Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
She stares blankly. “What? I didn’t do anything.”
“Ladies.” Sister Patricia scolds us from the front of the class, where she’s setting up today’s video. It’s already October, and I don’t think she’s taught us a single thing since school started. All we do is watch movies, usually musicals, that I’m starting to suspect come from her home collection.
“You’re imagining things,” Ainsley tells me. “Better up your dosage.”
Beside Ainsley, her best friend, Bree, is giggling. “Yeah, for real.” The brunette chews loudly on her gum, then coughs when she nearly chokes on it. I don’t usually judge people with low IQ, but Bree Atwood is the kind of stupid you genuinely feel sorry for.
A few minutes later, class commences. And by class, I mean we proceed to sit in the dark watching a bad VHS-to-DVD transfer of a West End production of Les Misérables while Sister Patricia sits at her desk mouthing every line.
“Sister Patricia?” Ainsley calls out.
“What is it?” The irritated nun casts a glance in our direction.
“Shouldn’t we leave the lights on?”
Sister Patricia sighs, one eye on the TV. “Quiet, Ms. Fisck.”
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea to keep us trapped in the dark with an unstable student.”
I swallow a tired sigh. Within days of me transferring to St. Vincent’s, Ainsley had the whole school believing I’m a mental case. One bad hair day shy of a straitjacket.
Not like it hasn’t crossed my mind. I don’t remember what happened the night of the accident, so in a sort of quantum sense, I guess anything could have. I’m basically Schrödinger’s cat in a box of poison. But what’s more plausible? That I was the target of some phantom driver, or that I got high off my ass at prom, looking for attention, and plunged my car into the lake? You can only rant about the one-armed man for so long before you’re forced to consider the possibility it’s all in your head. Maybe I am nuts. Maybe I did have a breakdown that night and simply can’t remember.
Sister Patricia’s response is an annoyed frown, but her focus remains on the film. Even the nuns know the rumors, and I’m sure more than a few believe them. I’m almost surprised I haven’t yet been snatched coming out of the bathroom and hauled into the chapel for an impromptu exorcism.
“I’m not being mean,” Ainsley says with feigned innocence. “Darkness and loud noises can be triggering. Right, Casey?”
I continue to ignore her and stare at the floor, concentrating intensely on the black shoe scuffs and dotted patterns in the tiles. Ainsley’s been at it since first period this morning. In AP history, she remarked on my shoelaces. You know, is it a good idea for someone in my condition to be walking around with those. In physics, she suggested to our teacher that perhaps I should complete my assignments in crayon, lest I fashion a pencil into a weapon.
“How does it work?” she continues. “Like do you hear voices? Are they talking to you now?”
I glimpse several smirks in the darkness. Hear a few soft snickers. Girls can be vicious. I always knew this in theory, but once you become a target, it’s hard not to grow disillusioned. Not to become disappointed in your peers. Maybe it makes me an anomaly in this world, but I’ve always tried to treat people the way I want to be treated.
Sister Patricia shushes the class, though she doesn’t peel her eyes from the screen. Her mouth is still moving silently.
“I saw this biopic on Netflix once,” interjects Bree, the feckless sidekick who couldn’t find a personality of her own if she tripped over one. “It was about a woman who heard voices through her microwave.”
“Oh, I know that one,” Ainsley says. “She drove her car into a city bus because she believed it was a government surveillance unit tracking her.”
I’m crazy, is the gist. Delusional, dangerous, and on a hair trigger.
I wish. If I were all those things, maybe I’d have the courage to retaliate against these jerks. As is it, I’ve done the only sensible thing: ignore them. Every day, I brace myself against the snide comments and perpetual rumors. At first, Sloane said it wouldn’t last more than a few days. Ainsley’s just a bully and soon enough she’d get bored and move on. But her fascination hasn’t dissipated, and my resolve has withered. With each relentless assault, I’ve grown more self-conscious. Sorry for myself. Sulking in the misery of becoming the main character at a new school where only the worst parts of my reputation precede me.
“Casey. Hey, I forgot.” Honestly, you almost have to admire her persistence. That Ainsley’s yet to reach boredom is remarkable. “I’m having a party next week.”
She’s not especially clever, but what she lacks in material, she makes up for in purity of malice. Ainsley doesn’t have some long-simmering grudge against me. I didn’t steal her boyfriend in third grade. There’s no history here. She’s simply a rotten person who enjoys being a bitch.