A close call to midnight

Belle

I actually can't believe that Finn still wants to talk to me after what happened last night.

I am sitting in the canteen right now, eating my lunch. It is vegetable soup. 

I just told Finn sorry about last night; I did not get the chance for that at breakfast because I was so surprised by him talking to me that I forgot about that.

 I still feel so ashamed about what happened, though. 

When I got back to my dorm yesterday, a couple of minutes after I showed Finn my scars, I felt so ashamed of myself that I was seriously contemplating suicide. I had contemplated that before, but I never felt as sure about it as last night.

 In a fit of anger, I collected all the pills that I could find in the bathroom and took them with me back to my room. I started taking them one for one, but after twenty pills, I suddenly realized how bad it would be for Finn if someone found me dead the following day. I had already given him a trauma by showing him my arm; I would not want him to feel guilty about me being dead for the rest of his life on top of that.

 In a panic, I ran back to the bathroom so that I could make myself throw up, but the bathroom had been locked.

I then figured twenty pills would probably not kill me, but I was not going to take risks, and it definitely was not worth the belly ache in the morning that I knew would follow from swallowing so many pills at once.

"Please, I need to get in right now."

 I had knocked very loudly on the door. 

"Can't it wait?' One of my roommates' voices answered. 

"No, erm, I am about to throw up, food poisoning, I think. Please ."

 A long silence followed. ''Ugh, fine then.'' A few seconds later, the door opened, and Finn's twin sister Sophie came out. How ironic. 

I had totally forgotten that she was my roommate. She looked at me with a strange face, ignoring the fact that I visually had been crying , and she let me get in the bathroom. She was not as nice as her brother. Not even a little bit. 

Finally, inside, I had let myself throw up more than eight times just to be entirely sure that everything was out of my body. 

After that, I spent an hour just screaming:

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?" while looking at myself in the mirror.

 I kept thinking about how much I must have hurt Finn. I had never done something similar before, showing somebody my self-harm... Nobody in my life knew about it, and I always had planned to keep it that way until last night. Apparently. 

I still don't know what got into me. It felt so unlike me to do that. I always worried about someone finding out by accident, so I always hid it. I still have no idea why I just shoved it in Finn's face last night. 

The whole night, after I had thrown up, I told myself that he must hate me now and thought I was such a big attention seeker. 

Well done, Belle, I thought, you finally find someone who isn't immediately repelled by your presence, and what do you do? You give that person PTSS almost right away. 

The whole thing by the tree was genuinely pathetic of me. I still am ashamed of it. 

 With a heavy heart, I fell asleep last night. 

Naturally, when I woke up this morning, I did not feel like going to my classes or breakfast. I was not ready to face Finn and accept the consequences of my actions. If I went to breakfast, it was for sure real what had happened last night; I could no longer tell myself that it was just an awful dream. 

But private school meant stringent rules, so sadly, I could not stay in bed all day; they only let you do that when you were literally on the verge of death. 

I felt so nauseous going into the canteen, but against all odds, he started to talk to me during breakfast, something about his tie. I was so surprised. Then, he spoke to me again during math. 

I had spent the rest of the math class thinking about it. I still don't understand why he does not seem to hate me after all this. Let's be fair; he has all the right to do that but doesn't. I might not understand why. However, I won't take it for granted now. 

I give him a small smile when I leave the table. He is still eating his soup but waves me goodbye. I want to pee before the next lesson starts. I see on the clock that I don't have much time left, so I walk as fast as possible to the nearest toilet. Just as I wash my hands, I hear the loud bell ring:

 Lunchtime is over.

 Now it is time for English. I quickly leave the toilet, but the second I enter the hallway, I start to feel overwhelmed by the sea of ​​people there. Damn, why is our school always so crowded? 

I have never walked through the school and not felt like a target. All around is a potential danger. Disapproving eyes and mean voices follow me everywhere. It is happening now as well. 

People I don't even know look at me as if I am garbage, and I can feel their eyes pry on my back. I hear girls giggling, and someone points their finger at me. I feel myself starting to panic. This triggers my fight or flight, but there is nowhere to run away to. 

Or..... is there? 

I recognize Finn from the back. I quicken my pace and tap him on the back. 

"Hey! Finn, I was thinking about that paper for English?" 

He turns around right away, and I can see that he is surprised to see it's me. 

"Hi, what about the paper?" he asks me back. 

As we walk further through the crowd of people, I notice more people are watching me than usual. Probably because I am talking to somebody and that somebody is not being mean to me. 

Finn is catching all the stares too, and I see him give a weird look back at some of them. I try to ignore it like I always do. 

"Do you perhaps already have a partner for that?" I ask Finn then.

 It would be so nice not to worry about who I will end up with for this paper. Always in class, when the teacher says to make pairs for an assignment, I end up alone. It is always so awkward to approach the teacher and say: "Erm, hello, I don't have somebody to do it with." 

They always end up putting me with two people who clearly did not want to work with me, making me feel like some sort of charity case. I would rather just work alone. But now, with Finn in the picture, things might be different.

 "Nah, not really. You?" he says. 

"Me neither, so I thought maybe we could work together?" I ask. It is worth a try. 

"Yes, that's fine," he says. 

I can't help but feel a little relieved. Part of me was convinced that he would say no or that he already had a partner. I nod at him and notice we are in front of the English classroom. 

Walking with Finn definitely has calmed my nerves, it made me feel less like a target for the bullies. It's a nice change.