Page 88 of The Guru: Shadow

So, no way of getting Pi and my Laptop out.

Fuck.

She’d text her neighbor later to get Pi out, right now, it was too early. She glanced at the time.

3:33

What is it with that fucking number?

She drove up Upper West Side to Harlem.

When she reached 125 St., she parked near where a few guys hang out on the street and braced herself for what she would do. Her heart racing, she closed her eyes for a couple of moments.

What the hell am I doing here?

But she had to get out of here. Get out of the city, get away from this bad dream. And maybe she’d wake up in a minute and be back to her old miserable life.

She opened her eyes, got out of the car, and walked over to the guys, who cat-called her immediately.

“Take the car,” she told them, and threw the key towards them to catch it. And before anything else could happen, she rushed for the entrance to the subway, running down the stairs.

One minute to go.

Racing to it, her heart began to pound. It was a game with the fire. There was no way in hell Deis could follow her here without drawing too much attention.

Glancing back, she saw no one running behind her.

Good.

And there was the subway. She squeezed in with the closing doors, gasping for air from the running. She was no runner, in general, more the no sports of any kind of person. But she made it. The moment she heard the loud rattling, feeling the subway roll out of the station, relief spread through her.

Immediately, she let down her hair – she hated a bun as it always made her scalp hurt. The whole situation gave her a sensation of being exposed, so she pulled the hood over her head and let herself fall onto a seat at the end of the carriage where she had everything in view.

She observed all the people in there. There was an older woman knitting, two guys watching something on their phone, two women reading the same book and a guy audibly arguing on the phone with what was supposedly his girlfriend. Or ex-girlfriend. He didn’t mean to cheat.

What a dumbass.

Taking out her phone, she stared at it.

487,933 notifications on Instagram.

1,891 emails.

Opening the email app, she read one.

‘Disgusting whore’

And another, just to be sure.

‘Wait till I find you!’

It was too much. Fear rose in her to a very uncomfortable level, making her chest clench. Never had she gotten any hate mail ever before. And now? Her mail exploded from people – women – hating her for being with Deis, telling her how ugly she was, internally as much as externally.

In what world do we live, where women are sending hate mail to another woman because I am with a guy they have never even talked to before, let alone know?This is crazy!

Taking a deep breath, she tried to release the anxiety in her, which was on the verge of overwhelming her. And then she opened Instagram.

Almost 400,000 people had followed her by now. There were messages. Thousands upon thousands with more hate in them. And comments. Under all her posts were hundreds of comments. Reading them made her feel like she had a big lump in her throat, she was almost on the edge of crying. Things were completely out of control.