Trying To Endure

Chapter Fifteen

WARNING: references to panic attacks, suicidal thoughts and self-harm.

🌺

April Levesque

My mind floods the susurration puckering the bystanders with a famous motto of Mike. Silence in insanity. My mouth sealed, my heart savagely batters the syllables of with or without power, there is a great responsibility, leaving an excruciating roaring blaze: because the truth is a deathless death.

"Ishaan?" someone murmurs, curious. Voices are powerful. "Who's Ishaan?"

Society wants sheep. "Who's Charlotte?"

Rhett, Roy and a few of the basketballers recover into a thirst to wish me dead. When the lamb decides to be its' own shepherd, to break out of this ingrained system of oppression, it scares people.

Rhett wipes his mouth again. "The hell did you say?"

When you rise, when you speak up, it shows you don't care, that you act out of the heart, and that's dangerous for them.

"Sooner or later—" I lug to Hunar. If what Bodie said is true, it is saddening a person of colour committed treachery. "—the truth will come out." Hunar drops his petrified glare to my shoes, coasting to my shoulders, to my face. Anyone is capable of maliciousness.

Jasmine tows me away. A rapid, final collision of Roy Heston, his frame hunched in soreness. Glamorous and gorgeous, a Grecian prince of the old tales; his sallow hair tow-coloured in the dullest brilliance, surfed his mousy irises that once had the power to warm me, flutter my stomach, and glistened at my the sight of me. I swooned over that smile, of mischief and fun, day and night, minute by minute, eager to be engulfed in its' presence, as it had the potential to remarkably lift my spirits. Incredibly easy he is to fall in love with. So illusional.

Monsters are beautiful, walking among us.

After all, God's favourite was— and still is—a beautiful angel.

***

Whoever sprinted for the teachers was stopped. I suppose if those horrid boys are arrested again, it won't look winsome on their profiles. Despite it being partially us who initiated the conflict, our side has prominent support; last time, there was no luck for the opponent.

The girls and I are in Naila's dorm room. Her parents live in Milton Keynes. Edgewater Independent is one of the 'closest, best private schools with fantastic educational success', and so they sent her here. She returns home most weekends. Rarely doesn't to efficiently study. The edifice next door has the reputational bathrooms where last year's sexual violations happened. The boys cannot enter for obvious, strict regulations. They encountered Zavian Malik, hence they're in his place.

I am in the bathroom of her flat, their voices in the bedroom muffled. The door locked, I clutch the pristine-white sink. The confidence expired seconds ago, on the brink of melting down—

I want to cut.

I started to self-harm again after what Roy has done to me. The urges are random, are reasonable. To steer clear of the temptation, I do Mike's meditation: deep inhale for four seconds. A five-second pause. Slowly exhale for seven seconds.

Do it.

In through the nose, out through the mouth.

Cut, you wretch.

No thought, no dialogue, no action.

I want to die.

Focus on the breath.