ANATOMY OF A GIRL

part twenty-three

Flair couldn't remember most of what had happened when she'd attacked Caelia last night. And even then, the little she remembered came in the form of flashing images and broken sentences. She remembered Caelia on the floor with fluttering, blue eyes that glittered, with blood running down the side of her head. She remembered the panic and fear as she ran toward Arlo's dorm blindly. She remembered throwing herself on his bed beside him. The bed still bore his sheets and his scent. They hadn't sent it all back to his parents in Vseti yet.

Flair remembered him telling her that it would be okay, no matter what she'd done. Even after all she'd done to him. But his condolences didn't make the guilt in her own chest lessen at all. He hadn't been there with Caelia. He hadn't seen what she'd done to her, and how she'd let go.

She'd told him how sorry she was, about not telling him everything. He told her it was okay, that he understood. She didn't deserve it. She didn't deserve him. He was too gentle, too kind for this world.

She lost consciousness after that.

Caelia had spent the night in the infirmary with the healers, leaving this morning for training with just a concussion. If Fern hadn't got Caelia to the Healers so quickly, things could have been a lot worse. Considering what she'd done to Caelia, and how much blood poured from the cut on her head, a concussion seemed a dream.

Things should have been a lot worse for Flair, too. Because she hadn't just lost control, as she'd told the principle, Ms Solaris, this morning. Her lie had barely saved her from being expelled, left only with a warning in her file and a month's detention starting on Monday. Yet, her lie hadn't kept Ms Solaris from calling Flair's parents. How was she supposed to explain, to her human parents, that the magic in her veins changed her into this girl they wouldn't recognise? This girl she didn't even recognise herself.

With this magic in her veins, there wasn't a way she could regain the person she was before. This was who she was now. This girl with no control over her emotions or her magic, who had little remorse and resembled the monsters from the woods that she used to fear. Maybe she'd learn to recognise this part in herself, to accept this wickedness and use it to help, rather than to harm. Or perhaps, Flair would do what she'd always done. She'd bury her flaws and this wickedness beneath a façade, and pretend she wasn't fighting against the suffocating water that was everyone's expectations for her. A dark and heavy water that clawed at her with slippery fingers, pulling her under. There was much wickedness within her, and she couldn't discern if it was the magic, or if this evil had always been at bay in her heart, and the magic had only allowed it to flourish. Blackening the edges of her heart and pushing her to do the wrongs she could once have stopped herself from doing. That was then, but things were different now. She was different now.

"I expected more," and "Not good enough." These whispers that raised her, that her parents said with pressed smiles, because everyone was watching, and they couldn't know that Flair was less-than-perfect. The façade with her own pressed smile became who she was until Arlo's death.

Until that night, she drowned out the whispers with laughs, smiles and everything else that screamed I'm okay. Maybe she'd been a good enough actress to fool her friends into thinking she was actually okay. After all, no one had noticed her screams. They hadn't noticed, until Arlo's death, because then, her screams tore loose.

*

Caelia knew she couldn't stay in the Healer's room like some kind of victim. She may have been one, nonetheless, but everyone else had to see her strength. They had to see that she wasn't scared of Flair, and that she was stronger than Flair would ever be.

She arrived back at her dorm to find Fern getting ready for training, in amongst the mess of their room. The blood had been cleaned away, the only proof it was there was the red-tinged wooden floor. Other than the blood, the room hadn't been cleaned much. Posters still hung from the walls limply, clothes were still strewn on the floor and on the furniture, papers had been swept into piles in the corners of the room, some as blood-stained as the floor.