Page 16 of Lessons In Grey
I had ripped myself open, letting the pressure under my skin pour out onto the world, and the world thanked me with relief.
As temporary as it was, my mind felt free of the normal weight, but the weight of the shame was just as heavy. I wondered how long it would last.
I wondered if I had just forced myself deeper down into whatever it was that was consuming me slowly.
My eyes fell back to my notebook, and I tapped my pen three times. Halloween was fun, yes, but it was nothing compared to Christmas.
We hadn’t celebrated last year, and I wasn’t sure if I would celebrate this year either. It was hard to imagine being so happy during the holidays.
After another few seconds, my eyes lifted to the front of the room, finding the Professor watching me. His eyes locked with mine, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he could hear how loud I was screaming behind my dead, glassy eyes.
I turned back to my notebook. So intelligent, so worldly. He spoke as if he were from another universe. Or, I suppose, my taste in guys just wasn’t that great. Who knows, maybe people from the PNW spoke with more poetry than the people I had met in the city, whatever it was, it didn’t matter.
Just because his words could keep up with mine meant nothing. It meant nothing.
The silence is deafening. It screams in the cracks of the universe that nobody can see.
It cries out for help, for someone to listen, but it’s met with vectors of crystalline words and pleas of abstinence.
What is purpose but dreams not yet lived? What is hope if not promises yet to be broken?
Broken are the cracks in the bark of trees growing, trying desperately to reach the stars, only to get chopped down before they can make their first wish.
If the world has nothing left to give, what am I but empty ofthe good that was never mine to own?
I am drowning in sin, is there anything left in me that is good?
I stopped, my brow furrowed as I reread that last line over and over again.
My left wrist caught fire as the words borrowed deep into my soul, screaming the truth I had refused to admit until it slammed into me like a rogue wave.
I pulled at my sleeve, seeing the bruise Jordan had left around my wrist three days ago like a beacon, the blood pouring from my skin and me, unable to staunch it. They could all see it couldn’t they? Every single one of them.
Good people don’t mutilate themselves like this. Good people didn’t let their stepbrothers hurt them, right? Good people weren’t 24-year-olds waiting to die, right?
I closed my eyes and shook my head, leaning my head in my hand as I tried to calm my racing heart. Shit. Calm down. Just breathe.
Please, just breathe.
“If you’re not in this class this hour, get out. Everyone else, pull out your notebooks.”
“Em, are you okay?”
I nodded, hand tightening around my pen. “Yeah,” my eyes lifted to Ash’s. “I’ll text you later.”
She didn’t look convinced, but she truly didn’t have a choice. With a nod and a comforting smile, she grabbed her things and began filtering out with the other students that lingered here before class began.
My eyes lifted back to the stage just as Remi made it to the far staircase. I tracked her movements as she walked up to Rags. She grabbed his upper arm and pulled out her phone with her other hand, her lips moving quickly as she showed him something.
Wow, so Remi really did bag him in the first week. She had been bragging about getting a date with him the first Friday of the year, nobody believed her, but with them being like that infront of the class?
Good for her, I guess, and him too. This place was just like High School in the sense that people were afraid of Remi. Of the power she had over the professors. Her dad was a big shot in this city, he worked hand in hand with the Mayor and the Governor. Some even said he was friends with the President, but I highly doubted that.
It made sense that the new hotshot Professor would fuck her.
Even so, I didn’t like the strange feeling twisting in my gut seeing them like that.
His lips moved quickly, and he stepped away from her.