Page 127 of Insincerely Yours
Please, Birdie.
I miss you.
And these messages aren’t just from sophomore year. I scroll back down to see them dating back four years, three years, two years—
My thumb freezes on the screen at the sight of the texts from eighteen months ago, the date forever burned into my brain.
Both of my hands begin to shake, and the words in front of me blur as I try to blink back tears.
Are you okay?
Birdie????
What did he do???
Are you hurt?
Please call me!
Birdie!
Just let me know if you’re okay!
Message after message is sent,some within the same minute as another, and after over a dozen, the chain ends with:
I’m going to fucking kill him.
CHAPTER 29
PRAYING
JANUARY, 18 MONTHS AGO
I’msure Family and Consumer Sciences (a.k.a. the rebranded name for Home Ec) has its purpose in the real world, but here? It’s officially the most useless class taught at Winterborn Prep. You need to prepare a meal? Hire a cook. You need your house and laundry cleaned? Hire a maid. You need childhood development skills to raise your eventual rugrats? Hire a nanny. Ninety percent of the people in Ravenswood would never have to wash a dish in their lives, let alone have to know how to hem a pair of pants, but Home Ec had always been part of the curriculum at Winterborn for as long as Mrs. Kitzmiller had been teaching it…which I’m pretty sure goes back to the school’s inception.
As lame as everyone else thinks it is, this is my favorite class. Well, itwas, anyway. For the first two weeks of the semester, FCS was the only subject I didn’t share with one of the Untouchables. Sure, several cheer squad members are here, but without Sienna or Trent having to egg them on, I may as well be invisible. For two weeks, I was blissfully left alone—
Until the Wicked Bitch herself comes to ruin everything.
Mrs. Kitzmiller begins handing out carpet swatches so we can practice removing stains when Sienna flounces into theroom. Apparently, she was having issues with Mrs. Lutz, the art teacher, and dropped the class in favor of transferring to FCS.
I’ve only had to share forty minutes with her thus far, and it’s safe to say this is officially my most hated class now. Despite our workstations being on opposite sides of the room, Sienna somehow keeps finding her way over near me. I’ve been tripped, elbowed in the kidney, and called “a waste of oxygen,” all conveniently when Mrs. Kitzmiller has been preoccupied. Granted, that’s nothing new in Sienna’s playbook, but when she not-so-discreetly comes up behind me with a pair of scissors, and I feel a soft tug on my hair, I reel sideways out of her reach just as she’s about to snip off a healthy section of my black locks at least eight inches long.
What the fuck?
Never has she been that brazen before, and in my panicked state, I operate on autopilot, whirling around and throwing my arms out in front of me.
“Watch it, spaz,” Sienna snorts, but there’s a gleam to her eyes and a smile far too nefarious for my liking as she looks over my shoulder.
I already know another attack is coming, but I don’t have enough time to react. I’m barely able to turn back around when Marissa smacks an open plastic container into my stomach. Warm liquid oh so conveniently spills out all over the front of my uniform, and by the pungent chemical fumes that immediately assault my nose, it’s obviously not water. Likely bleach. Considering Marissa’s work table is next to Sienna’s on the other side of the room and the entire aisle behind me is empty, there’s no way Marissa did this on accident.
What makes this worse is that she didn’t want to do it at all—that much is clear. Marissa has a wad of napkins at the ready and apologizes profusely, sounding sincere as she hands them over.Like everybody else here, Sienna told her to jump, and Marissa was too scared to tell her no.
Doing so would only incite the Wicked Bitch’s wrath, likely resulting in an ugly rumor circulating about Marissa or, worse, getting her kicked off the cheer squad.
And since the three of us are in the far back of the room with no one else paying attention, Sienna happily supplies her own version of events, telling Mrs. Kitzmiller that I freaked out for no reason and ran right into Marissa. The teacher doesn’t look particularly convinced, but Marissa has no choice but to agree with the narrative. Since the science lab is the only room equipped with an emergency shower station, I’m excused from the remainder of class to clean myself off in the locker room.
The liquid thankfully didn’t splash more than the very ends of my hair, but the front of my blouse and skirt is sopping wet, and I can feel it soaking into the top of my underwear. Since I’d rather not risk it spreading lower and burning a certain area, I hurry down the hall and into the locker room. The bell for the next hour sounds off before I even disrobe, and I couldn’t be more grateful that there’s a pep rally taking place, because the locker room remains blissfully empty as I wash off. Despite the healthy donations made to the school, no one ever bothered to invest some of that money into developing single-stall wash areas, leaving one large communal shower, like a prison.
