Awake

THIRTY TWO

So, that's what happened yesterday. Even though it was barely afternoon, everyone was in such a state of either pain or shock that Zoe declared that there wouldn't be any more training till the next morning. She told our silent assembly an extremely long anecdote about the dangers of being exhausted whilst training that I think involved a spork and an amputation, but as interesting as that sounds, I tuned her out almost immediately, still too furious to want to engage with any of them.

Rao was quiet, as always, but his face was tight and strained, and his eyes kept flickering to the corners of the corridor, as though he could see something invisible to everyone else.

Jake was limping slightly, his mouth a tight line of pain. Rust-coloured blood stained the back of his t-shirt from the wound on his head. I averted my eyes and told myself I didn't care. But I did wonder why they hadn't used a medstick on him. Did they just save them for emergencies?

As we progressed along the corridor, people peeled off – Mila disappearing into a room with a red cross on the door (like a plague marker, I thought uncharitably), and Rao waving off Zoe and slowly making his way up a narrow staircase.

"So then I had to perform a make-shift burny-thing, you know – when you burn the wound and it seals... cauterizing, that's it! – It didn't fucking work – Oh!" Zoe interrupted herself. "Teakettle!" she appeared to be addressing me. "This is your room."

She heaved open a metal sliding door. It was painted pale blue. It slid across on rollers and I looked into the room gingerly. Nothing inside but a large, bare mattress on the floor. A grey blanket was heaped carelessly at the end. At the other end of the cavernous space was a door.

"Where does that go?" I asked.

"Narnia," said Zoe. I frowned at her. She rolled her eyes. "It's your walk-in-wardrobe, sauna, ensuite – whatever. It's empty. I think maybe they kept chemical waste in there."

"What?"

"Oh, God," she said, grinning widely. "I'm so fucking hilarious. Sometimes I can't stand myself."

 I don't know how her own mother stands her. I stepped into the room and Paige followed me like a shadow.

"Anna," said Jake.

I turned cold eyes on him. "I'm going to sleep," I said, gripping hold of the heavy sliding door.

"Ah, wait – Eyeball," said Zoe, lunging in and grabbing Paige's arm. "Your room's up this way. Master-fucking-suite..." she dragged a reluctant Paige away. Jake stayed behind.

The silence between us felt as thick as tar. I studied his face, even as he studied mine. As always, his expression was nearly impossible to read. That should have warned me long ago that I couldn't trust him.

"I – " began Jake.

"You knew that if I failed the test they would murder me," I said simply. "And you brought me here anyway." Something burned in my eyes, but I blinked it back. "You knew they'd put me in that box – and you knew that they'd hurt me in it. And you brought me here anyway."

My grip on the door was white-knuckled.

"Maybe you even knew that I'd never forget what you just allowed to happen," I said. "But you brought me here anyway."

I slid the door shut on his stricken face, and I locked it. Then I walked over to the mattress and collapsed onto it, facedown. If I cried a little, I'm the only one that will ever know. The massive room swallowed up all sounds.

Then I fell asleep.

As you know, Zoe woke me up with her typical charm and a bucket of water the next morning, and here I am. It helps to write everything down and read it over. It separates what happened from me – as though it happened to someone else.