LXIV.

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It really didn't come as any shock that I was incapable of sleeping for the next six days.

It wasn't for a lack of trying on my part. Beauty sleep was one of the top ten cardinal rules of skincare, and if I could pick the five things that mattered most to me in this world the state of my skin definitely made that list. If I didn't have more important things to worry about I would have had several mental breakdowns over the horrendous bags that had taken up a permeant residence under my eyes.

The thing was, I did have more important things to worry about. Namely, just one, and his name was Arsen Mitchell.

From the moment he had dropped me off at home after our fairly dark auction date last Saturday I had been cycling through three emotions: anxiety, anger, and bitter sadness. For the better part of that Saturday night and into the early hours of Sunday morning I had spent most of my time by the toilet as a physical sickness from the combination of all three of those emotions overtook me.

While I hadn't spent all week throwing up, I found it very hard to shut my brain off long enough to get the rest I was in desperate need of. My mind absolutely refused to pause for even just one moment in the relay race it was doing that had no end in sight, and all my thoughts circled around the Arsen problem, and it was a problem.

I wanted so badly to help him in any way I could, but I just didn't...know.

I didn't know what I supposed to say. I didn't know how I was supposed to act. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. Were we supposed to talk about it further or did we never talk about it again? Should I wait for him to bring it up? Should I bring it up myself or would that be considered rude? Should I change the way I acted around him now that I was privy to this kind of knowledge or should I act as if he had never told me? Was it okay for me to touch him? Should I only touch him in certain ways? Should I ask to touch him?

All these questions and no answers had done quite the job of causing a great deal of panic to reside in me.

Of course, I made use of the time I wasn't sleeping and did a lot of googling about sexual assault, and while I was a lot more knowledgeable about the general subject than before it still didn't feel sufficient enough. The articles always ended with vague ways of how someone could help a person who had been assaulted: believing them, listening to them, not judging them, etc., and while all that was great and certainly something I made sure to take note of I felt like I was missing something. Like there was more that I could do.

I was mulling over all of this during breakfast, pulling apart the warm chocolate chip muffin Inez had set in front of me and letting the pieces scatter across my plate. I jumped a little when I felt a hand on my forehead.

"Are you okay, Juliet?" Inez frowned, studying me carefully as she flipped her hand over and continued feeling all over my face, searching for the temperature I did not have. I swatted her hand away and leaned back.

"I'm fine," I dropped the muffin and took a sip of the orange juice in front of me. "Why?'

"You've been looking a little...well, very drained. Have you been sleeping okay?"

"Yeah," I lied with a shrug. "I mean, maybe not as well as I should. I have this really big exam today that I've been studying all week for."

Not a complete lie. I did have a biology exam today. Sure, I hadn't studied as much as I should have for it, but to be fair I had a lot on my mind.

"Oh," she nodded, stepping back.

She continued cleaning up around the kitchen, but from time to time she would sneak a concerned look over at me when she thought I wasn't looking.

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