'Are you okay?'
I glance at Diwa as I drop into my seat. Pathirana keeps everyone at separate desks for form time and Diwa has to lean over the aisle to whisper—whisper, not cause it'll make the conversation less noticeable but maybe it'll make it even a little harder to eavesdrop.
'What happened? I only saw from the window. Are you hurt?'
'I'm fine.'
I drop my focus to my hands.
The unprotected blisters were shredded by my fall. Crooked flaps of flesh stick up in different directions. Blood pools in the cavities between torn skin and runs down my wrists, disappearing into my sleeves.
Appearance ain't the point. The issue is that it don't hurt.
Even without the violence of growing up in dogfight rings, I cut up my palms on a biweekly basis from skateboarding while high. And it should hurt, a sting that flares up at every accidental touch. So why don't it? Has familiarity extended to immunity so my brain no longer bothers to register it at all?
On Beewolf's command, I graze the torn skin and when no pain shoves me away, press my thumb as hard onto the wound as I can.
Nowt.
'Cece, you're bleeding.'
Diwa's voice drags me back to the classroom. Jeremy is asking Pathirana about summat I can't hear, the angles of their words lost somewhere outside of me.
'You need to see the nurse–'
'No,' I seethe. 'Don't tell anyone.'
Her stare prods, scouring for an explanation. I pull my hood further over my head and try to ignore it along with everyone else's.
They're all in on it, everyone in this school. They're all in it together. All of them against me. Sakda will tell Cobham about Death to Beewolf, tell him just to remind me that hope is for fools.
They'll hand me over and I'll be locked in forever.
Every page turned by a form peer gives me a paper cut from sound alone. Their breathing overlaps into unsynchronized waves that wobble me seasick. A clock counts down my seconds, each strum torn from my heart.
When her worry won't stop poking my side, I glance at Diwa. 'You afraid of a little blood? I'm fine.'
She's too preoccupied with my palms to take it as an insult, which she'd be perfectly within her rights to do. Did I even say it out loud? I'm not sure. The classroom still ain't solid.
I can't still be this high. Am I still high?
My head buzzes from asphyxiation. Iridescent sparks stream in from the periphery, flashing in waves and vortexes until I can hardly see further than a metre ahead.
I curl my toes inside my Vans and blink, try my best to look like I'm not worried the world might be ending or that, at the very least, I'm dying, if I'm not already dead because I really don't feel like I'm inside my body.
I'm good at pretending. I'm so expressionless normally that another mask fits seamlessly over it. But summat's wrong. There's a tremor. A pinch in the corners of my eyes. In sowing on the mask, I manage only to stitch my fingers together.
The scrape of chairs drags rusty knives along my cerebral cortex. My body tries to curl up like a millipede.
Diwa's voice comes from above. 'Form's over.'
YOU ARE READING
CECE, DISRESPECTFULLY | ✓
Teen FictionWrath will cremate Cecilio Velez to the bone. Beewolf, his personal demon manifested from childhood nightmares, has taught them to think with fire. When he's about to be expelled from his fifth school, his older brother and current guardian has had...
