The Ripmender

Chapter 6

“I don’t feel hungry, ” I said, as Zama and Aldytha peered into the fridge to see what they could cook for supper.

“You can’t not eat,” Tenley said. “Just try.”

I sat down at the kitchen table, and tried to stop thinking about the way food made my stomach want to do a double somersault.

The residence where we stayed was a large one, with about thirty apartments fitted into it. Each apartment consisted of two shared rooms, a tiny lounge and kitchen.

The res was access-controlled, and only residents with key cards were allowed into the living areas and communal games room. Visitors were permitted in the large lounge on the ground floor, as well as in the courtyard in the middle of the building.

My meals had been a matter of sneaking into the kitchen when the rest of my fellow apartment dwellers had finished. My roommate barely said a word to me, and the two other girls frankly scared the life out of me.

They belonged to some literary society, and walked around barefoot with long black hair and long black clothes. They had always behaved in a friendly manner towards me, but I wasn’t the sort who made friends very easily.

It was a strange sensation to find myself in a cheerful group of people who seemed to like being with me. I couldn’t enjoy it though; every cell in my body was jangling in an uneasy discord.

Silly, really. Nathan Jake couldn’t waltz up to the room, being both a man and a famous person, and not be stopped.

But what happened in the morning … and during the day, and the next day and the next day? How was I ever going to be able to study when I had an angry drugged-up psycho musician/magician after me?

I could only eat a few mouthfuls of the delicious fish and savoury rice that the other girls made. They tried to get me to have more, but my throat felt like it was closing tightly around every mouthful. It made swallowing rather difficult.

It was also difficult to eat when I wanted to cry all the time. Not just about Nathan, but the fact that I was being shown kindness at last. I had known that I was miserable, but I hadn’t realised how much I had ached for people to care about me.

My school friend’s desertion had really knocked me hard. She had been the one who had been there for me every time I had cried about my family. We had comforted each other when the school bullies had made us their target. We had shared every part of growing up together. She was the only person who understood the way I felt about Nathan.

And then she had left, promising to email me, but obviously not really meaning it. When I had written to her, in tears over the way the local farmer’s son had treated me, she hadn’t replied.

When she eventually mailed me back, she gave me a long list of excuses why she didn’t have time to stay in touch, and I had realised that the saying “out of sight, out of mind” was very true.

And here were three girls who didn’t need me for anything, and yet they were concerned about the fact that I didn’t have an appetite.

Sometimes, wonderful things do happen to people like me…

After supper, we went to the games room where there was a comforting crowd watching the evening movie. Nathan would hardly burst into the room and slay everyone.

I knew I had to do something about the terror that was consuming me. If I didn’t resolve this situation, I was probably going to die of a heart attack before Nathan could zap me with his purple laser.

I would leave.

I had some money saved up for emergencies; I could sneak out the campus and catch a taxi into town, despite dire warnings of how dangerous they were. After that a bus, someone had to know where the bus station was.