ANATOMY OF A GIRL

part five

Two weeks later, Sapphire still found herself plagued with the same nightmares. The same darkness and the same stillness. She couldn't seem to shake them, nor could she shake the sinking in her stomach.

Leo knocked on the door and called out, "You ready to go?"

She looked over to Flair, still sleeping soundly luckily. Leo was one loud son-of-a-bitch. Sapphire pulled on her running shoes, grabbing her phone and earphones from beside her bed.

She pulled the door open and stepped out, pulling it shut behind her. "Can you keep quiet for a single second? Flair's sleeping."

He looked at her for a second and told her, "Your hair is a mess."

She rolled her eyes and replied, "Always is."

He nodded. "True. Let's go."

They began the walk to the Training Centre, where the running trail began. The hallways were empty, some students still sleeping, and others not on campus at all. After Arlo's death, they pushed the start of the semester back a month. Many of her classmates returned home for the month, to spend the time with their families, but Sapphire didn't need any more time with her family. After travelling for three months with her mom and dad, she needed some time to recover. Besides, she had her friends here with her. Ayden and Leo's family said they could stay and get ready for school, which they hadn't been doing, and Flair refused to return home to Vseti until she'd finished grieving. She said she didn't need her mother telling her when she should stop grieving. Flair's mother wasn't always a kind woman.

As they passed the hall attendant's desk, Sapphire smiled at her. She caught Leo watching her.

The woman smiled back and said, "Have a nice day, Ms Gracen."

Once they'd left the reception, Leo shook his head. "They're always so nice to you."

"They'd be nice to you, too, if you stopped sneaking out at night."

"I don't see how it's any of their business, whether I sneak out or not."

"Leo, they're hall attendants. It's their job to prevent you from leaving."

He said, "Well, it's creepy if you ask me. The way they're always watching us, trying to keep us in line."

"You watch too much TV. We aren't in one of those British boarding schools humans go to."

Soon, they passed the first trees in the forest, and as they got deeper, the trees condensed. They followed the path that lead to the Training Centre.

The Training Centre rose up before them. As they reached the beginning of the trail, Leo put an earphone in one ear, and she did the same. Leo began running and she quickly followed behind, running up beside him. She watched him, the way the light hit his dark skin and the way his eyes scanned the forest around them.

In the week after Arlo's death, they didn't see much of each other. Ayden and Leo stayed locked up in their room, and Sapphire with Flair in theirs. Even now, Flair still didn't leave their room all that much, but at least joined them in the cafeteria sometimes. Thinking back on that week following Arlo's passing, Sapphire knew she couldn't let herself fall back into that dark place. She had to keep moving.

"Leo," she called. He made a strange noise that she took as an acknowledgement. "You feeling better?"

"Yeah. I mean, not enough that it doesn't hurt when I think about him, but enough that the days don't blur together."

She liked that about Leo. That he was always honest with her.

A while passed before he spoke again. "I have this theory that we don't ever stop grieving. We just learn to live the grief, learn to live with the constant pain. We work around it, and call it 'moving on'. But then there are days we feel it, when the pain comes to the surface, and we realise it didn't ever really go away."