Your Loyal Servant

(22) What's More Important?

Rocking back and forth and curled into a ball, I tried to focus on my breathing. I wanted my heart to dislodge itself from my throat and calm down, and I hoped I wasn't shaking uncontrollably—but I couldn't tell, since my brain refused to function.

As I sat there in that dusty, tiny storage closet, my only company sports equipment, I thought about various things. The main one on my mind was Howie.

That stupid jerk. When my bag had been stolen, he was the one to return it. When I almost fell to my death after someone toppled a ladder, he had caught me. He was there when I didn't know how to deal with my first breakup, and he helped put me back together. He tutored me whenever I struggled with a subject. By now, it was safe to assume a part of me depended on him to get me out of sticky situations.

So where the hell was he?

Of all times to rescue me, I thought that now would be a prime candidate. I was locked in a freaking storage room, suffering from a case of claustrophobia. I could have sworn he had a built in detector that informed him of when I was in trouble—and, hello, I was in trouble! So why wasn't that door opening to reveal him?

The whole reason he came to this school was to protect me, right? He had some crap about being a servant meant being a protector, too. To him, that entailed preventing things like this from happening. Yet this had happened anyway.

What was keeping him from finding me? Wasn't I the most important thing in his life? I wasn't tooting my own horn—he had told me that himself. So what in the world was more important to him than the most important thing to him?

It had occurred to me early on that Bianca had been the one to lock me in the closet. It just made sense. She had been the first one to suggest I put the equipment away, after all. And her number one goal in life was to make my life miserable, so it was natural to assume that anything that made me miserable was her fault. I had decided early on as well that I would murder her the second I got out of here.

It had also occurred to me that Selma had failed to notice my absence. As depressing as it was to admit, that hadn't surprised me. As soon as she was changed, she'd have her phone in her hands and I'd be an afterthought—that was just the kind of person she was. It kinda pissed me off, but I still understood that it was just how life worked.

Now, I knew Apple would wonder where I was. When she asked Selma, that's when she'd realize I never showed up in the locker room. But she'd shrug it off and feed Apple some excuse like, "She might have started feeling bad so she went to the nurse. She'll pop up soon enough." And that'd ease Apple, so they'd stop worrying about me.

It was a bit concerning how well I knew my friends.

Sitting there wasn't helping me, so I got up and glanced about the room. I found a pencil, so I sat by a wall and started doodling, just to distract myself from how small the room was getting. When I realized I probably looked mentally insane drawing on a wall, I tossed the pencil and fell back onto the gymnastic mats.

What time was it? At least an hour had to have passed. For all I knew, several hours could have gone by. There was no concept of time when trapped in a cramped storage closet, it turns out. Maybe the entire school day had finished. I had no clues to figure out how long I'd been in here.

I was thankful for the small, flickering light bulb on the ceiling. Even though it was weak, at least I wasn't in utter darkness. Had it been pitch black, my claustrophobia would have easily tripled.

After being immobile for so long, I was getting cold in my short-shorts and thin cotton shirt. I sat up on the mats and leaned my back against the wall. I curled into myself, tugging my shirt over my knees. I held my arms tight against my body, trying to conserve heat.