Chapter 22. Liam #3
"Someone has to make it, because you won't!"
We're close now, close enough that I can see the bruise along his jaw, the bandage still clinging to his eyebrow. Close enough that I can smell him.
"I trusted you," I say, and my voice breaks on the word trusted, and I watch something shatter behind his green eyes. "I trusted you with everything. I told you things I've never told anyone. I let you in, and you went straight to Griff to rat me out."
"Because I love you!" His voice rises, desperate. "Because I can't sit there and watch you destroy yourself and do nothing. I won't. I'd rather have you alive and hating me than dead from this. Do you understand that? I'd rather you never speak to me again than let you keep hurting yourself…"
He stops. Swallows hard. His eyes are bright, glassy, and I realize with a sick jolt that Ethan, who's usually a stone wall, perfect record, iron control, is on the verge of crying.
I can't look at it. I can't hold that image and stay angry, and I need to stay angry, because anger is the only thing keeping me upright right now.
"Don't pretend like this was love, because love doesn't look like this."
I turn and walk toward the door. Jack says something, but it doesn't register. I don't look back because I don't want to look at Ethan's face.
I don't go far, just down the hall, I have nowhere to go.
I slide to the ground, press my palms against my eyes until I see stars.
I don't cry. I won't give this place, this system, this moment, the satisfaction.
I fucking hate him. And that's a lie, because I love him too much, and that's why it hurts so bad.
The next meal comes too fast. Lunch. I barely have time to scrub my face and pretend I haven't been sitting on the hallway floor.
Only I don't get to join the herd. Not anymore.
A guard I've seen around but never spoken to intercepts me at the entrance. She's tall, broad-shouldered, with dark hair pulled into a severe bun, dark skin, and her nametag reads SANTOS. She doesn't smile.
"Marsal," she says, not a question. "You're with me."
She guides me to a table in the far corner of the cafeteria, separated from the others. It's a two-person table shoved against the wall. My tray is already there, waiting for me. Mashed potatoes. Green beans. Some unidentifiable protein. A carton of milk. A bread roll. Same old.
I sit. Santos pulls out the chair across from me, positions it at a slight angle so she can see both me and the rest of the room, and sits. She doesn't speak. She doesn't pull out a phone or a book or even a clipboard. She just watches me with those flat, professional eyes.
The humiliation is total.
Every kid in this cafeteria can see me. The weird kid at the corner table with a personal babysitter, eating under supervision like a toddler who can't be trusted with a spoon.
I can feel their eyes, the quick glances, the whispered conversations.
I can practically hear Harry's commentary from wherever he's sitting, and the thought makes my skin crawl.
I pick up my fork. The mashed potatoes are cold.
I put a bite in my mouth and chew, staring at a spot on the wall just above Santos's left shoulder.
She doesn't react. Doesn't nod encouragingly, doesn't check off some invisible box.
Just sits there, breathing, existing, being a witness to my degradation.
I feel Ethan watching me, sitting with Jack and Miles.
I don't look. I won't give him that. He doesn't get to watch me suffer and feel good about it, like he’s helping me heal.
He doesn't get to sit over there with his clean conscience and his I did it because I love you bullshit and see me acknowledge him. He gets nothing.
I take another bite. The green beans taste disgusting. I chew. Swallow. My throat works against the food like it's swallowing glass.
Santos shifts slightly in her chair, recrossing her arms. Still silent.
Still watching. I wonder if she drew the short straw for this assignment or if she volunteered.
I wonder if she thinks I'm pathetic. I wonder if she's been briefed on my file, on the specifics, on the clinical language they use to describe what I do: bulimia, purging behavior, self-induced emesis, compensatory mechanisms. Words that make it sound clean and medical instead of what it actually is, which is me on my knees in a bathroom stall with my fingers down my throat, crying.
I eat another forkful. And another. Each one is a small act of violence against myself, which is ironic, because the whole point of this exercise is supposedly to stop me from committing violence against myself.
The bread roll is dense and dry. I tear it into pieces, eating them one by one, washing each down with a sip of milk.
My stomach cramps. Not because I'm full, not yet, but because my body knows what's supposed to come next, the relief, the release, the three seconds of silence, and it's bracing for a ritual that won't happen.
I'd love to vomit right there, just to spite them.
Across the room, the normal sounds of lunch continue.
Plastic trays clattering. Conversations overlapping.
Someone laughs, loud and sharp. Everyone else gets to eat like a person.
Everyone else gets to sit with their friends, make jokes, complain about the food, be normal.
I get a corner table and a silent guard and the knowledge that the boy I love is the one who put me here.
And I can’t even get as angry as he deserves.