mermaid 》 alemanda ✔

chapter thirteen.

alesha

I had done it. We had broken up but it had left more bruises on my body than being with Azuka had. He had abused me when I had tried to break up with him last night but I had done it in the morning. I left him a note, saying why I wasn't there because we were done. I was done with being abused for almost every little thing, done being his sex object. I was done with him. We were done.

I had checked into a hotel that morning as a place to stay until I could get back up onto my feet and rent a new flat. The flat we had shared was in Azuka's name so I didn't want to stay with him. The only person I had to go to was Amanda but I hadn't told her about how Azuka was beating me on an almost nightly basis and coming close to raping me almost every night. I couldn't tell her that Azuka had been doing that stuff to me.

I looked at the prosthetic leg laying on the opposite bed from me and then looked at the stump of my leg that had been left from cancer. It was red and raw, a result of me leaving it on last night because I was going to run from Azuka. I ran from him and checked into the hotel. I kept the leg on for the rest of the night in case he had followed me and now my leg was paying the price for it.

I rubbed lotion gently over the stump, trying to calm the angry skin down before I had to put the prosthetic back on to leave the hotel for the drama club lock in. The lotion soothed my skin and I put a sock over the stump to protect it from further damage. I put the prosthetic back on and rolled my yoga pants leg back down to cover it.

Almost none of my students knew I had a prosthetic limb except for those on the swim team. Only they knew and I asked them to keep it quiet that their coach was disabled. None of the other teachers knew except for those in my department and Amanda. I could trust Amanda but I didn't trust her enough to tell her about Azuka. I didn't trust myself to tell anyone about Azuka.

I hummed as I picked my bag up with my things for the lock in in it and my sleeping bag. I swung the bag over my shoulder and pocketed my phone charger and the room key to my hotel room.

I left the hotel room and I left the hotel, getting into my car and driving to the school. Amanda's car was already there when I got to the lock in and a couple of parents' cars were parked. I was early for the lock in to help Amanda set everything up and a couple of drama club members has volunteered to help with the set up.

Simon wasn't here yet and he had volunteered to be a chaperone for the lock in as we needed at least three adults and we only needed one more. Simon was almost always late. No matter if we texted him to remind him, he would be late and he said he was going to bring Paula.

He had managed to succeed in getting Paula to go on a date with him and that turned into a second and a third date. They were dating steadily now for a month and only I knew about it. The cat would be let out of the bag tonight if they cuddled while they were sleeping as Simon had said he would bring a couple of air mattresses with him.

I pushed open the door to the band room and I was greeted by Amanda.

"You're early!" She said. "Simon's not here with Paula yet and I sense they're doing something naughty to make them late. They've been flirting more and more with each other lately."

"They have," I agreed. I didn't tell Amanda that they were dating as it wasn't my business to tell. "They just need to have a good shag with each other. There's too much sexual tension in their relationship to be healthy."

Amanda laughed and she nodded. "They're probably shagging right now," she replied, still laughing. "Everything is already set up so all we need to do is wait for people to arrive."

amanda

The members of the drama club arrived quickly and it was going off without a hitch. A few students who were in the concert band got out their instruments when they weren't cleaning out the tech closet or trying on their costumes or cleaning out the closet, and started playing old concert songs and pep band songs.

It filled the band room with music that was somewhat louder than the music I had playing on the stereo from my classroom. It was turning into a good idea to do the lock in with Alesha, Simon, and Paula. Simon had ended up disappearing into the band room after the students who had started playing and he joined them, as he kept his trumpet at school. Paula had a couple of students helping her dispose of old paint cans that had paint still in them and dragging old sets and broken props out to the dumpster.

Alesha had disappeared to somewhere halfway through cleaning out the tech closet and the costume closet. She had taken a phone call and she didn't return after it but her car was still at the school. It worried me that she didn't return after she had left to take the phone call.

I was too busy to go and find her as I was in charge of cleaning the costume closet and helping people to find their costumes and for some of them, the wigs that went with the costumes.

We had wheeled the rack of costumes for the Matilda  musical out into the arts hallway and we were attempting to tackle finding the ripped costumes, the costumes that were attacked by moths, and the costumes that had buttons missing. I put another dress onto a costume rack, the dress being a wedding dress that was extremely dated for 2018. We had sectioned everything into categories and we were putting everything onto the racks they belonged on.

It was a simple task but it kept me too busy to try and find Alesha until the closet was almost all the way organized. I started to search around the school, looking in the arts hallway, down the math department hallway, and the languages hallway. She wasn't in any of the hallways, not even in the science department wing. I went up the stairs to the English and social studies departments hallway and I could hear faint crying from one of the branches that went to a classroom.

I decided to explore, thinking that it was most likely Alesha that was crying. Alesha was in the farthest branch from the stairs, in the branch next to the emergency stair case. She was curled up, her arms holding her legs tightly to her chest and her head was buried in her legs. She didn't look up when I saw her.

Her phone was laying abandoned next to her, a text making the screen light up. I didn't look at the phone as I was too concerned about Alesha crying. I sat down next to her and I touched her left knee lightly, her jumping and looking at me with fear in her brown eyes that were glittering with unshed tears.

"Why are you crying, Alesha?" I asked gently, my hand moving to the top of her back to try to comfort her.

"I-I don't w-want to t-talk a-about it," she murmured in response, being muffled by more sobbing as she buried her head back onto her legs.

"Do you want me to comfort you?" I asked, my hand now rubbing Alesha's back to try to comfort her. She mumbled a yes and she cried harder than what she had been before.

My hand moved the back of her shirt down and I could see a dark bruise on her back. I frowned and worry creased my forehead.

"Alesha, how did you get this bruise on your back?" I questioned gently, lifting my hand from her back and setting it into my lap.

"M-my ex b-boyf-friend," she revealed. "He-he's been hitting me."

She dissolved into heavier crying upon telling me that her boyfriend had been abusing her and recently from how fresh the bruise on her back looked. She hunched over, putting her head in between her legs and she mumbled the same sentence for a second time. I didn't like seeing Alesha like this at all so I pulled her into my lap and she slowly unfurled.

[] hey guys! Alesha broke up with Azuka finally and Simon and Paula have become an item. What do you think is going to happen next and what did you like about this chapter? Bye until the next chapter!