A dead, mutilated animal laid in the cart.
The color of red and fur mixed with my clothes.
Crawling to my trashcan, I leaned over right as the contents in my stomach came up.
“Mia?! What in God’s name…” I heard before hands gripped my shoulders.
I recoiled at the sudden touch and twisted around, pressing myself closer to the wall. Once I noticed the hands belonged to Ethan, my arms flung around his neck, and I cried into his shirt collar. Ethan’s body went stiff for a moment before he relaxed and pulled me in closer. His hands grasped the back of my head.
“Who would do this?” I cried out.
Ethan’s hold around my waist tightened as his hand moved over the back of my head, “Some sick fuck,” he muttered through an exhale. “Come on. I have to get you out of here and call this in.”
Ethan shielded my eyes from what waited for me on my pull-out cart and walked me just outside the door in the corridor. He led me against the wall as I tried shaking the image out of my head. His blue eyes stayed on mine while he unclipped the radio from his belt and talked into it.
“Yes, wing four…” he repeated into the radio. Ethan clipped the radio back over his belt and hunched over with two hands on my shoulders. “Has anything like this happened before?”
Shaking my head, I tried to control my trembling hands.
“Has anyone threatened you?”
Shaking my head again, I said, “No one. It’s been quiet all summer.”
Another tear fell down my cheek, and Ethan reached out to capture it but paused before contact could be made. He sighed and dropped his hand and head at once.
“Ethan … ” My voice broke and I let his name hang in the air as both a plea and a question. I wanted to tell him to make this go away—to find a way to erase the last ten minutes, but I could no longer speak. I bit the inside of my cheek to avoid showing emotion and fight back any more tears from escaping.
Ethan lifted his head and held my face with one hand. “Stay here while I look around?”
I nodded, and he took off.
My back fell against the wall and I slid down until my bottom met the ground.
“So, where are you going to be staying now?” Jake asked over the running water of the showerhead.
No matter how long I stayed under the water, the visions of the dead cat wouldn’t disappear. Scrubbing my body until it turned pink, I replayed the last couple of weeks over and over, trying to find a flicker of a hint as to why someone would do something like that—nothing. “Take a wild guess,” I said through a sigh.
“Please don’t tell me a different wing.”
“No, Officer Scott wouldn’t allow it,” I said low, hoping he didn’t latch onto the comment or make something of it. No one knew the friendship Ethan and I shared, not even Bria. My friendship with Ethan stayed hidden in the middle of the night and far away from everyone else. It was all mine, and something I cherished. Up until the dead animal was found in my room, he had the ability to separate work and me. It was only a matter of time before his two worlds collided, and I wondered how this would change things between us.
“Then, where?”
I turned under the water and tilted my head back, massaging my fingers into my scalp. “Ollie’s old room.” The room where we had first kissed. The room I’d slowly fallen in love with him. The room we’d made love on countless occasions.
“No way,” I heard Jake laugh from the opposite side of the wall separating us, “Oh, you poor thing. That’s pure torture right there.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Do they know who did it?”
“No, but they opened an investigation.”
I turned off the showerhead and rung out my hair. “Shit, I forgot a towel. Can you grab me one?”
“Yeah, one second,” Jake said, and I waited naked as the cold slowly crept over my wet body. Moments later, Jake pushed a towel through the opening of the curtain. “Thanks.” I wrapped the towel around me and opened my curtain. Jake was already in his boxers and standing in front of the mirror, squeezing toothpaste over his toothbrush.
I cocked my head over to the entrance of the bathroom to see Ethan standing against the wall. As soon as our eyes met, he turned his head away and adjusted his stance.
Since last year, security presence doubled around campus. A security guard was assigned to each wing, Ethan was ours, and the guards rotated between the mess hall and the community bathroom. I tightened the towel around me and grabbed my toothbrush from the sink. “And I have to wear the looney bin clothes until I can get new everything,” I added, eyeing the tasteless clothes waiting for me on the counter. My old ones, including my “Cute but Psycho” shirt, had been ruined in blood.
Jake spat a mouthful of toothpaste. “Oh, this just keeps getting better and better.”
“Yeah, you should see the underwear they gave me, too.”
He rinsed off his toothbrush before tapping it over the edge of the sink. “I don’t know why you care. It’s not like you’ll let anyone see your knickers, anyway.”
Though I couldn’t see, I felt Ethan’s eyes on me again. I turned my head, and my eyes met his piercing-blue, narrowed eyes. The way he treated me like a child annoyed me, but then he looked at me like this, and I figured screwing with his head a little would help with the day I had.
The few stragglers emptied as the steam gradually lifted. We had half the students here during the summer, and it wouldn’t be long before the community bathroom crowded again, and I would have to start taking my showers in the morning.
“Alright, I’ll see you in the AM.” Jake tousled his blonde hair and high-tailed out as I finished brushing my teeth.
It was just Ethan and me. Turning to face him again, he tensed against the wall; eyes fixed on me, hands clutched to his belt. He wanted to turn away, struggle carved in his features, but a more powerful force kept his eyes trained on me.
I released my towel and it dropped to my feet.
Ethan’s jaw clenched behind his light red stubble, and his eyes scanned up and down my naked body. The rest of him stayed glued against the wall. The thick air swirled around us as we both breathed deep, staring at one another and chests rising in sync.
Finally, a look from him I’d been waiting for—admiration and appreciation.
“Get dressed, Jett,” he finally said from the throat, clearing it afterward. “Please.”
“I never said thank you,” I picked the towel off the floor and towel-dried my hair, “but I’m tired of you treating me like a kid.”
He turned his head away. “Then stop acting like one.”
“Do I look like a child to you?”
“Don’t do this,” he warned.
“No, look at me,” I forced out with a finger pointed at my chest. Ethan dropped his head momentarily. My heart plummeted as I waited, begging to be looked at again—waiting to be appreciated again. The same way Ollie did. “Do I look like a child to you?”
Ethan lifted his head, and his eyes soaked me in as the rest of his face fell. “No, Mia, you’re definitely not a child.”
He slapped the wall behind him with his palm before walking out.
Ollie’s dorm looked like every other room now. It no longer screamed “Ollie” and now had a desk, a lifted bed, and a rolling cart—prepared for the next prisoner, which was me. My notebook sat on the desk, and I took a seat before opening it. Blank pages waited to be filled. It didn’t take long before ink colored an entire page before I moved on to the next. The day became my muse, writing about everything between the sick surprise in my room to Ethan’s gaze in the bathroom to Ollie.