I never had much interest in Government and sitting in the classroom only added to the disliking, despite the subject not being to blame.

The last couple days hadn't been too bad; a great portion of which was spent going over class rules and the like. Even better, the seat beside me had remained vacant. The moment I heard the familiar sadistic laughter of Kevin Marshall, a sinking feeling weighed heavily in the pit of my stomach. Without scanning the room to check for another seat he may have more of a desire to take than the one to my left, I knew he'd be far too close for comfort in less than five minutes. Despite my mind processing this information, my emotions didn't grasp the matter of fact until he sat down.

"Is this seat taken?" he questioned, looking too comfortable to move if asked.

I could form the coherent answer in my head, but the second I opened my mouth, it suddenly died on my tongue, and I felt as if I'd spent the last two days trudging through the Sahara Desert. I quickly adverted my eyes, in fear that his would find mine.

"Dude, you're fine." a blond basketball player responded a few desks back. I recognized him but wasn't familiar enough with the jocks to know his name.

With Kevin close enough for his cold fingertips to brush my elbow, it wasn't exactly the first thought to come to mind.

My eyes fell on my desk, widening a fraction when I saw how much the trembling in my hands had worsened in the couple minutes since Kevin had lowered himself into the chair beside me. I tried to grab a hold of my notebook, but it slipped from my backpack and hit the tile between our desks. I reached for it, yanking my hand back when his shot into my line of sight. I clenched my shaking hands into fists on my lap, making a mental note to discard the contaminated notebook the moment his fingers touched the red cover.

He laughed and tossed the spiral notebook on my desk with a quiet "oops" and a crooked grin I'd once been so infatuated with I'd seen no flaws in it. I turned my back to him, touching my index and middle fingers to my lips to force the little I'd eaten back down.

Mr. Nicholson took the opportunity to stand and delve right into today's lesson. I tried to focus, but I could feel Kevin's eyes still burning holes into the side of my head. I sunk deep into my chair, hugging my arms around myself, eyes straight ahead on the middle aged, balding teacher. I could only guess he was feeling me out, trying to get a good reading on me. Or more importantly, whether I was going to speak up about what'd happened in May.

With him so close, my thoughts immediately shot to any way out of the room. The door to Mr. Nicholson's right had been shut, and if I ran out it, he'd be sure to contact the principal and guidance counselor. I had no desire to talk to either.

My heart started to hammer into my ribcage when I caught Kevin's eyes in my peripheral. He wasn't looking at me as if he were prompting me to say something, he was staring as if he had no clue who I was or what he'd done; it only made my hatred for the bastard beside me intensify.

"You did it to yourself." Mr. Nicholson said, and when I lifted my head up, I found he had stopped at my desk, one of his hands pressed against the corner of the hard wood, eyes on me.

"What'd you say?" I whispered, blinking in surprise.

He crouched so we were eye level, grasping the edge of the table with a worried expression. "Are you feeling alright, Miss Spencer? You're looking a little sick. Would you like to go see the nurse?"

If my anxiety wasn't in an even larger hurricane of emotions, I would have wanted to disappear with every pair of eyes in the room on me. But I was in such a desperate attempt to escape the presence of Kevin Marshall that I nodded.

"That'd be great."

*

"So how about you be real with me, Avery, and tell me how you've been sleeping and what you've been eating?" Nurse May said with a pointed look.

She tucked a strand of her short black hair behind her ear as she awaited an answer.

"I'm fine, Nurse May. Really." I lied. "I've been sleeping great and been eating everything my brother throws my way."

The nurse fell back into the chair beside the bed I was stretched out on. "Really? Because you look like you haven't slept in days and eaten even less than you've slept."

She wasn't wrong; her guess at how long the bad habits had been manifesting was. My sleep schedule had never been something I'd had to worry about before that night. I'd always slept soundly, so much so that Landon had teased me on it a countless number of times. He'd always theorized that I'd be able to sleep through a tornado. But I'd spent that entire night walking the streets, then sitting in my bedroom fully clothed on top of my bed, clutching my pillow against my chest as I stared blankly ahead at my bare walls. From that night onward, it proved to be a miracle to get more than a couple hours of sleep a night, and even then, I tossed and turned through most of it.

Trying to keep food down was a chore. I knew without a doubt that Landon was thinking I was going through a phase or had an eating disorder, but he hadn't tried to pry information out of me. I had tried to tell him multiple times over the last couple months that I wanted to eat, that my stomach growled and craved food every second of every day, it just wouldn't allow anything to remain in my system for more than an hour.

"Avery, sweetheart, what's going on?" Nurse May unfurled my fingers and set a granola bar in the palm of my hand, then closed my fingers around it with a worried look. "You know you can talk to us. We're all here to help you."

The creaking of the office door cut me off before I could say anything. Kimmy Lee squeezed through the small gap she'd managed to get the heavy door open to. Still fully clothed in her cheering uniform, I was shocked to find her hands both spotted with blood.

Even if it was only for a millisecond, I wanted to ask if Kevin had done it to her. They'd had a strange on-again-off-again for a year and a half and it wasn't the first time I'd seen a mark on her skin that she didn't have a realistic answer for.

"Oh, Kimmy!" Nurse May rushed to the cheerleader's aid, grabbing the box of tissues on her desk across the room. "What happened?"

Kimmy shook her head. "Lisa dropped me and I smacked my face against Myra. Is it broken? Nurse May, is it?"

The worry hanging on to the end of every word that left her mouth earned a little sympathy from me, not that I would ever tell her. It wasn't that I disliked the peppy popular girl nor was she the stereotypical bitch cheerleader everyone labeled her as. I just couldn't find it anywhere in myself to say a word to anyone that had any sort of relation to Kevin.

"I've gotta call Kev. He's going to freak." Kimmy breathed, reaching for her phone in the front pocket of her pink and white duffel bag. She unzipped it with one hand, the other holding the clump of tissues against her nose. I could hear Nurse May trying to talk her down from her current state, but Kimmy didn't want any part of it. She continued fiddling with the pocket of the duffel bag until she had the phone in her hand.

I looked away as she pushed her thick black hair away and pressed it against her ear. I watched her until she began speaking into the receiver. I quickly swept my backpack from the end of the bed and stood, a sudden wave of vertigo nearly sending me back down. I stared at the tip of my shoes until the room stopped spinning, hoping the nausea that'd rose with the dizziness would dissipate just as quickly.

I heard Nurse May shout something after me, but I'd already slipped out the door before I could catch what it was. I rushed down the hall before the next bell sent everyone out and into the empty hallway. I slowed to a stop outside the girls locker room, did a quick sweep of the hall, then crept in. I walked the entire perimeter to ensure I was alone before dropping my backpack to the ground and sitting on the bench between lockers. I buried my face in my quivering hands, trying to wipe away the flood of silent tears escaping me.

The silence was soon broken by my quiet sniffling, then finally the ravaging sobs that broke passed my lips despite my attempt to keep them down. I brought my hand to my mouth and stared at the blurry array of lockers in front of me.

"I hate you." I cried, pounding my tight fists against the cold metal repeatedly. "I hate you!"

I turned my back to them slowly, sliding down until I hit the floor. I hugged my knees against my chest, my eyes on the blood that had started trickling down the side of my left hand.

"I hate you." I whispered.

The worst part was not knowing who I hated more; him or myself. 

***AN***

*Unedited*

I hope you guys enjoyed! Sorry for the late update! 

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