CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ALICE
I managed to find an optician's store tucked away on the corner of the main street leading to Oakhaven.
I didn't want Zade's bronze-detailed charity, so I spent a chunk of my meager savings on a pair of emergency contact lenses.
They aren't perfect,everything still
feels a bit soft around the
edges,but they're better than the blur.
Mio called me the second she realized I had vanished from the penthouse.
I lied to her, telling her I'd received an urgent call from my landlord and had to handle a dispute before heading to campus.
I couldn't tell her the truth: that seeing Zade laugh had made the air in that penthouse too thick to breathe.
Now, I'm sitting on the very front bench of the lecture hall.
I'd asked Ellie to save it for me because even with the lenses, my vision is struggling to keep up with the professor's slides.
Every student who passes by stares at me as if I've suddenly grown elf ears and a tail.
Is it because I'm not wearing my glasses? Or is it because the rumor mill has already started spinning about where I spent the night?
Beside me, Ellie isn't her usual bubbly self.
She has her head down on the desk, her arms wrapped tightly around her stomach as if she's trying to hold herself together.
"Are you okay, Ellie?" I whisper, leaning in.
"Yeah... I'm all good. It's just a cramp," she winces.
The words turn into a strangled groan as she suddenly bolts upright and sprints out of the hall.
I don't even think. I grab my bag and follow her. I find her in the nearest washroom, the sound of her painful retching echoing against the tiles.
She's hunched over a stall, her body shaking with the effort.
I kneel down beside her on the cold floor, rubbing her back in slow circles.
As I watch her, my own head begins to throb again....a sharp, pulsing reminder of the concussion I'm supposed to be resting.
"Are you all right?" I ask as she finally finishes.
She slumps back against the porcelain, her face ghostly pale and beaded with sweat.
"Yeah... I just need a moment," she croaks.
For a long time, we just sit there in the silence of the bathroom, the only sound being the hum of the fluorescent lights.
"When was the last time you were truly terrified in your life, Alice?" she suddenly asks.
The question catches me off guard, slicing through my own fog.
I don't even have to think about the answer. The memory is always there, lurking in the shadows of my mind.
"When I lost my mom," I tell her, my voice barely a whisper.
"It was the most terrifying thing I've ever faced. Nothing prepares you to be on your own. Not really."
I stare at the bathroom door, seeing past it to the day of the funeral.
"My father... he was never what people described as a 'loving father.' He was just a man I shared a house with."
I feel a lump forming in my throat, but I keep talking.
"I was left on my own from the age of fourteen.
"That was the moment I realized why we call a mother a mother.."
"A woman can carry another person inside her body... she can care for that life for her entire existence without a second thought.
That kind of devotion is impossible to find anywhere else.
And that was what terrified me
the most....realizing that the only person
who would ever love me unconditionally
was being buried six feet under.
I wanted to join her there."
I hadn't realized I was crying until I felt a warm drop slide down my cheek.
Ellie reaches out, her hand shockingly cold but incredibly soft, and wipes the tear away.
She looks down at her own hand resting in her lap, then slowly moves it to her stomach.
She looks up at me, a small, fragile curve forming on her lips.
It hits me then.
Like a high-speed truck.
The way she's been eating lately... the sudden mood swings... the running out of class to vomit... How could I have been so blind?
"Don't tell me you're—"
"I'm pregnant," she says shyly. She leans forward and hugs me tightly.
"I didn't know how much I wanted this
baby... not until I heard you speak about your mother just now. I was seeing this as a cage, Alice. A trap that would ruin my life.
But... thank you for making me realize
what it actually is."
She continues talking, her voice muffled against my shoulder, but suddenly, her words start to sound... wrong.
They feel like they're coming from the bottom of a deep, dark well.
A cold sweat breaks out across my forehead, and the bathroom tiles start to swirl like liquid.
The world is tilting again.
"Alice!"
Ellie's voice sounds miles away.
"Alice, what happened?!"
The last thing I see before the world goes dark is a pair of expensive, polished loafers running toward us—the kind of shoes that don't belong in a girl's bathroom.
And then, there is nothing but the pitch-black silence of the void.