CHAPTER FOUR
Great.
What a great way to divert attention, Willa.
I licked my lips and swallowed past the lump in my throat.
“May I be excused to go to the bathroom?” I asked as carefully as possible while teetering on the edge of a break down.
Mrs. Reed nodded, and I wasted no time scrambling from the room with my metaphorical tail tucked between my legs.
The door closed behind me before she could restart the lecture, so I went from deafening silence to resounding, judgmental silence as the self-lambasting kicked in for being so weak and awkward.
The roasting session carried into the girls’ bathroom as I locked the handicap stall at the far end and squatted against the wall, folding in and burying my face in my arms.
Why did I think I was ready?
What possessed me to think that I could attend school like a normal person, pretending everything was hunky-dory?
Like the mayor of the town hadn’t tried to murder me at the psych ward.
Like the chief of police hadn’t coldcocked me into a coma that robbed me of so much muscle mass that my handwriting resembled a toddler’s.
Someone had the power and means to hush the entire police force, but the scary part was their motive to do it.
Why would someone with that much sway go to such lengths for me?
Well, apart from the chief of police, Ben’s dad, I knew very well why he’d want me gone.
Aside from that, I was nobody—a high school teenager who’d flown under the radar most of my educational career out of necessity.
What had I done to land the malicious intent of such prominent community figures?
Or figure, singular, if the mayor was also behind the hush money that prompted the Fairview Police Department to send their chief on mandatory vacation and then sweep the dirt under the rug several weeks later as they welcomed him with open arms.
How could I survive that kind of firing squad when I couldn’t even write the word proton?
A chill raced down my arm, and I glanced at my watch out of habit, my eyes snagging on the time. Somehow, fifteen minutes had passed while I wallowed in self-pity.
And what good had it done?
Not a single bit.
Angrily, I scrubbed my eyes and shot to my feet, rushing for the sinks to splash some cold water over my cheeks before someone came in. It was a miracle nobody had.
With water dripping down my face, a black shadow figure caught my attention in the mirror.
A gasp escaped me as I whirled around. No one was there, but I’d seen something.
A shiver skated up my spine.
I checked the reflection again, but only my pale, wet-cheeked, wide-eyed expression stared back and nothing else.
Flashes of fleeing the psychiatric ward—something I’d tried so hard to bury—rose to the surface. More often than not, the feeling hit that I should have stayed, like I belonged there. The level of hallucinations while fleeing for my life…
There was enough to get two people locked up.
Nothing had happened since then, though, so they must have been fake.
Still, I licked my lips, a kernel of hope rising. “Ben?”
My hands gripped the sink as I studied the brightly lit area beyond my shoulder and waited.
One minute passed.
Two.
When it was going on twenty minutes since I’d fled class, I shook my head. “Come on, Willa. Get it together. Ghosts aren’t real. It was your mind breaking and coping with a stressful situation in the only way it knew how.”
The pep talk did little to reassure me since talking to myself made me feel more shades of crazy rather than less. Avoiding the mirror, I power walked to class with my gaze glued to the ground, only to be met at the door by a pair of black high heels. Someone had noticed my absence.
“Willa, can I talk to you in the hallway for a moment?” Mrs. Reed asked, sotto voce.
Clothing and chairs shifted as students turned to the doorway.
“Sure, yes.” The hallway sounded like heaven.
The door shut behind her. I could feel my peers turning and speculating with their friends and neighbors without the teacher’s supervision. The gossip would be wild by lunch, I was sure.
Mrs. Reed took her time, a line pinching between her eyebrows the longer she studied me. “Willa, are you okay?”
A wave of heat flushed through from head to toe. “I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? You were in the bathroom for almost half an hour.”
The heat edged into annoyance. “Positive.”
My mom would have throttled me if I’d given her this much attitude in public. Well, she would have before. Head hits, even playful ones, were a bit of a persona non grata in the Walker household these days.
Mrs. Reed didn’t bat an eye. “I see. If you need anything, just let me know.” She outlined the assignment I missed, each kind word increasing the guilt over my outburst toward her. “Any questions?”
“No, Mrs. Reed.” My tail was fully tucked between my legs. “I’m sorry for snapping at you.”
Her face morphed into a genuine smile, overtaking the careful facade of politeness I’d mistaken for true cheer. “It’s okay, Willa. Although we can’t imagine all you’ve endured, we are here to help, so reach out if you need it.”
If she didn’t know she was the Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Watkins’s Hyde, then she’d been burying her head in the sand during lunch in the staff lounge. That much bitterness couldn’t be hidden forever.
A tremulous smile twitched at the corners of my mouth. “Thank you, Mrs. Reed.”
She patted my shoulder with a nod. “Okay, go on now. You better get inside before the class invents even more outlandish rumors.”
The blunt, honest statement startled a laugh out of me so loud, she shot me a wink.
Inside the room, the stares burned into me as I beelined for my seat, but the resounding silence didn’t last long when Mrs. Reed called out a nonstop list of instructions and tips. Chairs scratched the floor, and a flurry of keyboard clacks filled the air as everyone scrambled to return to task.
They’d definitely been wondering about our discussion. The boy at the pencil sharpener might have even been lingering near the door. It wasn’t like he needed a writing utensil for a digital assignment.
Manuel’s eyes lingered on me with curiosity. Even without looking at him, I could tell his brows were raised. I endured the burning gaze from across the workstation, starting a mental countdown in my head.
Manuel lasted all of two minutes before he checked on Mrs. Reed, who was hunched over, helping a student navigate to the correct link. Satisfied with the teacher’s level of distraction, he leaned forward, closing the distance between us. “So, you fall in or something?”
I blinked, my plan to ignore him thoroughly dashed in the face of my confusion. “What?”
“Just saying. Even if you don’t know the layout of the school, you were gone long enough that you could have made it to industrial tech and back. Twice.”
I broke eye contact almost immediately. “I needed a breather.”
My sloppy notes cut a stark, painful reminder—a good part of the reason for needing a breather. The elementary penmanship and wobbly lines mocked me, even if my hand could endure more than one word this time.
Progress.
Fingers snapped near my face, and I reacted.
The chair legs screeched, dragging out a high-pitched jitter across the hard linoleum tiles as I flinched away.
Friction overcame the slick polished floor, and the tall chair lilted.
Only a second of vertigo passed as my body corrected to balance.
The stool legs fell to the ground with a thud loud enough to draw attention—again.
My cheeks warmed. If I still had hair to hide behind, I’d have done it in a heartbeat.
Mrs. Reed straightened. “Is everything okay?”
Manuel spoke before I could answer. “Yeah, sorry, Mrs. Reed. That was my fault. I told her there was a spider on her arm.”
Mrs. Reed quieted the scattered amusement with a stern look. “See that it doesn’t happen again, Emmanuel. She could have been hurt.”
“Yes, Mrs. Reed.”
Emmanuel not Manuel. Again, the gnawing itch in my brain screamed familiarity.
My skin cooled as goosebumps traced along my arms in an unpleasantly familiar wave.
Oh no.
Like clockwork, buzzing dampened my hearing, turning down the click-clacking of students’ keyboards by two notches.
Dread slammed into me. If this was an episode, then there was no way Mrs. Reed would allow me a second bathroom trip after abusing the first. Would a snack be enough? Would she let me have one?
Except… the chill receded almost as soon as it began, a whisper of a feeling there and gone. The volume returned.
I was okay.
I had no idea why, but the episode receded on its own. That rarely happened.
Still, the near miss, especially because of the uncertainty if it was truly over or just the opening act, compounded my nerves, and I spent what remained of class dodging Manuel’s mild questions and attempts to spark a conversation while I mentally prepared a speech to convince my parents to homeschool me.
The gossip surrounding Ben’s death, revived with Chief Pierce’s return from his mandated vacation time to plan Ben’s memorial service, and Chief Pierce being nearby, period, was enough to set my teeth on edge.
The bell rang, and then it was onto the next period.
I hadn’t even started the homework.
“Willa, wait up,” Manuel called loud enough that I stopped because I didn’t want him calling attention to me again.
We hadn’t made it outside the classroom yet, hovering in the far corner near the second door. With the rest of the students filtering out at speed, it was relatively private when he closed in and murmured, “Sorry about scaring you earlier.”
“It’s okay, really.” I adjusted my shoulder strap, wondering if the passing period allowed enough time to drop the deadweight device off in my locker, wherever it was. Did the paper schedule have my combination?
Manuel shrugged his shoulders. “Alright. Sorry again anyway. Do you know where you’re going next?”
“Art? With Mister—”