watching the blood, more blood as she had opened up all of her knuckles at once; Iridia heard keys—obviously borrowed from whichever teacher in the theater or shop Brielle could find—as Brielle unlocked the door, slowly pushed it open, and poked her head in. She gasped and dropped the bundle of keys. "Iridia!"

Brielle bolted into the room, narrowly avoiding the droplets at Iridia's feet, and grabbed her by the forearms. "Iridia, what happened?"

The world zoomed back into focus. Iridia was panting. She was sweating. The water was still running.