Phoenix Knight [A Bad Boy Story] - Editing

Chapter Fifteen

Today’s word of the chapter: ‘En bloc’. Definition: (Adverb) as a whole.

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Chapter Fifteen

I don’t know what angered me more, the fact that they believed what Jason said or the realisation that not a single one of them was on my side. Not a single one of them had ever been on my side. They always just seemed to gang up on me.

I suddenly felt as a though a weight had been placed on my shoulders and just wanted to scream. Or run away. Or die. I was so tired of life’s consecutive punches and didn’t know whether I could take another minute of it.

Somewhere out there, my father was hunting my mother and me down.

Somewhere out there, Phoenix was killing his next “target”.

Somewhere out there, my friends were probably laughing over what I had to say. Probably with Jason.

But me? Well, I had locked myself in a toilet stall and taken a seat on the closed lid of the bowl.

I didn’t want to get out.

Ever.

I couldn’t even cry because I was still struggling to make sense of everything. Somehow, choosing to “befriend” Phoenix Knight had spun my life onto a whole new axis.

If it weren’t for him then my friends would never have believed Jason’s bullshit.

I guess that was pretty much all I could pin on Phoenix. I just needed someone else to claim responsibility. Although, I was slowly coming to realise that I had no one but myself to blame en bloc. Even though that conclusion make little to no sense and even though a small part of me knew that I had not actually behaved irrationally, it just seemed... right.

I stared at the tiled wall behind the toilet and noticed that some of it had chipped off and now lay on the floor. I picked up the jagged triangle and scrutinised the piece as I rolled it around on my palm. I held the sturdiest edge and placed the pointed tip on the wrist of my opposite arm, just above my veins. I felt my heart rate quicken as, slowly, I persuaded myself to just... do it. Get it over with.

It was, after all, my fault. This was the life that I had created for myself. What kind of person associated themselves with abusive men? Men that were hired to kill others? A mother that was so weak, she only just escaped the holds of a husband that harmed her. Somehow, every one of those stupid questions... they just made sense in that moment as I pressed the tile into my skin and gulped.

This was it.

If I could just –

“Sadie?” someone called from just outside my stall.

I dropped the cracked tile and stared at it in mortification. My chest was heaving.

Was I actually going to do it?

I would never find out.

Why?

Why was it so easy to convince myself that somehow I was the person that brought the events of my life upon myself?

But I knew why.

It’s not very hard to convince yourself of something when all else seems to be falling apart.

I was sure enough of it to have wanted to kill myself. In school. I wanted to kill myself in school within a toilet stall.

“Sadie?” the person called again. I recognised the voice the second time over and began straightening out my baggy t-shirt for no reason other than to calm myself and appear... sane.