BRIANNA
“Do you have the resources you need?” Melissa asks as I gather up everything she’s given me.
“Yes.” No.
There is nothing in the world that would help me be any kind of prepared for what’s about to happen.
My heart is in my throat, blood is racing past my ears, and my hands are trembling.
I haven’t even left her office yet.
“If you can nail this, then you’ll be able to handle any student here at Knight’s Ridge.”
Nail…
If I can nail this student. Pretty sure our heads are in entirely different places right now.
“I’ve got it under control,” I lie, hiking my bag up over my shoulder and scooping up the books and papers Mrs. Hendrix printed out for me.
“I have every confidence in you. And I’m sure it’ll be much more entertaining than the meeting I have.”
Entertaining would be one word for it.
“There will be biscuits, right?” I ask, having learned over the past few days that the teachers at Knight’s Ridge don’t do anything without being fuelled by sweet treats.
“Oh, you can guarantee it. Good luck,” she calls as we walk out of her office and head in opposite directions, her toward the main building where all the senior management offices are, and me toward the sixth form building.
My head spins as I make my way over.
But it’s nothing compared to when I walk through the huge double doors to the sixth form library.
I’ve been inside the one in the main building that the rest of the school uses. That was… mind-blowing. Much like everything in this place, it was massive, over-the-top, and ostentatious. But while this one might be smaller, it’s still as impressive. The second I step inside, the scent of books hits me, instantly settling something inside me.
Despite appearances and what I know everyone thinks of me, deep down, I’m just a bookworm trying to find her place in the world.
When I was a kid, life was… well, I try not to think about it. My mum, Jodie’s aunt, was young, too fucking young when she had me. I’ve since learned that she point-blank refused to do what her parents deemed to be the right thing, something I can understand. But in doing so, she caused a massive rift between her and my grandparents. They were traditional and idealists. Both Joanne and my mum were meant to be perfect ladies, save themselves for marriage and then just lie back and think of England while bringing up a handful of brats and keeping the house clean.
Joanne had already fucked them over by falling in love with a mafia soldier—a fact I’m not sure they were aware of at the time, but Jonas was a bad boy through and through, from what I’ve heard. And while she was defying the rules and shattering the expectations put on her, my mum, her little sister, got pregnant with me. At fourteen.
From what Joanne has told me, she hid it for a long time. But obviously, she—or I—was a ticking time bomb and eventually, her swollen belly was unignorable, and my grandparents flipped their lids, insisting I was put up for adoption and handed over to loving parents the moment I was born.
Needless to say, that didn’t happen. My mum ran and ended up in a home for young vulnerable mums. I don’t remember most of it, but we moved around different homes and assisted living places for years. Mum was a mess, an addict, desperate to find a connection to someone, and in doing so, I was mostly left to my own devices.
We had no money, no food, no heating or even electricity in some of the places we were forced to call home. But no matter where we went, there was always a library. Sometimes it took a little finding, or I was forced to use the rubbish ones at the schools I was enrolled in, but they were always there to offer me an escape. Books were the one reliable thing in my life. I could always count on them to help me forget how cold I was, how hungry I was, and to provide me with images of another life. I didn’t even care what the story was. As long as it was a distraction from my life, I was in.
Mum didn’t get it. She used to tell me that I lived with my head in the clouds in a fantasy land that wouldn’t help me in the real world. I often wanted to ask her how she thought the things she did helped her in life, but I was never brave enough. Or maybe it was that I never really wanted to hear the truth. That I wasn’t enough for her.
All those years before, she’d been so adamant that she wanted to keep me, yet she did nothing for me. It didn’t make any sense. If she cared so much, then you’d think she’d want me warm, fed, safe. But that wasn’t my reality.
When I found her in the middle of a seizure in our damp and fousty living room after school, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me.
By the end of the day, I’d found a family, people who cared, a sister in Jodie, and Mum finally got the support she needed. But still, the books remained. When things got too much, and they did often, I fell back into my old routine, pulled a blanket over myself and grabbed any book I could find and jumped in with two feet.
I smile at the librarian as I pass, my eyes scanning the tables of sixth form students. I recognise a couple from the English lit lesson, but none of them pay me any attention.
As instructed, I walk to the back of the vest space where I find doors that lead to private study rooms.
My stomach knots. Being anywhere private with Nico is a bad, bad idea. But I could hardly stand in front of Melissa and demand we have our study session in the middle of the busiest place on campus because I don’t trust myself around him, despite the number of times I’ve tried to convince myself to forget about every second we’ve spent together, every touch, every cry, plea, and moan of his name.