My legs hurt. My whole body ached but it felt good. I’d gone on such a long run and it had been fantastic. I had enjoyed every moment even though I had gone further than I usually did, journeyed deeper into the woods. The reckless confidence that I had felt stayed with me, making it so I just didn’t care. My usual worries about straying too far away from the house and how dangerous that could be if I were to get injured were gone.

I didn’t even care that my mom would be suspicious of how long I had been gone or that she would probably question me as soon as I returned to find out where I was and who I was with. I hadn’t been with anyone, obviously, but she would never believe that.

To my surprise, my mom hadn’t been outside when I got back. She wasn’t even waiting for me in the kitchen. She was watching television. I’d felt her eyes on me as I climbed the stairs but she didn’t say anything. She was suspicious though and I knew that the questions were coming. I didn’t really care though. She was going to ask me questions, so what? I could deal with that, I had so far.

My confidence worried me. There was a smaller part of my mind, a quieter one, that questioned how long it would last and when I would stop feeling like that. It was only a matter of time, I knew it. That made me think that I should be more careful, not do anything dumb to further incur my mom’s anger or suspicion but… I couldn’t help myself. Or more, I didn’t want to stop.

There was a part of me, a vindictive part, that enjoyed it. I liked the power it gave me, even though guilt followed. I did feel bad. It must be hard to live the way that she does, to be so riddled with constant doubt and paranoia. She never trusted anyone. Not me, not my dad. There was no one in her life that she didn’t question which sounded so tiring really.

I would hate to live that way. And I knew that I shouldn’t add to it. I shouldn’t purposefully make her feel worse, even if it made me feel better temporarily. It wasn’t worth it and it wasn’t kind. I needed to be better than her. I needed to at least try.

Pulling on the first dress I touched when I reached into my wardrobe, I dropped down in front of my mirror and stared at my reflection. I looked good, alright at least. There were bags under my eyes which made me seem exhausted but I could cover those with makeup. I didn’t normally really wear that much makeup but I wanted to now. For tonight, at least.

I crawled towards my suitcase where I’d tossed my makeup bag as soon as my grandparents had left, planning not to wear any again until I had to. But it was different this time. I wasn’t wearing makeup to stop my grandparents and mom from judging me or to cover up my flaws, I was wearing it because I wanted to.

Glancing at my reflection in the mirror again, I paused. I was wearing it to cover up some of my flaws but it felt different. It was for me this time, not someone else. That thought made me smile as I started to rub moisturiser onto my face. I couldn’t remember the last time that I did something just for me, because I wanted to or to make myself happy. It felt like a silly thing to do, almost. Unnecessary in a way.

I didn’t really feel happy, not for more than just a fleeting moment unless I was in a dream, so why would I go out of my way to do something for that? It never lasted and it was never really worth it. It was just a waste of time and I just didn’t have the energy to even try more often than not. I mean, why would I try? I knew that things would just go back to how they were before I felt the moment of joy and that would be worse.

But, as I started to put makeup on, I realised that I was feeling something else. Something weird. It wasn’t quite happiness, it felt less... noticeable. It was more contentment, maybe? It was like I wasn’t happy but I wasn’t as sad. As if my usual mood had been pulled up a little bit. I wasn’t exactly sure what had caused it or where it had come from but it made it easier for me to breathe. Even if it left me worrying about it would get worse again and how I’d feel then.

I froze, my mascara wand held just in front of my face as my mind started to spiral on that. What if I felt worse and that feeling never went away? Normally, I just felt kind of numb, not sad but not happy. There were moments of sadness, of frustration or happiness but normally I just felt… nothing. That was easier to deal with. It made the sadness easier, it didn’t hit me quite as hard as it could have. As it did sometimes.

I still had those days sometimes. I’d wake up and the weight of everything just felt crushing. On those days, it felt kind of hard to be alive, which felt like a dramatic thing to admit. It was true though. Sometimes I’d just lie in bed and fantasise about anything. It wasn’t the same as how I did it now, they always felt more… flat than my current daydreams. Nowhere near as realistic.

And they were always much more mundane than anything I’d fantasised about recently. They were always just about things like my parents divorcing, which made me guilty every time, or somehow being adopted by someone who gave me everything I ever wanted and actually loved and liked me. Or, I’d dream that I was born into a different family. One that was happy which meant that I was happy. And popular. In that dream, I still went to the same school, the people were the same, but they all liked me. I was pretty and popular and I even did well in school. It was great but it wasn’t real. It didn’t even feel it, it just felt desperate.

“Are you almost ready to go?” my mom asked as she pushed my door open suddenly, clearly hoping to catch me doing something that I shouldn’t be doing.

I jumped, almost stabbing myself in the eye with my mascara. I caught myself just in time.

“Yeah, I just need to finish doing my makeup,” I said, smiling at her in the mirror.

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously and she looked around my room.

“You’re wearing makeup? Why?”

I shrugged.

“I just wanted to.”

It was the truth but I saw confusion flit over her face before looking away and starting to apply the mascara. The movement made my chest twinge slightly and I wasn’t sure why. Surely, it couldn’t still be hurting from when I’d almost drowned before. I’d been pretty much fine since.

Mom’s eyes continued to burn into me as I started to comb through my hair with my fingers, debating how to wear it. Normally, I’d straighten it or curl it, never really leaving it be. I cocked my head to the side, eyeing the frizzy yet wavy strands, before reaching for my hair oil. I wasn’t going to do anything with it today, I decided. I’d just tie it back and let it do whatever it wanted.

“Are you planning to wear tights?” my mom asked but it sounded like it was a demand or maybe even an accusation.

I’m not sure what she meant by it or even really why she was asking but I glanced down at my legs. They were mostly covered by my dress and, for once, I didn’t want to wear tights. I knew that my mom wouldn’t like it, she argued that it made me look cheap or that I was too pale to show my legs off but I didn’t care.

“No, I don’t think so,” I replied.

She looked taken aback.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, I just don’t want to.”

The reckless confidence that I’d felt before had found its way back into me, making it easier to stand my ground. It was about such a silly thing, something that no one would really care about so it didn’t even matter, but it felt difficult to me. I wasn’t used to standing up to my mom. Normally, I would have just said yes and ignored what I wanted. What I wanted didn’t really matter, it was easier to ignore than my mom’s irritation.

I saw her eyes narrow.

“I think we should go somewhere else for dinner,” she decided.

Confusion washed through me and I glanced back at her.

“Really? Why?”

I was genuinely curious. Her suggestion had come out of nowhere and I wasn’t sure why but I saw victory flutter across her face.

She thought I was going to meet someone at the restaurant and that’s why I was wearing makeup and not wearing tights, I realised slowly. It was a win to her, she assumed that she had ruined my plans to meet up with someone, even though I was never going to do that.

“I’m not really feeling pizza tonight,” she said with a shrug and a smug smile.

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“You never have…” I trailed off, knowing that it wasn’t worth the argument. “Where would you like to go?”

She was silent, obviously not having thought that far ahead and I could almost see her mind turning as she tried to think of a place. We went up to Scotland every year but there really weren’t that many places that we frequented and definitely not for dinner.

The hotel was out of the question, a reservation was needed to eat there and we hadn’t made one. We were too far away from any big city to have many options and my mom was picky. She had decided that she hated too many of the restaurants nearby and refused to go to them, even though many were good.

Part of me enjoyed her indecision. She had brought it on herself by being so distrusting and fussy but I did feel a little bad. It was easy to ignore, however, as I turned my head to make sure that my hair looked okay. It was strangely bouncy. I liked that.

“O’Connell’s,” my mom decided eventually and I glanced at her in surprise.

“Really?”

She hated O’Connell’s. It was essentially a pub, an upmarket one but still a pub. We’d been once before but it was enough for her to decide that we were never going to go back. It was too noisy, she claimed even though it hadn’t been, and the food was bad. I didn’t think that it was. I had really liked it, even if I couldn’t remember what I’d had.

“Yes, I hear it’s quietened down since we last went,” she said. “And Mom said they have a new head chef who actually knows how to cook. Unlike that last one…”

I didn’t have a response. There was no chance that my grandmother had ever set foot in O’Connell’s. She would have hated it even more than my mom did. The noise, the atmosphere, would have made her furious.

“Are you ready to go now?” my mom asked once it became obvious that I didn’t plan on replying to her.

“Yeah,” I said, glancing in the mirror one last time before grabbing my phone and standing up.

A sour look appeared on my mom’s face.

“Are you sure you don’t want to wear tights? Your legs are so pale. You need to spend more time outside.”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes at her.

“Nope,” I said. “I’m good.”

Her lips pursed and I knew she was debating pushing it but I was feeling stubborn and I didn’t really care about what she was going to say.

After a moment of staring me down, she finally nodded.

“That’s your decision, I guess,” she said with a heavy sigh. “As long as you’re comfortable with people seeing you like this. I wouldn’t be but…”

She shrugged before turning and starting along the corridor. Despite feeling so strong and certain moments before, I did feel a flicker of doubt in my stomach that made me want to grab some tights out of my suitcase but the thought of how smug she would be if I did stopped me from doing that. I wasn’t willing to let her win. I normally did, it wasn’t worth the fight, but this time, I didn’t want to.

Holding my head high, I followed her. She hadn’t waited for me. She was already at the front door, stepping into her heels, before I caught up with her. Her eyes lingered on my legs as I put my shoes on and I knew she was annoyed that I hadn’t given in. Luckily, she didn’t say anything more about it though and I waited until we had left the house before slipping back into my fantasy.

The room was dark and the bed was soft beneath me. It was nighttime or, at least, early morning. The entire afternoon and night had gone by without me really even noticing as I flitted in and out of the world whilst showering and getting ready. I could remember everything that happened though. The memories floated back to me hazily as I rolled over, pulling the duvet higher.

We hadn’t done much, not really. We’d just… hung out. I’d missed the scariest part, the part when I’d introduced myself to the others and that boy who looked like Duncan. He was cute. His name was Seth and, as he introduced himself, it felt like his gaze had lingered on me for a while, how I wanted someone to look at me. Even when Katie had started talking, he didn’t look away.

I’d blushed and looked down but I liked it. His attention hadn’t been scary or worrying, the opposite. He seemed interested in me in a way that not many people were in this world. No one was, not really. I’d never really dated anyone or flirted.

In Mitch’s world, I had but that was so brief that it didn’t really count and… I guess how I was texting Duncan was kind of flirting. But, not really. It was flirty, not flirting. I wasn’t sure if there was much of a difference but it felt like it. Flirty felt less scary. People could be flirty with each other but flirting… That felt like something else. I think if we were flirting, it meant that we weren’t just friends, that there was something else there. But there wasn’t.

We were just friends, even if it did feel like we could be more. I didn’t want to risk it. I’d known him for so long and, although we didn’t hang out as much as we used to, we were still close. I didn’t want to throw that away just because I had misinterpreted things and thought that there was more to the way he was acting than that. He was nice. He was probably just being kind to me.

That would make sense, even though he had used the term ‘date’ when talking about us hanging out when I got back from Scotland. Maybe he meant it as just like a friend date. That was a thing, right? I truly had no clue but I was almost convinced. I would just wait and see, I decided. Play it by ear and follow Duncan’s lead. If he was flirty then I would be too but, if not, I wouldn’t be. I would just be normal.

Even though I had just decided that, I still wanted to text him. It didn’t need to be anything more than just a normal text but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I watched my mom out of the corner of my eye as I fiddled nervously with my phone. No, I wouldn’t text him. That would be weird and he hadn’t texted me so he was probably bored or busy or didn’t want to talk to me or something. I’d wait until he reached out, go from there.

A loud jarring noise broke me out of my spiral and I opened my eyes, looking around as dizziness hit me. An alarm was going off but I had no clue where it was coming from and I was wracked with vertigo so I couldn’t get up to look for the source of the noise. The now bright room spun around me and it took almost ten seconds for the nausea to subside.

I sat up carefully, looking at the others in panic. They looked just as scared as I did but Katie was already out of her bed.

“Is there a fire?” she called over the noise.

It stopped just as suddenly as it had started, leaving us in a shocked silence. No one moved for a moment, we just continued to stare at each other.

“That wasn’t…” I started hesitantly. “Was that just the morning alarm?”

A laugh tumbled out of Katie’s lips.

“Surely not! That was horrible!”

“I don’t know. It is seven thirty and the schedule did say that there would be a wake-up alarm then,” Abbie said, holding up her phone.

“Are they going to wake us up like that every morning?” Katie asked, sounding concerned. “I hated it.”

“Me too,” I added, stretching and climbing out of bed. “It did work though. I’m wide awake now.”

Katie chuckled.

“I am too. Do you mind if I use the bathroom first?” she asked.

“No, that’s fine with me,” I said.

“Yeah, go ahead,” Abbie told her with a smile.

“Great!” Katie said as she started to walk towards the bathroom.

I watched her go, my eyebrows pulling together. She was wearing the same pyjamas as Abbie and I, they’d been supplied by the Academy. The shorts revealed a lot of her long legs and they were speckled with bruises. I’d seen marks on her arms before but it was still concerning. I felt like I should say something, ask her if she was alright, but I knew that there was no real point. If there was a reason that she had those bruises, if someone had caused them, she was away from them now.

I looked away and started to walk towards my wardrobe. I pulled it open, staring blankly at the many options inside, and wondered what to wear. I’d worn a skirt yesterday which made me want to wear something else today. But then the skirt felt like a safer option. I knew what it looked like and how I looked in it so it wouldn’t be as stressful for me. Was it weird to wear the same thing again? It felt weird even though, logically, I knew that it wasn’t. Impulsively, I reached out and tugged one of the dresses off of the hanger, deciding to wear that.

I had just finished rooting around in my drawers to find underwear and tights when Katie emerged from the bathroom, her face still damp.

“Do you mind if I go next?” I asked Abbie who shook her head. “Thanks!”

Rushing into the bathroom, I locked the door behind me and dropped my clothes on the shelf. I didn’t want to take too long because I knew that Abbie still needed to get changed and everything so I rushed through my morning routine.

Before long, my teeth were brushed, my hair was tied back and I was dressed. I glanced around the room before dropping my pyjamas into the chute and opening the door again.

“You look lovely,” Katie called as I stepped out of the bathroom. “We match!”

I looked down at myself self-consciously. We had both decided to wear dresses but hers suited her more. I’m not sure why, she just looked better than I did.

“We do,” I said, forcing a smile onto my face. “You look nice too.”

Katie grinned before looking at Abbie.

“You should wear a dress too so we all match!” she told her.

Abbie grimaced, looking between us awkwardly.

“I don’t really like to wear dresses,” she said uncomfortably. “Sorry…”

“Don’t worry!” Katie replied immediately, her tone genuine. “Wear whatever makes you comfortable!”

Abbie smiled but still hesitated as she chose her clothes, glancing at Katie and me several times. It made me feel bad, like I should offer to get changed or something, but that felt like a weird offer. I didn’t want to make Abbie uncomfortable but then I also didn’t want to single her out and if Katie and I were both wearing dresses, would she feel excluded? I mean, she was the one who had decided not to wear a dress so probably not, right?

“We’re not expected to remember our timetable right away, are we?” Katie asked me, as if I would know somehow.

“I doubt it,” I said before immediately being seized by worry.

What if they did expect that from us and I wasn’t prepared? It seemed silly that they would assume we could remember it so quickly but then I didn’t know how things worked in the Academy so maybe they would. Maybe they held us to higher standards than normal schools would and we’d get in trouble if we didn’t know. I couldn’t remember anything that I had today. There was been an assembly in the morning, a doctor’s appointment at some point in the afternoon and a class that was just called ‘Firearms’ but I couldn’t remember when that was exactly.

I reached for the folder that was on my bedside cabinet, knowing that I should have spent longer reading through it the night before but I had been so distracted by the others and by getting to know them that I had abandoned it at some point. It was so stupid of me!

I glanced up for just long enough to send Abbie a tight smile as she came out of the bathroom before looking back at the timetable, trying desperately to commit it to memory. Katie was silent as she stared at hers, her lips moving as she read.

“What’s the matter?” Abbie asked, watching us cautiously.

“You’ve read more of the folder than us,” Katie said. “Do you know if we’re meant to have memorised our timetables already or can we, like, take it with us?”

Abbie’s eyebrows pulled together.

“No, there are multiple copies in there. I’m pretty sure you’re meant to bring it with you,” she said.

A sigh of relief washed through me as I reached for the top of the plastic wallet and realised that she was right.

“Oh, phew!” Katie said with a laugh. “Okay, shall we go to breakfast?”