For this, at least, I won’t be the snitch who ruined everything.
I go back to my room and collapse onto my bed. I tell myself that this will be the last of the tears, that I can just get it out now, it’s only right, and aren’t I owed this? Aren’t I allowed to be human, just for one day? To hurt and feel and be something.
My mind keeps running back to that moment in front of the wall, the moment he was caught. He’d started to say “I lov—"
The lengths, the sheer cruel lengths, Hamilton Bates will go to ruin a person is a level of commitment impossible for me to comprehend.
When did he decide to do it? The day after the locker room? When coach told us about the co-captainship? Or was it earlier? After the party with Sky?
I cry myself to sleep, paranoia swirling in my brain.
I have no idea how much time passes. For a long time, my dreams waver between utter monotony and horrific nightmares, but neither is powerful enough to jolt me awake. Eventually, my sleep grows dreamless, an eerie feeling of vacancy permeating my mind. I float there for a long while, long enough that I awaken thirsty, with a pit of hunger nagging my hindbrain. I fall back into sleep, instead. There’s nothing here for me. No one to protect and nothing to look forward to, just the endless expanse of ugliness and shame.
The knock comes so late that it’s already dark outside my window. My bladder and I aren’t on the best of terms, and my joints feel creaky and disused when I finally climb out of the bed and cross the room.
I’m not sure who I’m expecting to find on the other side of the door. Reagan, maybe, coming to push some more salt in the wound. Maybe she’s found more creative ways of telling me I’m nothing. All the same, it could be Hamilton, or any one of his Devils, coming to gloat. It could be my dorm resident coming to ask why I missed classes today. It could be Dewey coming to tell me that I have a thousand years of detention for skipping classes.
The reality is all at once far less dramatic and way more surprising.
My mom gives me a small, sad smile, holding up a bag. “I brought pho.”
My mom and I eat on the floor. I think how similar this is to the time I spent in here with Hamilton, and then I can’t help jerking violently away from the memory. At first, my mom doesn’t talk at all, just busies herself with unpacking the food and drinks. Nevertheless, I can see the question in her eyes, the intensity of her concern. She doesn’t verbalize it, though. She gives me a pair of chopsticks and lets me distract myself with the business of eating.
I eat mechanically. The soup seems tasteless. The motions of chewing feel foreign and strange, all of a sudden. My stomach accepts the offering, anyway. I can see her in my periphery, eyes searching, waiting, but I don’t have anything left. I feel numb now, like something came when I was sleeping and hollowed out my insides, and now I’m just a brittle shell made of dead nerves and unfamiliar skin.
My mom sighs. “Got a call today.”
I push a chopstick-full of noodles into my mouth.
There’s a beat of silence before she continues, “I take it you saw it?”
I stab my chopsticks into my soup, offering only a single, heavy nod.
“Oh, Gwen.” She sighs again, pushing her cup of soup away. “Sometimes I really hate my commitment to letting all of you make your own choices. If it were up to me, I’d pull the three of you out of this place so fast.”
Despite the broth and the iced tea I’m drinking, my throat still feels dry when I swallow. “Does Micha know?”
Her face falls. “There were pictures. Online.”
I nod. “Is he okay?”
She reaches out to sweep my hair away from my face, arranging it behind one of my slumped shoulders. “We spent the day with him and Michaela. Had a nice, long talk with them. He seems to be taking it as well as can be expected. I think Michaela took it harder than him, truth be told. It seems like maybe you did, too.” Her smile is rueful. “I suspect I’ve raised some really amazing girls.”
I push my own food away. “I don’t think I can handle any more.”
She doesn’t ask which I mean—the soup or the antics. Instead, she asks, “Do you know why I asked the moms for Thanksgiving dinner?”
I give her a look that I’m pretty sure says it all for me.
“I know you think my insistence is selfish.” She scoots until she’s beside me, our backs against my bed. “And I suppose you aren’t wrong. It is selfish, in many ways. I know what you all go through here. I also know that you are all the stubbornest, most resilient kids I’ve ever met. But I feel so helpless.” She takes my hand in hers. “I can’t make things better for you here—I can’t give you my blood—and I worry that, at some point, you’ll all start internalizing this nonsense. That maybe you’ll start feeling like something really is missing. Sharing you with your biological mothers is the only power I have over this.” She ducks her head until our gazes meet, eyes shining. “Gwen, I never wanted to make you feel like I don’t respect you. I can’t promise that I’ll always be perfect, but I can promise this: I will never again put you in a position where you feel forced to face her.” Her hand comes up, thumb swiping at my cheek, and I become aware of the wetness there in a detached, surreal sort of way.
I hadn’t thought I had any tears left.
“Mom?”
She tucks my hair behind my ear. “Yes?”
I shift my gaze to darkness beyond the window. I know that this school is a machine, that it has moving pieces that never cease, and I know that I’m tired—so very tired—of being crushed between the rusty cogs.