"I need to get to the restroom," Lilith said to herself, pressing a hand to her chest as she rushed down the stairs.
She passed a few students in the corridor who looked at her with pity.
"I don't need that".
They must have already heard everything going on with her and we're trying to sympathize on her behalf, she didn't want that.
Lilith reached the restroom, stepped inside, and locked the door behind her. For a moment she just stood there, one hand on her chest, forcing herself to breathe.
Standing for two hours would normally be nothing. But her arm was injured, and the weight of everything she'd just heard sat heavy on her lungs.
Three deep breaths. Then she moved to the mirror, turned on the tap, and splashed cold water on her face.
She looked up at her reflection.
Silver eyes stared back at her, wide, tired, rimmed with the particular redness that came not from crying but from holding everything in so tightly that the body found other ways to show it.
Her hair had come slightly undone from the morning, curls escaping at the edges. There was a crease on her cheek from where she had pressed her hand against it too hard during the meeting.
She looked like someone who had been through something.
She hated that. She hated that it showed.
She turned the tap back on and splashed her face a second time, harder.
Then she stood straight, squared her shoulders, and looked at herself again.
"You're still standing", she told her reflection. That counts for something.
She wasn't entirely sure she believed it. But she said it anyway.
Then she opened her bag.
There was a hidden pocket inside, the pocket where she kept the pills. She stared at them for a moment before opening the container. She shook five into her palm.
She was supposed to take only two pills.
Technically, she wasn't supposed to be taking them at all. They were her Mother's, ones she'd been secretly been throwing away because her mother had grown dependent on them and it wasn't good for her. Not that she particularly cared about that. But… maybe she cared, just a little.
Curiosity had gotten the better of her the first time. She'd taken one just to see what the fuss was about, and—
Oh.
She understood now. She understood completely. The pills made you feel good. Not just fine, genuinely, quietly, warmly good. Like all the weight you carried just… lifted. And they killed pain too, in the same silent way.
She swallowed all five, gulped them down with water from her bottle.
The effect didn't come immediately. It never did. It started at the slowly, a warmth that began somewhere behind her sternum and spread outward slowly, like someone had placed something gently heated against her chest from the inside.
Her shoulders, which she hadn't even realised were hunched up toward her ears, dropped. The tight, breathless feeling that had lived in her throat since she walked into that office began to loosen its grip.
And then, the Weight lifted.
Not disappeared. Not gone. But lifted, the way a hand lifts a heavy thing and holds it so you don't have to for a while.
The humiliation of standing in that office for two hours. The unfairness of the invigilator and Belle and all of it. It was still there, she could still see it clearly, but it had moved to a distance where it couldn't reach her quite so easily.
Her arm stopped throbbing.
She exhaled slowly through her nose.
This. This was why her mother couldn't stop.
She understood it completely and hated that she understood it and took another sip of water anyway.
Five was too many, some small rational part of her noted.
She agreed with that part. She just didn't particularly care right now.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
"Who the heck is in there?"
"Open this door right now, we need to use the restroom!"
Lilith pressed her palms flat against her cheeks.
"I can do this, I need to find Jasmine… She needs to explain why she would do something like this to me".
She tucked the pills back into her bag, grabbed her water bottle, and opened the door.
Five girls stood waiting outside. The one at the front smiled, not kindly.
"Well, well, well. If it isn't the girl who is an alleged killer, locking the door, plotting who to attack and how to be more successful this time around"
They laughed. One of them stayed back as the others filed in.
"If you're looking for Jasmine," she said, working a lollipop in her cheek, "She's in the cafeteria. With her new bestie."
"Who's her new bestie?" Lilith asked, voice level.
The girl smiled and licked her lollipop slowly. "You'll find out."
Lilith exhaled and started toward the cafeteria. She already had someone in mind, but she didn't want to believe it could really be that person. It would make absolutely no sense.
She stepped into the cafeteria.
The first thing she saw was Belle and Jasmine, matching hoodies, matching bows on their ponytails.
Oh. Really.
She stood in the cafeteria entrance for a moment longer than necessary.
Jasmine.
Of all the things that had happened today: the office, the complaints, Mr Aryan and his disgusting cunning ways, somehow this one settled differently.
Because Jasmine had been different.
Or Lilith had believed she was.
Jasmine had laughed at her jokes in a way that felt genuine. Had sat with her in comfortable silence in the library on days when neither of them felt like talking. Had texted her at odd hours about nothing important.
Lilith had told herself she wasn't the kind of person who needed friends.
She had believed that, mostly.
But she had let Jasmine in. Just slightly. Just enough.
And now Jasmine was sitting in a matching hoodie with Belle, BELLE, of all people, with a little bow on her ponytail like they had been best friends their entire lives.
How long, Lilith wondered. How long was it all fake?
She didn't let herself wonder for too long and walked up to where they were.
"Jasmine," Lilith said. "I need to talk to you."
"About what?" Jasmine didn't turn around.
Lilith stepped around until she was standing in front of her.
"I don't understand what's going on with you. You know you can always talk to me."
"Wait—" Belle sat forward. "She thinks you're being bullied? Or threatened into some performance for her sake?" She laughed.
"She's just slow," Jasmine said. "She doesn't get it."
Lilith's jaw tightened.
"Oh, I'm slow. Fine. Why don't both of you, since you're so intelligent, explain it to me?"
Belle gestured elegantly. "With pleasure. Jasmine?"
"Lilith, you and I were never friends. Not to me, anyway. You may have believed we were, but I never saw it that way. You see, Belle and I had a bet going. Whether the loner girl in school could actually form a close friendship before I transferred. And well—" Jasmine shrugged. "Am I not a good actress?"
"The best," Belle said, and they high-fived.
Lilith looked at them both for a long moment.
Then she smiled.
"Thank you for explaining."
She turned to leave.
"Wait, that's it?" Belle asked, visibly irritated. She'd clearly been expecting a different kind of scene.
Lilith stopped but didn't turn back around.
"Were you expecting something more?" she said. "Sorry to disappoint."
"Bitch," Belle snapped, pushing to her feet.
Her boyfriend William caught her wrist. "Chill, babe. We'll see her at the trial."
"Exactly, no need," Jasmine agreed.
Belle settled back, slowly. She held up her middle finger in Lilith's direction and screamed.
"See you at the trial, Bitch".
"Morons," Lilith murmured, and walked out of the cafeteria.
Lilith kept her face completely neutral until she was through the cafeteria doors.
Then she walked, not fast, not slow, just steady, and let the smile drop.
It hadn't been a real smile anyway. It was the smile she used when she needed people to think she was fine, which was different from actually being fine in every way that mattered.
She had learned it young. Smile and they can't tell. Smile and they don't get the satisfaction.
But underneath the smile was something she refused to look at directly.
Something quiet and bruised and angry all at once. She pressed down the feelings starting to rise in her, the way she always did, somewhere deep where it couldn't embarrass her in public.
They didn't deserve her tears.
None of them did.
She walked out of the cafeteria with her head straight and her jaw set and her silver eyes dry, and if her hands were trembling slightly at her sides, well. Nobody was looking at her hands.
You're fine, she told herself.
She was a very good liar. Even to herself.
Lilith turned left instead of right.
"To the Library".