SIR のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 141 - チャプター 150

He knows. I don’t know how he knows, I don’t know who in this building has a death wish severe enough to gossip to Elias Arden about my business, but he knows, and he’s sitting there with that barely-there smile like he’s already won something and we haven’t even been in this room for five minutes. I turn back to my notebook and write absolutely nothing on the clean page in front of me because I can’t remember what class this notebook is even for and my brain is too busy formulating ways to make the next two weeks survivable. The proctor, whose name tag reads Ms. Finch and who has not looked up from her paperback once, clears her throat at the front of the room for no apparent reason and then goes back to reading. The fluorescent light buzzes faintly overhead. Someone two rows ahead is clicking a pen in a rhythm that I am going to need them to stop immediately. “You’re not going to ask me how I know?” Elias says, without looking up from his book. “I’m not going to do anything you

There are four of them. My brain registers this with a clinical detachment that lasts approximately two seconds before the fear moves in and makes itself completely at home. They materialize from the edges of the alley the way things do in nightmares, unhurried, spreading out as they come, and even in the dim light I can see enough to understand that these are not boys playing at something. These are men who have done this before and are comfortable with how it goes. I stop walking. Running is not an option I'm evaluating yet because there are four points of entry and I came from the only clear one and it's already closing behind me. The heels I wore tonight because Jason said we were going somewhere nice are four inches of complete tactical disadvantage on wet pavement. Think, Lucia. Think right now, think fast, think better than you've ever thought about anything. "Nice night for a walk," one of them says, and his friends find this funnier than it is. I swallow, and lift my chi

The ceiling of Mount Sinai’s third floor is a particular shade of off-white that I have now spent enough time staring at to have opinions about, and my opinion is that whoever chose this color has never had to look at it from a hospital bed while their face throbs and their palms sting and the events of the last three hours replay on a loop they haven’t figured out how to stop yet. I’m fine. That’s what I’ve decided. I decided it somewhere between the cab and the admissions desk and the examination room where a very kind nurse cleaned the gravel out of my palms with a gentleness that almost made me cry, which I did not do, because I was fine. My cheek has been treated. My knees are bandaged. Nothing is broken. Physically, by every available medical metric, I am fine, and I am going to keep being fine, and the fact that my hands won’t stop trembling slightly is just adrenaline and adrenaline fades and I am going to be completely fine. Zeke is sitting in the chair beside my bed like

I sit very still for approximately four seconds, which is the amount of time it takes my brain to process what Eli just said. I’m just here, hoping and praying this is one of his cruel pranks. “Try not to look too excited,” Elias says, wearing a smile so bright that means he’s genuinely enjoying himself and that tells me the most brutal truth of all. It isn’t a joke. “Shut up,” I snap. “Five minutes ago you were mad at me for not talking to you, now you want me quiet,” he shrugs a shoulder and picks up his pen. “You’re gonna have to start being much clearer if we’re gonna be besties.” It takes everything in me not to punch him, meanwhile he just returns to writing. My new bodyguard. Elias Arden. Who has spent the better part of two years finding increasingly creative ways to get under my skin. That person is going to be living in my house, following me to school, standing outside my bedroom doo

The first thing I see when I walk into the kitchen Monday morning is Eli at my family’s breakfast table, sittng where Zeke used to seat, and eating Maria’s rosemary bread. The second thing I see is my eleven-year-old brother Lucas sitting directly across from him, leaning forward with both elbows on the table and the expression he gets during particularly riveting episodes of whatever documentary series he’s currently obsessed with, which apparently this morning is Elias Arden in the flesh. “But what’s the difference between a hook and a cross?” Lucas is saying, with the intensity of someone who needs this answered before they can continue with their day. “Setup versus power,” Eli says, and he gestures with his fork in a way that somehow communicates the mechanics of it. “Hook comes from the side, shorter range, more snap. Cross goes straight with full rotation behind it, that’s where the real damage is.” “Which one did you use on those guys in the alley?” “Lucas,” I say, from the