It took almost a week for Nat to sort of recover from what the nurse claimed to be a flu. Since it was a virus, all they could do was wait it out. Apparently it would be 'wholly unethical' to give her antibiotics, but the nurse was pretty free with the painkillers and surprisingly lax about visiting hours. She also seemed pretty happy letting every single one of Natalie's friends in there at once, who were very luckily (though rather miraculously) not affected by whatever flu strain it was that Nat had.
Having her friends coming to see her was almost strange. Whenever they did make an appearance they were all honey and sunshine, joking around trying to come up with dumb stuff to make her laugh until she kicked them out because she was getting worn out. When they were gone, she would either be trying to catch up on all the work she was missing (very reluctantly, but painfully aware that she'd have to do it sometime), sleeping, or compulsively drawing Ephren. It might be his eyes, or his mouth, or an arm lain out across the page – only once did she cave to drawing all of him on the same page. As it was, she would often abruptly stop drawing and start ripping up the paper into tiny little pieces which she would then split into two piles: one for the bin; one for her clothes drawer, which she would later slip into the bin when it had been switched over. Only when she very rarely managed to draw something that definitively wasn't Ephren would she keep it.
Most of her time was spent sleeping it off, though, no matter the time of day, meaning that sometimes her visitors would either have to be turned away, or wait in her room very quietly for her to wake up. They could be waiting for hours, though, since she had temporarily become notoriously hard to wake up. Most visitors would therefore either try and come back later, or perhaps hang around for a bit, and hope she'd wake up. Only Penryn, out of everyone, could wake Nat up that week, although she'd only do it if they hadn't already seen her that day.
When Natalie woke up in the infirmary one morning and briskly got up, showered in the tiny cubicle with those health-and-safety-overkill handrails and dressed herself in her comfy trackpants and sweater, balancing awkwardly on one leg to put her socks on, in the privacy of the toilet cubicle (which somewhat unnervingly didn't lock), then quickly returned to the warmth of her bed to await the nurse's morning round, she suddenly realized she wasn't really all that ill any more. It was at that exact instant that Nurse Kelly appeared from where she had evidently been waiting in the doorway of the ward with a stern smile on her face.
They spoke in unison, saying almost exactly the same thing, "I guess I'm ready to leave now."
They both laughed for a moment, and then Kelly bustled over and took Nat's temperature, which was now about normal. She wasn't exactly 100%, but she wasn't going to be fainting all over the place any more. Nat quickly changed into something a little more presentable, then the Nurse authoritatively helped Natalie tidy up her (who had brought it to her again? Penryn, she supposed) and together they had Nat ready to go off to Math in a matter of just a few minutes.
"You make sure you come right to me if you're ever feeling ill like that again," commanded the Nurse with a smile.
"Of course I will." Natalie was turning towards the door when she thought of something. She fumbled in her bag and produced a little A5 slip of paper. "Oh, I almost forgot. I drew this while I was here," she said, holding it out to the woman. "I thought maybe you might want it. I don't know, you don't have to if you don't want it, just..."
Nurse Kelly looked up from the drawing with broad smile. "It's lovely. Here, I'll tack it to your cupboard here, so I'll see it on my rounds... Not that there's anyone here at the moment," She added bitterly, then hastily tacked on, "- which is a good thing, of course."
With that, they parted ways and Natalie headed very cautiously (and reluctantly) on towards Math.
Except she didn't get that far.
The first sign of trouble was someone calling out loudly from behind her. It wasn't a voice she immediately recognized, so she ignored it. They probably weren't talking to her, after all, and it wasn't as though they'd said her name. Then they shouted it again, and it seemed closer this time. And finally, accompanied by a few people disgruntled protests, it came a third time.
"Hey, bitch!" This time it was partnered with someone's razor-sharp grip on her arm, yanking her back slightly. It took all her concentration just to not fall over, especially as they yanked her bag off her shoulder.
She turned around very slowly, as if trying not to startle a wild beast, to see her attacker. The grip on her arm tightened even more, and they turned her back again before she got a chance to see their face. Some of the other people in the corridor were slowing to a halt, staring at the mini-commotion. A face rammed up to her ear and hissed into it, "Smile and act normal or this will be even worse for you."
Natalie wanted to be brave and refuse, but this was too much. Trying her best to pull a convincing smile, she stayed silent as they cheerily told the growing group of Samaritans that this was some kind of in joke and she and Nat were BFFs really. Seemingly glad to have their excuses covered, they all nodded along and left, clearly not genuinely convinced, but willing to overlook their gut instinct when it made life easier.
The mystery then forced Nat down a quiet side corridor which eventually led back to the dormitories. Natalie could now hear a couple more voices behind her, meaning there must have been a whole group of them, but whoever had hold of her arm now had in some kind of martial-artsy hold that made it nigh-on impossible for Natalie to turn around enough even to catch the slightest glimpse of their faces. Eventually, they came to a halt at one of the doors and there was a sudden flurry of whispers that Natalie could only partly make out.
"Shouldn't we ha... It's all well and ...eeing our ...sure knowing... room we ... hint...."
"You ... blindfolded her ...supposed to... and that..."
"Well... now then ...looking, and ... is the right corridor or not."
"Yeah! ...little walk-about and then-"
"But... no one sees..."
"Do we really ... her a bit... I really don't think ...this."
"Oh... deserves this. ... hurt her badly ...crystal clear that ....absolutely immoral."
"...stop now... won't know what ... wrong."
"What?"
But she heard the last bit, as it came from just next to her ear. "Never mind, let's just hurry up and cover her eyes already. My arm's beginning to ache like hell from holding her like this."
A flurry of movement above her head was shortly followed by almost complete darkness as some kind of makeshift blindfold was pulled roughly down over her eyes. Someone ran their hand along the bottom and top edges, presumably checking the blindfold was on properly, which it was. Next, her other hand was yanked behind her back and both her wrists were tied tightly together. The person who had hold of her pushed her on down the corridor. Natalie was completely petrified, constantly worried she'd trip over on something or they'd make her walk right on into a wall. She briefly tried keeping track of the turns they took, but they kept suddenly stopping and spinning her around, and quite soon she was struggling to remember (more than usual) her left from right.
Finally she heard a door unlocking and they shoved her inside so she landed on something thankfully soft, almost certainly a bed.
"Feeling comfy there, Natalie?" one of the asked, their voice dripping with cold sarcasm.
Natalie finally found her voice, "what... what am I doing here?"
"Can't you guess?" Natalie shook her head slowly. "Why, you're being punished, of course."
"I...I don't understand. What have I done to make you so... angry with me?"
"Don't pretend you don't know." Natalie didn't bother contradicting them this time; they clearly didn't care what she said. "Don't you think you've been behaving rather... sluttishly lately? Taking a leaf out of your sweet Penryn's book, are we?"
"Hey!" said Natalie, some life flaring back into her at their cruel insults. "Don't you dare talk about Pen like that!"
"Or what?"
"Yeah, what do you even think you can do against all six of us?"
Natalie surged forward, hoping to... well, she wasn't really sure what she hoped to achieve with that, but she figured some kind of hard contact would make her point. But they were obviously ready for her and they quickly caught her and shoved her back against the wall, causing her lip to split on it as the two collided. She hissed in pain, and then hauled herself upright, resigned to her fate. There really were too many of them for her. Tears had already begun to well in the corners of her eyes from the pain and the shock of it all, but the just soaked straight into the blindfold.
"Back to the point," said a slightly shaky voice from across the room. "We're holding a little intervention for you, before you make the biggest mistake in your life."
"We've seen the way you look at them. Ephren and Charlie. Just like the way Penryn used to look at Stan. You thought we wouldn't notice, didn't you? Well, you were wrong."
"You're just fawning over them both, with absolutely no consideration for their feelings. I mean, you literally pretended to faint so they'd have to catch you and get close to you. You're like a... a succulus."
"Bus."
"What?"
"It's succubus, not succulus."
"Oh, whatever. You know what I mean."
"And as though that wasn't enough you were drawing them. Like, what a stalker!"
"No, no. I swear I wasn't trying to seduce them or anything like that," cried Natalie, her voice garbled with tears.
"Oh, shut up. Stop pretending you're all sweet and innocent when you're not. I've seen you making eyes at both of them. Now, flirting with Charlie, that would be excusable, I guess. We wouldn't need to do this if that was all you were doing. But doing it to Ephren too?" Their voice trailed off as they were overcome with their anger.
"Ephren's not yours to have. He's Jolene's, plain and simple. Why don't you get that?"
"I swear, I wasn't trying to get with either of them. I wouldn't do that to-" said Natalie breathlessly, cutting herself off before she said his name.
"To who? We know you don't give a damn about Jolene, so go on, who?"
"My Mom," she managed feebly.
Suddenly her face exploded with pain, shooting bolts of color inside her eyelids. The room erupted in cries of surprise. There was a flurry of rustling as her other captors presumably tried to hold back her assailant.
"Stop it! What the hell?" someone yelled a little more loudly than perhaps wise with such thin walls.
"At least try not to aim for the face. Jeez, Fel-" There was another rustle, as though someone had clapped a hand over the speaker's mouth.
"No. Names. Idiot."
One of them tried to whisper, but Natalie could still hear them, "I think we should stop now."
"One more thing." A hand grabbed the front of her shirt and pulled her so close she could feel their breath, hot and quick against her face. "If you so much as blink in the wrong way, we'll be back for you." The words sent an anticipatory shiver down to the very core of herself, despite the fact that this was still just a bunch of teenage girls who didn't really know what they were doing.
They heaved her up onto her feet but her legs wouldn't hold her. As she rested there for a moment on the carpet, but they didn't seem to like that much. She felt a sharp kick to her ribs, and then again to her back, causing her to writhe slightly on the floor. Just like when that girl had punched her, there was a little commotion as they pulled them off her. Another girl far more sympathetically helped her up, which was quite awkward thanks to Nat's tied hands.
In a slow procession they shuffled out of the room, and once again spun Nat around a bit until they were almost back to the main corridors, where they stopped and dumped something fairly heavy right onto Nat's feet, which made it instantly fall over with a soft sound. They made Natalie step over the thing until her nose was pressed up close to the wall.
"How's this going to work?"
"Everyone but me, go, and then I can let her go and it'll be fine," said the voice by her ear.
After a minute, she felt her hands being clumsily untied, and then the pressure from behind let up all of a sudden, and was quickly replaced with a sharp kick to her left knee. She instantly went down, and thanks to the wall in her way she banged her head on the way down. By the time her body had stopped ringing like a tuning fork and she managed to take off her blindfold, it was too late. As her eyes adjusted to the bright lights in the corridor, she found that the only other thing in the corridor with her was her bag.