✅ A Dose of Humiliation

16. First Boost

"I'm sorry, did I do something wrong? If you would like to send feedback about your command, you can–"

"Tomas! Call. The. School."

"Certainly. Calling East Side Community High School." And then the voice was replaced by a dialling tone for a long twenty seconds, as I saw that we were almost home. By the time Dad had asked the question, and proved that he was who he claimed, we were stopping on the street outside the house. I sat there and waited, scared but just hoping that there hadn't been any days I'd forgotten.

There weren't. A school administrator read out a list of the dates I had been off, which included two sick days I'd forgotten, but I at least hoped that my parents would see sense when the report each time included the fact that they had called in to say I was sick. I watched Mum's hands like a hawk, where one was still clutching the syringe in her bag. Morse stressful were a handful of what they called excluded absences; times when I'd been called out of class for reasons related to one student committee or another. There hadn't been so many this year, but as one of the only kids in my year with a third-party sports first aid certificate, I'd still volunteered to help out on a couple of occasions. Dad sounded a little irritable as he asked the question, but even the school secretaries were very clear in explaining that 'excluded' meant that the incident wasn't counted in attendance statistics because I was somewhere else following a teacher's orders. I crossed my fingers as we got to the end of the list of absences. It was a very short list, with the excluded ones counting for well more than half of it.

"And then there's the seventeenth..." I could hear that the secretary was bored by now, but glad we were at the end of the list. "First period absence. Called in by parents, medical appointment, Special and Unusual Deterrents. That can't be right, can it?"

"That's right," Dad growled, clearly angry at his decisions being challenged. And then there's this morning. Just tell me how late she was."

"No absence... oh, an excluded for morning registration. Entered into the system by Mr Gellert, the principal. I can't tell you more than that, but she's shown as attending all her classes today."

"So why did her form tutor not know where she was?"

"I can't answer that. But Mr Gellert has been working on updating the rules policy for the next academic year, and it's possible he would want an opinion from the student body on how changes are likely to be received. It seems natural that–"

The voice was cut off. Dad opened the car door and stormed back towards the house. He was upset; a mere receptionist had dared to question his parenting decisions, and that was the kind of thing that shouldn't happen in his world.

I fumbled for the door release behind me, still not taking my eyes off Mum, and then backed away as quickly as I could. I ran straight upstairs when I got into the house. I didn't want to face my parents right now, I couldn't face them knowing what they had done to me. And as I lay there in my room, I realised that I had no idea what the drug was even supposed to do. It certainly wasn't anything I'd noticed.

Could it make me more emotional? That might have explained the party last night, where I had done things I never would have considered normally. Or maybe it was a dud, with no effect beyond proving once and for all that my parents had just been waiting for an opportunity to hurt me.

I didn't understand why they would do this. I didn't want to admit that all of this was real. But there was no way to deny what had happened.

I had homework still, so I did it. Or I tried to. It was hard to focus, when my mind kept swinging back to what my parents were trying to do to me. Or guessing about what it could be. Would I have escaped if it didn't work? Unlikely, there was still a backup shot. I remembered that much. If that happened, would the extra jab Mum had given me make any difference? I had no idea.

My phone vibrated across the desk a few times. Somebody I didn't know told me that there was another party tomorrow, and I should come. Jodie letting me know some important gossip, but I couldn't even make sense out of the words right now. Another unknown friend asked if I'd gotten home okay, saying that I'd looked pretty upset this morning. The show of support was weird; it seemed that in a weird drunken haze I'd done something to earn the respect of the cool rich kids, but I didn't have any idea what it could have been.

And thinking about the party again reminded me that there was still a bag of pee-soaked clothes at the bottom of my school bag. I got it out and rinsed everything under the cold tap in the bathroom until there was no smell that I could detect. Then I shoved them to the bottom of the laundry hamper. Mum normally washed stuff at the weekend, so even if they were wet now the moisture would have soaked into all the other clothes by then. Mum would probably never notice. The top was harder; someone had written on it. I checked, and the number on there was one of the guys who'd texted me earlier, but that still didn't give me a name to go with the number. And no matter what I tried, I didn't know how to get pen out of a shirt. Normally I would have asked Mum to help; maybe there was a stain remover or something that would make the difference. But I'd been to a wild party, and this would only be more proof that I was guilty of something. I'd have to throw it out, and maybe buy a replacement before Mum noticed that the number in my closet had changed.

The clothes I was wearing now were Serena's, I remembered. I'd have to get them washed too, and give them back to her. Preferably without my parents noticing. I knew they weren't exactly the same as my own, probably a more expensive brand making them in the same style. Mum wouldn't see that either, would she? Or that I had more clothes than usual for this week?

There was a knock on my door before I could think of anything else. I ignored it, just like I'd ignored Dad banging earlier, and the shouts to come down for dinner. But this time the knock was gentler, and I wondered if Dad might have started to contemplate that he might not always be entirely right.

It wasn't likely, I knew, but I could keep hoping that somewhere deep inside he still cared about me. How long would it take for me to give up on that hope?

Author's Note: Sorry this chapter is so late in the day. Today's been a really bad day, struggling to get anything done. My mental health is in a downward spiral again, and I don't know any way to fix it without someone willing to help me reach littlespace.