✏️ Under One Roof

20. One Ambition

Tegan didn't see Ness again until half past two. He was just standing there, looking confused and uncertain. She wondered what was wrong; but reminded herself that his problems were none of her business. If his mental health issues were coming to the fore, her only concern was making sure that he wasn't the target. She absolutely shouldn't think of helping him; that would just be showing him that he could count on her whenever he wanted something in the future. She didn't want to end up as her brother's dogsbody here. But he seemed so helpless... it was hard to believe that this guy was a bully.

She turned around quickly, and walked back towards her previous class. She could get back to the station with a slight detour, and that would avoid any awkward moments. She kept on telling herself that she wasn't responsible for making sure Ness did well in college; that he wasn't her responsibility. But she still couldn't make herself believe it, really. So the only option was to pretend she hadn't seen him.

"Jealous ex?" Declan's voice jolted her out of her thoughts, but she couldn't put two and two together for a moment.

"Huh?"

"Or awkward?" he continued, apparently oblivious to Tegan's confusion. "You just stopped walking, stood there for a second, and did a quick one-eighty. Kinda makes it seem like there's someone you're avoiding. I mean, tell me it's none of my business, I just wondered what kind of girl it takes to make you feel like that. Sorry."

"No, it's fine. It's just... Well, my brother. Stepbrother. I don't want to get mixed up in any more of his nonsense. We've only been living together a few weeks, and he's already..." Tegan hesitated then. While she'd been walking slowly, they were still moving, and there was no chance that Ness could see them now. And maybe a little white lie would be just what she needed to inoculate her friend group against Ness getting involved. Her biggest fear now was that he might try to wedge himself in whatever social circles she could build, and she knew that could only lead to future embarrassment. She needed the people around her to never learn about the pranks she'd been the victim of, and she thought that flipping the story was one clear way of making sure that the two worlds never collided. And the best part of it was that most of the things she needed to say would almost be true. "He's like a baby sometimes. He says he's got mental health problems, but never goes into any details. But like... just last week, I woke up to our dads running around cleaning up because... because... I'll be right back."

She wished she could have finished giving her stepbrother a little embarrassing reputation, but she still wasn't quite sure how much she should say, and how much embellishment the tale could take. And when she was thinking about the things she'd already suffered, she realised that she needed to run to the bathroom pretty urgently. She darted into the nearest building, the Maverick Centre, and looked for a sign with a couple of stick figures on. She was quick walking as she entered the building, but broke into a run when she actually saw the sign. She ran ran into the toilet cubicle, slammed the door behind her, and then immediately lost control. Pee streamed down her legs as she tried desperately to stem the flow, and seconds later all she could do was try not to cry.

She took a deep breath and counted her blessings. She had reached somewhere private before disaster struck; and she was sure that the adjacent stall was empty. There was a puddle around her feet, but it wasn't too big; and once she left the building, she was sure that nobody would notice it before some cleaning staff came in. Nobody was close enough to connect her to this incident. And she was wearing a skirt today, which by some miracle seemed to be unsplashed. Her underpants were soaked, but nobody would see them anyway. Out of all the ways she could have wet herself on her first day at university, this was probably the one that gave her the lowest chance of being discovered.

A part of her wondered if that was deliberate. There was no way she could believe that she'd coincidentally started to lose control immediately after pulling a prank to make everybody think Ness had wet himself. He was doing this to her somehow, whether it was drugs or some method she couldn't even envision, like a bladder-filling raygun or something. And if he was in control, there were so many reasons he could have wanted it to remain secret. Maybe this was just supposed to be a threat; a proof of what he could do so that she would have to obey his demands, and so he didn't want to actually humiliate her. Maybe he was trying to stop his dad from finding out what was going on, so that he wouldn't get in any trouble. Or perhaps he just liked watching her squirm, and didn't care for sharing that thrill with the rest of the world. There was no way she could guess. But one thing was certain: she wasn't just going to take this lying down. She would get him back, and destroy his reputation until there was no chance anyone would talk to him again. This wasn't about some hypothetical bullying now, this was about a very real attempt to humiliate her, and what she could do to shoot him down.