Gemma cleared her throat and gave the headmaster—her father—a look. Her eyes widened slightly, and her small jaw tightened. I almost laughed at how hard the headmaster was trying to figure out what she was trying to tell him.
He wanted to know why I wanted to room alone, but I wouldn’t tell him.
I wouldn’t tell him that I didn’t trust a single person at this school, not even my old roommate, because the last time I was here, someone had tried to kill me, and I had no idea who it was.
xxx
“Sorry about that,”Gemma said, glancing over at me as we walked down the quiet hall. “He is so oblivious sometimes.”
I huffed out a polite laugh, even though nothing was funny. “It’s okay. I wouldn’t have told him even if he didn’t drop the question.”
Gemma rolled her lips together as she clutched her box of things in her hands. She seemed to be deep in thought as we rounded the steps to the girls’ and boys’ halls. Everything was exactly the same in this school, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss it, even if I didn’t feel as safe. What’s the fun in feeling safe anyway? Made life more exciting when you were constantly on edge. I’d been on edge since the second I left St. Mary’s, and that feeling wasn’t going anywhere.
I ran my fingers along the wooden handrail, feeling the intricate details engraved in the dark oak as Gemma and I climbed side by side. A heavy silence was surrounding us, and with each step that took me closer to the hallways full of students tucked away in their rooms, the pit in my stomach grew wider and wider. My eyes flicked to the boys’ hall, knowing that Cade was in one of those rooms. Or maybe he was still out in the courtyard, standing in the same spot that I was brutally assaulted in and left for dead.
Fear slithered up my spine and wrapped itself around my neck, making me itch. It was scary not knowing what had happened. It was unsettling when your thoughts were disoriented and your mind came up with scenarios that may or may not have been true. Every time I fell asleep in that locked room at the psych hospital, being fed drugs that I didn’t need for a suicide attempt that didn’t actually happen, it was as if my brain would construct a story in my slumber that was the worst of anything I could have thought consciously.
Cade. He was the only one who knew I was out there that night, and that was a mountain I couldn’t quite climb over. In fact, it felt like I was on the very tip of the mountain, dangling over the edge, with him holding me back with his pinky finger. My curiosity begged for me to look back and ask him if it was him, if he had something to do with my attempted death, but something stopped me from doing so. Something that resembled fear. I was fearful that he did have something to do with it.
I cleared my throat and straightened my chin as Gemma and I began our walk over the soft, red carpet. The hallway grew darker the farther we went, and there was a looming shadow hanging over my head. Being back at St. Mary’s, after the entire school knew something about me that was so far from the truth, felt like being trapped in that dull room at the Covenant Psych Hospital all over again.
A chill ransacked my body with the thought, so I quickly put an end to the silence. “So, is Tobias here yet?” We came to a stop at Gemma’s door. She placed her box of things on the ground and continued walking farther down the hall—I assumed toward my new room, considering she had the keys.
She sighed. “Not yet. He’s at Tat—I mean, the headmaster’s house, down the road. He should be starting soon.”
I nodded quietly, wishing that I had at least one person in this school that I trusted. Tobias, Gemma’s twin brother who everyone thought was dead, had actually been stowed away at the same place I was, and he was honestly the only thing that kept me from losing myself to misery the last several months. I had done okay by myself. I learned who to trust and how to get my way—survival of the fittest at its finest—but when I came in contact with the broken boy in the basement of the psych ward who was abandoned and tortured for reasons unworthy, things changed. Tobias was the longest ‘patient’ that the Covens had housed. The Covens was the disguised program veiled by the Covenant Psych Ward. It was the lowest level of the psych hospital that housed criminals and turned them into real-life monsters and the leaders desperately tried to turn Tobias into their ultimate black-market killer. He was being molded to do the dirty work of bad men, like his and Gemma’s uncle, but we made it out of that fucked-up place alone, trusting no one but each other.
“I should say thank you,” Gemma whispered, glancing at me briefly as the sconces on the walls flickered with our slow stride.
“Thank you?” I asked, my heartbeat growing increasingly fast. It made me anxious to talk to anyone about the last few months and what Tobias and I had done to get out of that place. Sister Mary tried getting me to open up, concerned with my well-being after learning that I didn’t get placed with a foster family like she was told, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t talk about it because I was half-ashamed but also half-proud. And feeling proud of the things I did probably wasn’t normal.
“Yes, thank you. Thank you for helping Tobias get out of that place.”
“We helped each other,” I answered quickly, tucking my hair behind my ear. I caught her soft smile just outside my new door, and although my fingers were shaking with the thought of everything that had happened and everything to come, I still grasped onto her gaze and allowed myself to bring up the one thing that tied us together. “About what you saw…”
Gemma’s eyes dropped momentarily. “You mean when you came into where I was kept at the Covens?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
Gemma huffed out a laugh, and her lip curved. “Journey, you don’t have to explain yourself to me. I know a fighter when I see one. You do what you have to do to survive.”
Gemma held the keys out between us, and I took them tentatively. The second she let go, I clenched my fingers together, the keys digging into my palm to erase the things I’d done and touched at that corrupt place. “It’s like looking in a mirror, yeah?”
I could see the white of her teeth as she smiled wider. “It’s something only you and I will ever understand, Journey.”
Silence passed between us, and she slowly began walking backward. “If you need someone, you know where I am. Okay? Sloane, too.”
I nodded and turned around, heart beating wildly inside my chest. A slippery breath left my mouth as I canceled out the past and entered my room, making sure to check the lock twice before sitting on my bed, feeling just as trapped as before.