Page 129 of Twisting Beauty

Why was she still here? I had not earned her kindness. I had not earned any of it.

She stood up and crossed to the bed where the violin case lay open. She picked it up carefully. She came back and knelt in front of me with the case held out between us.

I looked at the case.

I looked at the pieces in my hands.

Then, slowly, I began to put the violin back in. The neck first. Then the body in pieces. Then the splintered fragments, the broken strings, every piece I had carried back through the corridors. I fitted each one to the velvet where it had lived.

Then I closed the lid the way I would close a coffin, saying my silent goodbyes.

After a long time, she whispered, “Thank you. I know what it cost you.”

I didn’t answer.

Admitting I had chosen her would give her too much. I would not survive it.

She stood and turned to leave, as if she knew I needed to be alone. “I’ll check in on you later.”

Something lurched inside me. I couldn’t let her leave. Not without…

“Liath.”

She stopped at the door. I could feel her gaze on me like a warm hand.

Thank you.

But this was too far out of my grasp. My tongue could not form the words. I didn’t know how.

“Don’t,” I said, not raising my head, “tell anyone you were in here.”

“I promise.”

The door clicked shut behind her.

I sat alone on the floor with one trembling hand resting on the closed case.

38

LIATH

Iwas on my way to lab the next afternoon when the screaming started. It was loud enough that I broke stride. Beside me, Nuala stopped too.

The whole hallway had paused. Students turned their heads, one by one, their whispers rising in nervous little threads before dying under the next scream.

A door slammed open.

To my horror, Bridgit was dragged out of it.

Two staff had her under the arms. A third had her ankles. She was fighting them the whole way, twisting and thrashing against their grip.

I almost didn’t recognize her. Her cheeks had gone hollow, sunk in under the bone. Her eyes were wild, red-rimmed, the whites webbed through with broken vessels. Her hair hung in greasy clumps around her face. Her forearms were raked raw, fingernail tracks crossing older fingernail tracks, fresh blood beading along the worst of them.

“Get them off me,” she screamed as she clawed at her own arms, dragging new red lines through the old ones. “Get them off, get them off⁠—”

The corridor went quiet around her. A teacher who had been trying not to look turned the other way.

“I know what they did,” she screamed, her voice echoing down the hallway. “I know. I know too much. I know.”