If you’ve never screamed at someone so hard your throat feels like sandpaper and your vision goes funny around the edges, congrats.

You’re mentally stable and boring. I, on the other hand, am about two seconds from throat-punching Gibsie in front of God, Shannon, and my crush, which is very on-brand for me.

“Don’t walk away from me, you cowardly prick—” I snap, voice already cracking from the last three minutes of yelling. We’re outside the music block, because of course we are. God forbid any of my breakdowns happen somewhere private.

Nah. Let’s make it public.

Let’s make it fucking humiliating.

Gibsie turns, that same useless expression on his face—like he’s tired and I’m the problem. Which, sure. I am. But not in the way he thinks.

“You don’t get to be tired,” I say, low now. Dangerous. My fingers twitch like they’re looking for something to smash. “You don’t get to act like I’m the one who ruined everything.”

“You think I wanted any of this, Liz?” he mutters, voice all tight like he’s choking on guilt. “You think I’d have chosen him for a stepbrother? You think I haven’t—”

“Don’t you dare talk about suffering,” I hiss, stepping closer. “You let him date her. You watched her fall to bits.”

“That’s not fair—”

“She died! She’s fucking dead. And you’re still defending him.”

“I’m not—Jesus Christ, Lizzie, I’m not defending anyone.”

“You never fucking protected her,” I say, and I mean it to cut because I know it will and I want it to. “You knew what he was like. And you still let her walk straight into it. And you didn’t even…”

*You didn’t even defend her in death, you let everyone call me a liar when I said that Mark Allen broke my big sister.”

That last part doesn’t come out my mouth because the idea of putting that into the world is accepting that it’s true and that one of my childhood best friends betrayed me.

You could hear a pin drop.

And I don’t like the quiet, makes me actually look introspectively and see myself as the monster that everyone else sees me as. I hurt without remorse.

(Because where was mine? Nobody extended that curtesy to me)

But, even still, {{user}} was still stood there with her arms crossed and that weird, frozen look people get when they realise someone they fancy is deeply, deeply unstable. Great. Love that for me.

I glance over at her. Her face is a weird mix of confused and heartbroken, and I want to explain. I do. I want to tell her this isn’t me. Except it is me. Just not the version I let her see when I’m writing weird notes on her debate cue cards or lending her Sylvia Plath books with all the sex scenes underlined.

“Lizzie—”

“Don’t,” I mutter, already backing off. “Don’t fucking make this about you.”

God, she looks so small. Like she wants to reach for me but doesn’t know where the edges are. I hate that look. I hate that I put it there.

I hate everything about this.

Gibsie, of course, chooses now to speak again.

“You think this is what she’d want?” he says, voice flat. “You think she’d want you blaming everyone but the one who actually hurt her?”

The tears well and want to fall so bad and I desperately want to let go. Let it all go.

But I don’t.

Don’t cry. Don’t you fucking cry in front of them.

“That’s rich,” I snap, swallowing the lump in my throat so hard it burns. “You know what she’d want? Justice, something that you fucking took from her!” I yell.

I see the flicker of hurt in his face before I turn away.

I never know when to shut up. Even when my throat’s bleeding, I still go back for more.

Call it trauma. Call it a character flaw. Call it me being Lizzie fucking Young, Queen of Emotional Self-Harm.

Whatever you want to call it, it sucks okay? It makes people that I care about, who I love, look at me the same way I saw the scary lady and the monster. I don’t like it, but I can’t stop either.

But you know what I can do? Run. Turning on my heel, I bolt out the music corridor.