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Malia-Tarni
I spend the second part of the lecture in the toilets, crying. Which is unbearably pathetic, I know. Once I’m out of range of Bhodi’s phone and the earbuds go quiet, I take them out and pocket them. The hallway and bathroom were deserted but that didn’t stop the auditory hallucinations from continuing. Every thought I heard in the classroom returns to crawl across my skin like a thousand spiders with barbed legs, until I’m frantically scratching at my arms to get them off, in a desperate attempt to feel peace again.
How did this person get onto this course? This is a joke, right? Who wrote this shit? Are they trying to get kicked out? What the fuck? Was the author on drugs? I’d like some of what they’ve been smoking! Really?! I swear a child could do better. How are we supposed to grade something this bad? Fuck my life! I feel sorry for anyone who has to read this. Diabolical.
I scratch and scratch and scratch until I draw blood. And then I dig a little deeper, letting the pain bleed the voices away. It’s a low point, one I’m not proud of, but definitely not my lowest or worst.
I’m still breathing, aren’t I?
If anyone walked in on me, they’d think I was such a cliché. By the time I stop clawing at my flesh and my fingernails are dark with my blood, I sink to the floor to calm myself by rocking. The chanting in my head calm down Malia, calm down Malia, calm down Malia drowns out all other sounds and the rocking momentum of my overstimulated body helps to regulate me once again.
When I’m done, and finally able to function because the only demons in my mind are my own, I’m exhausted. Exhausted and angry.
Fucking pissed actually.
I get up and pace the small bathroom while I wait for class to end, getting myself more and more wound up.
Fuck the teacher for doing this to me! He had no right, and there was absolutely no purpose to his ‘lesson’ beyond humiliating me. If there was, he wouldn’t have obscured sections of my essay or given the class an already annotated copy. He would have allowed everyone to read it in its entirety and let us draw our own conclusions. No. This is personal, and needlessly cruel.
But why? Why is he doing this to me? Surely it can’t be because of whatever I said to him when I was drunk.
I don’t remember saying anything too outrageous or rude. And he must have known I’d been drinking, not that it would excuse me if I had said anything awful. I don’t believe in excuses. It’s why I never told him about my condition. I don’t need special treatment or understanding from him. I just need him not to be a dick.
It’s too late to consider it anymore than that now; class has ended and I need to confront him before my bravery flees. I wrench open the door to the bathroom and stride back along the now-busy corridor, moving against the sea of students with purpose.
I need to know — no, I'm going to demand that he explains himself.
By the time I get to the classroom we used today, the halls are quiet and everyone has left. I pause outside with my hand on the door when I hear raised voices. I listen in.
“What the fuck did she do to you?!”
“Mind your own business!”
“No! She didn’t deserve that shit, Prof. She was fucking devastated. You made her cry.”
“Bhodi—”
It’s Bhodi shouting at the professor? I’ve never heard someone sound so…enraged before.
I freeze.
They’re talking about me and Bhodi seems to be defending me…why? Why would he do that? It doesn’t make any sense, even if he did give me his earbuds and press his leg up against mine. That doesn’t mean anything though, right?
I can’t believe someone would shout at a teacher like that – even though that was what I had intended to do myself. Not that I would have followed through with it though. Not really. I might have managed a firm plea for answers but I doubt I could even manage that.
Not sober anyway.
I step away from the door just in time for it to fly open and narrowly miss me. Bhodi storms out and even if I hadn’t heard him shouting, I can tell he’s furious from the set of his shoulders and the way his chest is heaving. His hands are curled into fists and that, combined with his size, makes him look ferocious.
He’s terrifying, truly, but the knowledge that he is on my side takes away my fear. From the moment we met, Bhodi became my hero – he just didn’t know it. Today though, he chose to step up and become my protector for whatever reason. It makes me look at him in a completely different light.
