Starry Eyed

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen

My dormitory is not safe anymore. People have come spilling in, just like water. Gushing inside through a river and filling it up to chin level, beginning to choke me. I started running as soon as James told me to get out; it's always safer to escape his friend's clutches before they close in, and although he hasn't spoken to me about it, I think he knows his Facebook post has been taken down. You get the feeling his friends are coming to help butcher me.

I feel sick still. Star still hasn't spoken to me today, and I haven't heard anything about Kim or Finn since I took his beer in the morning. I don't understand why I feel so guilty. Didn't I want revenge all along? This is the perfect payback- they'll be punished by the very best, the police of high school, the judges of Huntley Academy. But something inside me tells me I've done the unspeakable to people that deserved better.

Maybe I'm scared Finn will be inside the dormitory when the Ken doll's invited mates arrive. I want to get as far away as possible, in case a crate is smashed over my head, or I die from being asphyxiated by the smothering fire of cigarette smoke. I don't even really think he deserved it, not really. I don't feel as bad about dobbing Kim in, although I still can't bring myself to believe I did the right thing. Finn was actually kind of nice today. And he only ever did one really nasty thing to me, which could be taken as one of his lame jokes. In fact, he helped get rid of the Facebook picture, and that's not something an enemy would do to another. We'll never be friends, but we might have been on the track to becoming acquaintances before I went and gave the truth away.

The hallways feel suffocatingly small, closing in around me. Students are sprinkled through the long corridors, laughing and talking and walking to unknown destinations, and even though they have no idea what I've done, it feels like every glance they throw my way is a flicker of their judgement. I'm climbing up to the top floor of the dormitory building. I've never been scared of heights; in fact, they sort of comfort me. And four storeys isn't going to be a particularly terrifying height. I don't know what I'll be looking for up there, but perhaps I'll find an empty corridor, and I'll just look out the window like they do in the movies, thinking.

The top floor seems to be completely empty. I've never been up here before, because all of the dormitories I've ever visited are on the second floor, and the only other really important places in this building are the hall and the cafe on the ground floor. I don't see a single soul up here, and the hollows of the hall echo my footsteps like a CD track skipping and repeating an endless lyric.

There's only one corridor up here; at the end, there's a locked door that says it holds the teacher's rooms. I squint from the other end of the hall and see there's a key card machine to get in, but of course this only restricts me from entering. For one moment I am jealous of the fancy technology the teachers receive, but the moment passes as instantly as it came.

There are no windows up here, making the dimly lit hallway gloomy and dark. A hint of light seeps through the bottom of the teacher's door, but otherwise, there's only one working lightbulb here, and it flickers every now and again. I feel like I'm in a really bad horror movie. I'm on my toes, pretending I have the guts to fight any monster that comes for me, but nothing comes. This could be because I'm too easy a catch, or I'm too wimpy and skinny for a decent meal, or because all the killers lurking in the shimmers of darkness know nobody would care if I died. Murdering a loser like me would only result in a few grunts of surprise from the student body, proceeded by an uninterrupted school schedule as always.

The lack of windows kind of puts down my theory of looking pensively outside at the setting sun while I think and breathe and stuff, so obviously I'm pretty much out of other ideas. I just need to go somewhere that feels more normal than the dormitory. Defying all rules set by the horror movie directors, writers and actors in the universe alike, I start trying to open the dormitory doors. After all, it doesn't look like anyone uses these rooms. They look identical to the downstairs dorms, except their painted doors are more chipped, and they're starting to flake down to their original wood. Principal Huntley would have rescued this place much earlier if it mattered.