FOUR SHADES OF DREY

Prologue

Aurelia

I'm going to die in a bathroom stall.

Not figuratively. Not dramatically. Actually die.

The scissors flash in the fluorescent light as Victoria Ashford grabs another chunk of my hair. The metal is cold against my scalp. I stopped fighting three minutes ago when Madison Chen twisted my arm behind my back so hard I heard something pop.

"Hold still, fat bitch," Victoria hisses, sawing through another section. Dark auburn strands fall like autumn leaves around my sneakers. "You should thank me. I'm doing you a favor. Maybe if you didn't have all this hair to hide behind, you'd finally do something about that disgusting face."

Her phone is propped on the sink, camera pointed at us. Recording everything. The red record light blinks at me like a demon's eye.

I'm fifteen years old and I'm going to be a viral video by morning.

"Please," I whisper. My voice cracks. "Please stop."

"Did you hear something?" Victoria asks the other girls. Emma Rodriguez and Ashley Kim laugh on cue. They're holding the stall doors shut so no one can interrupt. So no one can save me.

"I think the whale is trying to talk," Emma says.

The scissors cut again. And again. Victoria is breathing hard now, almost excited. She's enjoying this. That's what makes it so much worse—she's enjoying destroying me.

"You know what your problem is, Aurelia?" Victoria leans close, her breath hot against my ear. Her perfume, something expensive and floral, makes me want to vomit.

"You actually thought you belonged here. At Westridge Prep. With us. But look at you." She yanks my head up, forcing me to see my reflection in the mirror above the sinks.

I barely recognize myself. My hair hangs in jagged chunks. My face is blotchy and swollen from crying. Mascara runs down my cheeks in black rivers. I look exactly how I feel - destroyed.

"You're nothing," Victoria continues, still holding my head at that painful angle. "You're ugly. You're fat. You're pathetic. And honestly?" She meets my eyes in the mirror, and I see something cold and empty there.

"The world would be better off without you in it. Why don't you just kill yourself? Save everyone the trouble of looking at you."

Something inside me breaks. Not cracks breaks. Like glass shattering into pieces so small they can never be put back together.

Victoria releases me and I crumple to the floor among the scattered pieces of my hair. The tiles are cold against my cheek. I can see every crack in the grout, every imperfection. I focus on them because it's easier than focusing on the four girls standing over me, laughing.

"Send it to everyone," Victoria tells Emma, gesturing to the phone. "I want the whole school to see this by first period tomorrow."

They leave me there. Their laughter echoes off the bathroom walls long after the door swings shut.

I don't know how long I lie there. Long enough that the blood from my bitten tongue pools under my cheek. Long enough that my arm goes numb from the angle. Long enough that the janitor's footsteps pass by twice without him coming in.

When I finally stand, my legs barely hold me. I look in the mirror again and see a monster. That's what Victoria made me. That's what I am.

I go home. My parents aren't there—they're never there. Some tech conference in Singapore. The housekeeper, Maria, gasps when she sees me but I don't let her ask questions. I lock myself in my bedroom and open my mother's medicine cabinet.

The sleeping pills are right where they've always been. Ambien. Sixty pills in the bottle.

I take them all.