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Giggling, they do their best, stumbling and being completely awkward.
“Here you go, Justice,” Annie calls, holding a glass of something pink up in my face that smells pungently of alcohol. The liquid sloshes over the edges as I take it from her.
“Bottom’s up,” she says, and throws the strange liquid down her throat.
“Wait, they drink this in shots?”
“Just follow her lead, wench,” Mel says, joining in with two more glasses, and handing one to Eva. They both throw them back. I look down at the pink liquid and finally shrug. If the big shot heiress and the professor don’t have a problem, then I guess it’s fine.
And fine it is, so much so that we get another round.
I glance around for Sade. Or Micah, or any of the Kings, pretty sure the costumes wouldn’t be able to hide their identities. They would stand out even among the thickening crowd. Carlton is a mountain of a man, and Sade and Micah’s bodies are so brutally muscular that they’d be impossible to miss. Besides, they’d be recognizable by the way they move. Where Micah resembles a panther on the prowl, Sade is a sleek snake that’s always ready to snap. And they are nowhere within sight.
A light hand touches my shoulder.
“It’s better if you forget about him, at least for the night,” Eva says, her blue eyes contrasting starkly with the black eyeliner. It makes her look scary, but also attractive as hell. “Try to relax. That’s what booze is for.”
The smile I give her comes easier than it would have days ago.
She’s right. I can’t live with the possibility of destruction dangling over my head every second. Who knows, maybe this delay is all Gertrude’s doing. Maybe this is her way of prolonging my suffering, of making this pure torture because there’s nothing worse than uncertainty.
Bunny-Annie lifts the new drinks over her head, Eva and I stepping toward her to relieve her of two when my phone buzzes in the leather pocket strapped to my arm. Then Eva’s does too, and also Mel’s.
“Shit,” Annie curses while struggling to balance the drinks, clearly distracted by hers.
The buzz extends over the room.
I glance around to see everyone reaching for their phones. Panic slams me full in the chest. I know what that is before I even glance down at mine.
One new Whatsapp message.
My finger hovers over the display before I finally slide, unlock, and go to the chat.
Unknown number. Sending video footage that is still blurred until I tap it.
The title alone sends ice scraping through my veins, and my legs go weak.Justine takes it in all holes, written in Halloween black dripping font, as if I’m about to watch a monster fuck. My fingers shake visibly over the still-blurred video when another message comes in.
Come to the sports hall in ten minutes unless you want that video projected on the uni building like it’s fucking New Year’s.
Wait, that means not everybody got the same video? Because if they did, it wouldn’t make much difference whether it got displayed on the walls or not. I look furtively around, my eyebrows quivering, panic strangling me. But nobody’s looking up at me. Maybe what they got isn’t about me at all.
But it could be any second now.
I start walking, partly because I’m not sure I want to know what they’re looking at, partly because I don’t have time to lose. The sports hall is at the back of the main campus building. I would have to walk through a number of students’ areas, the cafeteria, and even a cloister before I get there.
I get lost in the crowd, everyone staring down at their buzzing phones. One after the other, they’re receiving a message. A molten fire starts in my chest, driving me to get past the populated areas as quickly as possible. The clusters of people thin out by the time I reach the inner cloister and push open the old, creaking doors.
Later in the night, when they’re drunk enough, some couples will surely make their way out here to grope each other. No earlier, though. The cloister is a place we all avoid at night if we can help it. Overgrowth covers the middle of it, vines creeping up the columns, and there are suspicious dark-red stains on the stone. Some people whisper the high elites are using this place for sacrifices or some kind of rituals, since nobody is tending to the cloister, and it’s not like the university lacks the funds to do it.
As for the sports hall, it’s mostly a vestige of the last century, and it’s rarely used. We use the newly built building adjacent to it.
My breath gets heavier with every step I take towards the hall. Cold sweat runs down my spine as I think about what is waiting for me behind closed doors. I pause in front of them. That’s it, all I have to do is reach out and push them open. Okay, Justine, one last deep breath.
I shove the doors open and step inside.
***
Sade
