Page 156 of Penance

I step off the sidewalk and onto the grass between the road and the treeline. It’s a sudden and stark transition. One moment I’m surrounded by concrete and metal, car horns and engines, the next I’m pushing past the first scraggly trees, their branches scratching at my arms like bony fingers trying to hold me back. The ground changes beneath me, from unyielding pavement to a carpet of leaves and hidden roots.

I can be alone here.

I can be away from the eyes and the voices and the sounds.

I can be by myself.

There will be no one here to judge me.

I can be alone with my thoughts, and that’s the realization that almost sends me back onto the sidewalk.

I don’t want to think about what Draco did to me.

I don’t want to be forced to remember it.

My ankle twists on something under the leaves and I stumble, catching myself against the trunk of a huge, towering oak. Bark scrapes skin, but the pain is distant, almost too faraway for me tofeel it. It’s nothing compared to the pain that wraps itself around my heart. The woods smell like damp earth and pine needles. Sunlight filters through the canopy in dappled patches, shifting and blinking across the forest floor.

“This isn’t happening,” I whisper to myself.

I need to hear my voice. I need to know that I’m still alive. Still awake.

I push deeper, branches snagging at my hair, pulling strands loose and ripping at the skin on my face.

It hurts.

It burns.

I might be bleeding.

It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I need to get away.

Draco’s not safe, and yet somehow he’s my safety.

I don’t understand it.

It doesn’t make sense.

I just know both are true at the same time.

My foot catches on a root, and this time I do fall, landing hard on my hands and knees. The impact jolts through my bones, and something inside me cracks—not physically, but something like a dam keeping my emotions at bay. A scream tears from my throat, primal and raw.

It hurts.

The pain is everywhere.

It’s all consuming.

“No!” The scream echoes among the trees, and in a nearby pine tree a flock of birds explodes into the air.

“No, no, no!”

I’m not even sure why I’m screaming.

What am I denying?

My fists pound against the soft earth and I scream again, louder this time. It echoes in the air around me, bouncing off the trunks of the trees and coming back to slap me in the face.

It hurts.

---