CECE, DISRESPECTFULLY | ✓

13: STRENGTH OF THE SPIRIT

            I hand Diwa a cup of water and she downs it as though she's been lost in a desert for a week. Rivulets escape the corners of her mouth to run down her neck. Once empty, she thrusts the plastic cup back at me for a refill, half of which she drinks equally quickly.

Without getting off the floor, she shuffles backwards and slumps against the wall opposite the toilet. Turquoise hand towels brush the top of her head. From there, she stares at me.

'I'm sorry.'

Any grudge I held against her has dissipated and her apology arrives as an icy wind. To escape its scrape against my cheek, I turn to the mirror cabinet, opening it to grab the denim pouch from the top shelf.

'You don't gotta apologise. Getting pathetically drunk is a rite of passage.'

But Diwa shakes her head. 'Not about that. About being a proper cunt all the time.'

'Look.' I swivel to face her. It's your fault. 'I know I did it first, but you need to stop calling yourself a cunt.'

She shrugs, too tired to argue.

'I were only tryna be cool and friendly and engage with my peers. I don't think I'm better than anyone.' Her voice gets progressively quieter until it's barely a whisper. 'No one needs to not like me cause of that.'

I tongue the back of my teeth as I watch her. 'If you want folk to like you so bad, have ya considered being nicer?'

'Rich coming from you.'

'I don't want no one to like me, innit. Intentional, that is.'

'Everyone wants to be liked. Pretty sure that's a linchpin of the human condition.'

I click my tongue. Only she would use a word like linchpin while drunk out of her mind.

'Most of the people in our year are completely unbearable so why would you wanna be mates with any of them?'

She don't answer.

Returning my attention to the denim pouch, I dig around the contents until I find a blister pack of aspirin. I toss it to her. 'Take one of those when you ain't gonna vomit it right back up.'

Diwa holds it in a loose fist.

Head resting against the linoleum wall as though it's a memory foam pillow, she looks at me through hooded eyelids. 'How come you didn't join? I thought you liked parties.'

'I don't. I like alcohol.' Sighing, I give in. 'I used to live here.'

Her stare prods the side of my neck but I keep mine locked with the bottle of contact lens solution on the lowest shelf of the cabinet. It's Sakda's. I could exchange it with disinfectant, get a strike in my favour without tarnishing my act of professionalism—Cobham could never prove it were me.

'Me and Sakda came here together. From the same residential home, too. We've got history,' I say, a tug of a grin at the corner of my mouth. 'Not sexually.'

Diwa remains quiet long enough for the fear she might have lost consciousness to creep in. Just as I'm about to check, she speaks.

'Is that why you're so afraid?'

She's got you.

'I'm not afraid.'

I place the first-aid pouch in its designated spot and snap the door shut to be confronted by my reflection. For a split second, fourteen-year-old me stares back. Then the image glitches back into reality and I flinch. Beewolf climbs up my arm, its stinger ready to paralyse.