Midmorning

xiii. three days

I was lucky it was six o'clock.

             People normally rolled about to crush six a.m. alarms into silence before finally getting up at midmorning—some had only just fallen asleep at dawn, and would be awake by the time lunch was served. If they saw me here, I'd be dead.

             Maybe I wasn't so lucky, then.

             My whole body cramped against his, limbs locked together, his breath warm over my neck. My sketchbook—I couldn't remember how it got there, but I remembered drawing him in the smallest morning hours—had pages torn out, carefully until not careful at all, fizzed edges running all along the inner spine. If I'd done it, I didn't remember that, either. Perhaps the memory had been stolen from me, page by page.

             His sigh was hostile on my skin. Good morning.

             Good morning, goodnight, goodbye.

             'We should get up.'

             'Will we?'

             'Seems unlikely.'

             It was wrong to smile.

             'Wren will wonder where I am,' I said, pushing away from the warmth, 'I should.'

             'She'll know,' said Tom, following suit.

             And, to my dismay, he was right.

             The hall had dimmed regardless of the gold streaming and spilling everywhere. Its colour had been drained, wrung out like a towel. Then there was Wren: the garland, the paint, the brush. I knew her smile was mocking but it was still ineffable.

             'Where were you last night?'

             But she knew where and I was thankful Tom was at the Slytherin table. 'Somewhere crying, mostly.'

             Wren wrinkled her nose.

'Was he that bad?'

             I coughed. 'We just talked, Wren.'

             'While you cried?'

             'Apparently.'

             Whatever it was, I was dependent on it. Talking, sleeping, together or alone. There was some strange comfort in lying next to a killer.

             Wren's face suddenly fell. 'Why were you crying?'

             You. Him. Mum. Dad. No one. Everyone.

             My face creased and ached. 'Doesn't matter now.'

             Her hand scraped up against mine. It didn't feel like Tom's: he was entirely hollow, like a mother and a miscarriage. But she was the ghost, the guest, the daughter, my sister. 'If you want to talk about it, we can.'

             'Thank you.' I squeezed her hand. I can't keep doing this to you.

             So I did it to him instead.

             People talked and I didn't care because there were only three days, like the Brontë sisters, the primary colours, the holy trinity. I didn't know if Tom cared, or he'd done this with so many girls that people weren't shocked he was toying with me, bound to make me cry, leave me, oh, so he's over her.

             But right now I wanted to feel something, anything, and as a result was in his dorm, textbooks littering the bed under the pretence of studying—there was a final exam—but instead I'd grated my instep against a hardback in an attempt to drag myself on him, books and clothes abandoned.