CECE, DISRESPECTFULLY | rewriting

20: WE WOULD LIKE TO SEE THEM DEAD

            A garden pea flies off my plate as I try to pierce it with my fork. I watch it speed across the table and roll somewhere on the canteen floor.

My gaze rises only to be caught by the grapple hook of Diwa's glare. We each sit alone but the group on the table between us has left and now we face each other. If I knew she were sitting there, I'd've dead well sat somewhere else!

I grant her my fakest smile and look away, brushing off an itch from my forearm.

'Trouble in paradise already?'

I've no need to look to recognise the abrasion of Sakda's voice. He speaks like friction burn. Still, I meet the dry blood brown of his eyes. Not doing so would be surrender.

Holding his tray, Sakda looks between me and Diwa, canines glinting at the corners of his smirk. 'Didn't last very long.'

The itch burrows deeper into my forearm and I shove up the sleeve of my moth-eaten jumper to scratch better.

'Though three days might be a record for you,' Sakda prods. 'How long did it take for your parents to give up on you again?'

I lock my ankles around my chair legs and settle for breaking the blue plastic tray with his face only in my imagination.

Diwa scowls at us. 'We've never been mates. There's nowt to give up on.'

It's true.

It shouldn't sting.

Sakda's focus is like sunlight through a magnifying glass. 'Nowt to say? Did you finally get domesticated?'

We're too well trained in antagonising each other. He'll keep going until I bite back or bow. We both know that.

There are teachers watching. My only choice is the latter.

I drop my stare to my plate, pierce my final potato quarter and eat it. Everyone will see me defanged and declawed. This is how I'll end up in swimming pools again.

I refuse to look but the way Sakda gloats tars onto my skin until he exits the canteen. And even when he does, Diwa's frustration continues to prod.

It's better this way, better she never invests in me. Look at what I did to Elliot. I don't do mates and it's for good reason.

'There were a new Death to Beewolf post last night.'

My only response is a hiss of pain as my forearm pinches. For the first time since the itch started, I look. And nearly jolt off my chair.

I shake my arm, try to sweep them off but the worker termites are too deep in my flesh to lose their footing so easily. They've gnawed right through to my bone, their teeth chipping against radius.

Diwa drops into the seat in front of me. My attention skips to her for only a fractured second before returning to my arm but...

There's nothing there. Save for redness from my scratching. But... No. It was real. I felt it.

I glance at Diwa again. 'Go away.'

Diwa slides her phone over to me, opened to the deathtobeewolf page. 'Thoughts?'

Why've I got to have th–?

She knows.

She knows. She knows she knows she knows she knows. Everybody knows.

She told everybody.

Cobham is on his way to expel me right now. I'll be expelled (LOCKED IN!). And school suspensions and expulsions can lead to a lifetime of depression. Do you remember that?