CHAPTER ELEVEN | ALICE HARDY

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          For a so-called uneventful first week of college, a lot has certainly happened today.

          I've been trying so stupidly hard to fit in, to be normal, and everything was flushed down the drain of that campus bathroom, courtesy of my panic attack. Though I tell the nurse I feel fine, I don't tell her nearly half of it, aware I already am a current topic of conversation on campus. This way of thinking is dangerous and horribly self-centered, like I'm overestimating my importance on other people's lives, but I know they know. The second I found out there was a club dedicated to discussing true crime cases, it all became so much clearer to me.

          I'm a number. I'm a statistic. It's how they know; that kind of information spreads like wildfire, and I hate it. I hate that this has turned me into some kind of minor celebrity because I survived the brutal murder of all my friends, and there's a club at the university I attend that may or may not decide to discuss it. It can't be worse than the online scrutiny, especially that from other Final Girls, the only people I need to impress and feel validated by, but I finally understand why it feels so exploitative at a personal level.

          "Your parents' numbers aren't on your file," the nurse tells me, sitting at her desk.

          "They live in Chicago," I explain, twirling a cup of sugared water that has yet to touch my lips. "You could call them, but it would take them a long time to get here if they're truly needed."

          She sighs, pursing her lips. "Is there anyone we can call? A guardian? A grandparent?"

          "There's her brother," Betty chimes in, from the opposite corner of the office, and doesn't even cower when I glare at her, a stark reminder I'm the least intimidating person I know. Odette, on the other hand . . . "Sorry, Wendy, but you need to have a phone number on your file in case something bad happens and the school needs to get in touch with someone. It's for your own good."

          I've lost track of everything that has been done for my own good, against my will, but I don't try to fight her on this, not in front of the nurse. Even if both of them have my best interests at heart, this certainly feels like an overreaction, and I don't want to place an even bigger target on my back by either letting Xavier be dragged all the way to campus or by telling the nurse I'm apparently seeing things that aren't there.

          Panic attacks are fine, it seems. Panic attacks in public are also okay, totally not a big deal (you're traumatized. Now what?). Telling people you're seeing things, including dead people? Not so much. It's a sure way of making them look at you like you've lost your goddamn mind, and I don't want anyone to doubt my sanity or attempt to gaslight me into thinking things have unraveled any differently than they objectively have.

         (It's then that I realize this is the most contact I've had with my mom in a long time, possibly ever since the divorce, with her making me call her every day. Her mannerisms have stuck to me with tight stitches.)

          I reluctantly give the nurse Xavier's phone number and watch her punch the numbers into her keyboard, filling in the missing details on a medical file I didn't even know I had. I set the full cup of water aside and rise from my chair, deciding I'm an adult and no one gets to keep me in an office when I don't want to be there, with Sidney raising her head and looking up at me in anticipation. She stays on the floor, lying like a sphynx, and she's not the one blocking my path.

          "Where are you going?" Betty asks, springing up from her own chair, like I'm not mad at her for dragging me all the way here. In a way, I've brought this upon myself, considering I wasn't even able to convince her I was fine, that this sort of thing happens to me all the time, and I always get over it by myself, regardless of how long it takes. My history with panic attacks isn't the greatest or the prettiest, I know that, but I just wish my opinion and my wishes were taken into account instead of being disregarded like I don't know or can't decide what's best for me. It's infantilizing and dehumanizing to some extent, not to mention frankly annoying. "I'm not done with my lectures for the day yet, but you can maybe attend this one with me just so you don't have to be by yourself—"

        "I'm okay," I say, headed towards the door, and the nurse doesn't even try to stop me or Sidney. It's instinctive now, refusing help I never asked for in the first place. "I can take the bus."

          "I'd really rather if you didn't. If anything happens to you, Xavier will never forgive me."

          Personally, I'd really rather if she stopped meddling in my personal life and treating me like her personal charity case, something she can use to test her knowledge, but I don't tell her that. I'm too exhausted from sprinting across the quad and from nearly having a heart attack thanks to the stress and strain I've put my body through, so I don't bother arguing with her. I don't want to be mean to the one person that's been extremely welcoming, but I have all these unknown, complicated feelings inside of me that I don't know how to deal with, and I already have too much on my plate.

          I don't want to attend a lecture of a course that means nothing to me and there are many other things I can do to keep myself busy while I wait for her. That's something harmless enough to say out loud, something that doesn't hurt her feelings as much as my other options, and being mean to her is like being mean to Sidney, so I shove all that bitterness aside. Instead of following her to a lecture, I go hide in the library, like I always do.

          Once we part ways, I pull out my phone, pretending I didn't just go through one of the most mortifying moments of my life, but I'm glad I can finally breathe now. I am feeling better, albeit a bit drained, but I still have one ounce of strength and courage left to call Doctor Albott.

          I tell her we might need to fit in an extra session this week. I don't elaborate too much on why that is, as I'm certain she can tell just by hearing the slight tremble in my voice I can't quite mask as well as I want to, and she eventually agrees. She says she needs to move a few things around in her schedule, a heavy blow to my guilty stomach, and it feels like I've been sucker punched when it dawns on me that she's probably talking about other people's appointments with her.

          "You don't have to reschedule anything," I say, sincerely hoping it's not too late to fix things. Around me, the late summer wind whooshes and hisses. "If you're not available, we don't need to schedule anything. Looking back, it's probably a stupid thing to do. I don't want to make you waste your time—"

         "My patients are never a waste of my time," she retorts, calm yet firm. "I asked you to contact me if you needed anything, and this is me keeping my word." 

          I don't want her to keep a promise to me if that involves screwing over her other patients, who are in far more need of help than I am, and I've seen them in the waiting room. Though no one ever makes eye contact with anyone, like being there is something shameful, like we all exist in our own tiny, private realities, I recognize them, and I know they've grown used to seeing me there, too. I don't know their names or their stories, but there's something strangely intimate about sharing a therapeutic waiting room with other people. It almost makes you think it's all connected.

          I try to argue with her, but it works as well as trying to prove a point to a brick wall, except you're a brick wall as well.

          She refuses to let me take back what I asked her and insists she'll make room for an extra session next week. Now that my body and brain no longer believe I'm in danger, sitting on a concrete bench with no one paying any attention to the Final Girl and her melodrama, there's a tiny voice in the back of my head grumbling about how I'm the one blowing things out of proportion. All of this is so unnecessary, so over the top for something that doesn't even exist.

          It did, at some point. At some point, He was my friend. Maybe that's the whole issue here.

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          I've done my fair share of walks of shame throughout the years, which makes me sound a lot more experienced in relationships than I actually am, when Zach is the only person I've ever been with (take that, Final Girl experts. It's called subverting the trope). This walk of shame has nothing sexual or romantic in nature to it; it's just me walking from Betty's driveway to mine, Sidney in tow, with Xavier waiting for me by the front door.

          Part of me is glad he's there, somewhere I can see him, and I have yet to come back to an empty house, especially one as loud and sensitive to the weather as this one. On the other hand, I can't help but feel too exposed when his eyes land on me, a flicker of recognition crossing his face, and I suspect he already knows what happened. It's only the end of my first week of college and I'm already causing trouble, which is a first for me.

          Trope aspects subverted so far: two. One can even say I'm on a roll today.

          "Did you have a good day at school today?" he asks, once I'm close enough, with Sidney jumping on him, paws struggling to find somewhere to hold on to. He holds her before she can knock the two of them down, though the sudden impact throws him off balance ever so slightly, even if she isn't that heavy.

          My heart momentarily stops. "College."

          "Same thing."

          I shrug, holding my breath the entire time in case he notices any spikes. "It was fine."

          "Yeah?"

          "Yeah."

          I rush past him and almost sprint inside the house, but Sidney stays behind, leaving me convinced she likes him a little bit more than she likes me. There are still a few hours before the sun sets, so the house is still well lit and warm, even with the wind blowing outside, and I decide to cherish these moments while I still can. In just a few weeks, the days will become shorter and I won't be seeing the sun too often; it's not even because the buildings obscure it, like they did back in Chicago.

          Zach always told me I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I never believed him . . . until now. Maybe it's because Xavier is the one person I can't ever hide anything from or maybe it's because Zach really was right, but I can still feel my brother's eyes glued to the back of my head when he closes the front door, like he's still waiting for a more elaborate answer.

          I don't want to give him a more elaborate answer simply because I suspect he already knows and is just testing me to see if I'm capable of being honest and because I don't want to dwell on what happened. The fact that multiple people had to witness what happened, including Betty, and that I had to be held in the nurse's office because she deemed me unfit to be out there on my own is just embarrassing. I don't want to relive those memories and suffer all over again. Haven't I gone through enough already?

          To avoid answering any questions I don't want to reply to, I retreat to my hideout upstairs and lock the bathroom door, a clear sign I don't wish to be bothered. I don't think he'd intrude, not exactly, but I don't want to give off the idea that I'm in the mood to talk.

          After a shower that fails to relax my muscles—though my joints crack and creak like an abandoned building—I sit in my room, half of my belongings still not unpacked, and boot up my laptop. The amount of untouched coursework is worrying, but my inability to sit and focus on one particular thing at a time doesn't allow me to properly fix it. The only thing I've started working on is my World Literature essay, the only one that sparks the smallest bit of interest in me, but 'started working' is a bit of an overstatement when the only thing besides my name I've written is the title.

          There are courses I'm taking for some unknown reason, but they're part of my curriculum, so I have to unwillingly put up with them. Introduction to Ethics, for example, is something I don't understand why I have to study to get an English degree, even if there are people who, for whatever reason, major and minor in Philosophy, the most boring thing on this planet that comes to mind. Metaethics is something I can't pretend to care about, even though my professor talks about it like it's the second coming of Jesus Christ and even sounds so passionate about it I'm guilt-ridden for not caring about it.

          "What is good, after all?" he asked, on Wednesday, like anyone could answer that question at nine in the morning. "Meta-ethics focuses on answering three core questions: semantics, ontology, and epistemology. We'll be focusing on them during the next three weeks. Subjectivism and relativism play a great role in moral ontology—that is, if moral judgments can be relative or absolute—as we ask ourselves what the nature of morality is . . ."

          Someone asked if murder could be considered good, among other crimes, and my brain instantly shut off, refusing to listen to another word, and now I have no idea what to write on a paper about moral ontology. Our professor did recommend some books and articles—they're technically part of our required reading for the semester, but he didn't put it like that—that he believes will help, but it's due next week and I have yet to understand what he even expects me to say.

          A knock on my door serves as a distraction from my dilemma—should I bullshit my way through this paper to focus on what actually matters or should I put in some effort to show my professor I care a little bit about what he has to say—and I raise my head. Xavier stands in the hallway, carrying a tray.

          "Brought you something to eat," he says. I crane my neck to see what it is—a plate of waffles and a cup of tea—and my stomach growls so loud Sidney turns her head to me. It's only then that I realize I haven't eaten since breakfast, courtesy of the panic attack and the way it stole my appetite, along with my energy. "Are you busy?"

          "A bit." He nods, setting the tray next to me on the bed. When he steps back, he still lingers. "Do you need me downstairs?"

          "Yeah, but it's not urgent." Xavier briefly looks back over his shoulder. "I'm not going to work tonight."

          "Did you get fired?"

          He scowls. "No."

          "That was a joke."

          "Very funny." He clears his throat, hands tucked inside his hoodie's pockets. "I'm taking the night off. Clara is coming over for dinner. Just thought you should know, in case you head downstairs and find someone else sitting in the living room."

          I've been here in Alaska for over a month and I have yet to meet Clara, despite spending this much time with Betty. Betty did say she works a lot and is rarely home, which explains most of it, but whatever relationship she has with Xavier should, in theory, be enough incentive for her to stop by more often.

          "The infamous Clara, huh?"

          "I think she might bring Elizabeth along, but, in case she doesn't, you're free to go to their house instead if you don't want to stay here."

          "You mean I should go stay with Betty while Clara is here so I don't cockblock you."

          He rolls his eyes. "I think you might be hanging out with her a little bit too much."

          "You didn't deny it, though."

          "That's because it's exactly what I'm asking you to do. No offense, Wendy, but you're still my little sister. It wouldn't be the first time you embarrassed me in front of—in front of a guest. Stop it," he scolds, noticing the smug look on my face. I'm amused enough to refuse to be offended by him indirectly saying it's embarrassing to be seen with me—something I'm certain my brain will obsess over in just a few hours—but I'm letting him have this one. It's not the first time I have made him look like a fool in front of a girl he's interested in, even if he refuses to admit it out loud. "If she brings Elizabeth, stay. If she doesn't, they live across the street."

          I know they're just across the street from us, but I haven't ever left my house after dark since before The Incident, and I don't want to start doing it now. I'm not ready for that yet—the mere thought of stepping outside after the sun goes down sends shivers down my spine—and Sidney is now trained to do her necessities on our side of the street at night just so I don't wander too far.

          I've read far too many posts about women being followed, attacked, kidnapped, or killed near their houses, sometimes just around the corner, so close yet so far from safety. That's not a statistic I want to be a part of, but I also know I can't spend the rest of my life using that as an argument, much like I know he won't accept it forever, regardless of how supportive he wants to be.

          "Can I stay if I promise I won't do or say anything stupid?" I tentatively ask him, reaching out for the cup of tea. It's peppermint, exactly the thing I need. "It's just . . . it's really dark out. I know it's right across the street, but . . ."

          His face falls. "Yeah. No problem."

          "I can come straight to my bedroom after dinner."

          "Yeah, okay. I'll ask her to convince Elizabeth."

          "I'm sorry, Xavier." I cup the tea with both hands, just so I have an excuse to not look at him. "I'll make it up to you, I promise. I'll cook dinner—"

          "Please don't do that. I have a reputation to maintain." His hand squeezes my shoulder. "It's fine. At least you'll get to meet her properly."

          I risk looking up, sincerely hoping he's no longer frowning or furrowing his brows. Unlike me, he can hide his emotions. "Is she anything like Betty?"

          "No. God, no. Never would've hired her if she were Elizabeth 2.0."

          "That's so mean. Betty's actually really nice once you get to know her, and she's been super supportive. She's very nice. She showed me around town, introduced me to people, doesn't let me embarrass myself on campus by answering every question I have—"

          "—and lets me know you have panic attacks there when you refuse to tell me anything about it. I get your point."

          I almost drop my tea over my laptop, a disaster waiting to happen. "She didn't."

          "Yes, she did." He finally drops his hand. "We'll talk about that tomorrow. Finish your food, finish . . . whatever you're working on, and then you can help me out with dinner. We're not serving Clara something inedible, or else I might have to disown you."

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we're nearing the halfway mark!!

though i absolutely adore wendy, this is also a difficult book to write. it's hard to try and put myself in her shoes, when i haven't had something nearly as traumatic happen to me, and that involves a lot of time spent doing research so i can deliver an accurate portrayal.

with that being said, please don't forget to vote & comment if you're enjoying the book. it helps me out immensely.