Graphite

At exactly six-thirty a.m. there’s a pounding on my door, loud and obnoxious and occurring in rapid sequences of four. I roll over, a half-hearted attempt at answering it before the inviting warmth of my quilt sucks me back in again. I’ve put a lot of miles and time between that prison and me, but every time I fall into this bed I remember what is was like to curl up into myself, with nothing but that thin threadbare blanket and still-bleeding wounds.

The knocking is insistent and I shout curses at it, burying my head beneath the pillow.

Silence ensues suddenly, and I thank God that whoever it was decided to stop and leave me alone for a little bit.

I speak too soon.

Dread fills the pit in my stomach as I hear all the locks being undone on my door, gently and with a careful hand.

I don’t even hear the door open when my quilt is pulled off my body, the window thrust open, and the early morning chill seeping into the room and permeating my skin, raising goosebumps.

“Fucking hell,” I mutter, pulling my pillow over my head.

“I’m quite a fan of your pajamas, Holly. Pick those out just for me?” a low, rumbling voice sounds in my ears and my eyes open wide with shock. God damn it, I slept in and we have mission today.

I toss the pillow at Harry and sit up; fixing the thin camisole that had ridden up to the top of my ribcage and the slightly too-tight shorts.

“Get the hell out, Styles,” I say, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and pulling my fingers through my tangled mass of hair.

“Our flight leaves at ten-thirty, we’ve got to fucking leave.”

I level a glare at him. “Yeah, I know, smart ass, and I’m already packed so why don’t you go be a gentleman and take my stuff down to transport?” I gave him a sickly sweet smile and turned my back to him as I grabbed my towel and locked myself in the bathroom.

As I turn on the water, I bite back a smile when his angry mutters drift beneath the door, all speculation on how CIA training didn’t prep him for life as a slave.

So melodramatic.

In ten minutes I finish showering and getting dressed, slipping on some fitted jeans and tank top to throw my solid-colored flannel over. The lovely part about high school is that you could—

Oh wait. There is nothing lovely about going back to fucking high school.

Routinely, I pull down the blinds and lock the windows, triple-checking the lights and making sure there was absolutely nothing I forgot. I feel almost out of practice, and this does nothing to settle the ball of nerves in my stomach from getting increasingly larger.

I leave the room without sparing another glance, vainly attempting to ignore the feeling in my chest that everything is about to go very and truly wrong.

***

I enter the broad expanse of the mess hall only to be encompassed by three pairs of arms in a complete ambush; suddenly my lungs are constricting the air attempting to get out of them and my skin burns with unwanted touch.

For one brief, fleeting, terrifying second I wonder if I’ve been found and that this is it.

My entire body tenses and I push the people off of me and grab arms and stomp on feet before I’m freed, skidding backwards so violently I hit the wall, tremors running deep enough to shake my bones.

My eyes begin to focus on the scenery around me; the haphazard blurs settling until they form people with faces and not threats.

Breathe, Sophia, breathe.

Niall, Louis, and Zayn all observe me with their hands up slightly in surrender, confusion painted on their faces as if with the detailed hand of an artist.

“Are you alright, Sophia?” Zayn asks, his deeply accented voice ringing with concern.

I nod my head rapidly, my chest moving up and down as if I’d run a marathon, and I step back further into the wall.

Then I realize it’s not, in fact, a wall. When two, rough, warm hands place themselves on my shoulders, rubbing up and down in a calming motion (which actually works); it hits me harder than a truck. And I’ve been hit by one of those.

It’s a goddamn person.

“What the hell did you lot do to her?” Harry demands from behind me, and I thank God I can’t see his face because I don’t honestly think I’d be able to bear it, no not really. “I leave for ten bloody minutes and she’s catatonic.”

I grit my teeth and pull away from him, feeling the sudden chill. “They didn’t fucking do anything to me, Harry. They caught me off-guard, that was it.” I raise an eyebrow at the other boys. “Word to the wise? Don’t try to surprise a girl who was kidnapped and torture for two months, okay?”

The boys look down sheepishly and sincere apologies fall from their lips, but I wave them off.

“Just don’t do it again and we’ll be all right here. Where are the others?” I ask, wondering if they’d gathered here in some big send-off for my first mission.

Louis turns dramatically and points at a table in the back where Liam, the twins, and Olivia were chowing down on breakfast. A small smile graces my face as I look over at them.

Harry’s elbow nudges me in the side then, breaking me out of my reverie. I avoid looking at his face, only replying with a sharp “What?”

“It’s nearly gone seven-thirty. We have time for a quick goodbye and maybe a snack but that’s it, love.”

I purse my lips. “Okay then. A quick goodbye.”

We make our way over to the table, and Liam catches a glimpse of me first, followed by the twins and Olivia, who looks somber.

Why is she upset?

Carefully, I slide into the seat beside her, making sure not to jostle her bad arm, and pick a muffin off Daz’s plate.

“Fucking Christ, Soph, get your own goddamn muffin you know blueberry is my favorite.” She pouts and sticks out her bottom lip, blond hair quivering, and I laugh before taking an obnoxiously big bite.

“I didn’t know you and Jesus were quite that intimate, D. When were you planning on telling us?”

She rolls her eyes but grins, pearly white teeth shining like headlights. Or Tom Cruise’s teeth. “Right after Easter, of course. When else?”

“I call maid of honor at your wedding,” I reply, and Daz’s laugh echoes like the tinkling of bells. “Anyway, I can’t stay long. My flight’s due to leave soon. Wish me luck, okay?” I stand and toss out the paper from the muffin.

“Phia, you’ll do fine. You can handle this, drug busts are middle school jobs,” Liam reassures me in a warm voice, clasping my hand in his for a brief moment.

“Yeah, Soph, you have nothing to worry about. Ten dollars says you and pretty boy will be back in a week, tops,” Tack adds, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. “Maybe more if you so happen to miss your flight back.” I smack him on the back of the head.

I look to Olivia, wondering if she was going to say anything, but instead she looks like the last thing she wants is for me to leave. Her hair is stringy and piled on top of her head, her cheekbones are prominent, as if she’s lost a lot of weight. There are red, brusing marks along her neck from the indentation of the sling. Her eyes have taken on a perpetual glassy look, as if they’ve been drained of everything that makes her feel alive.

In short, Olivia looks terrible. She looks haunted. How could I have missed this about my own best friend? Guilt wracks up inside me, sharp and stabbing like a knife twisting into my gut.

“Liv,” I whisper, “are you okay? I mean, are you eating? Getting enough sleep?” I glance over at her plate, which is completely clean save for a couple of crumbs in one corner. It doesn’t look like she even attempted to fill it.

Olivia’s eyes glaze over. “Phia, are you sure this is the best decision? Going back out into the field so soon? Are you really ready for that? The hallucination wasn’t that long ago and you couldn’t function for nearly a day after it happened. And I just, I don’t feel like—” Olivia pauses suddenly. “I don’t feel comfortable with you going on a mission without me.”

Involuntarily, I glance over at Harry. He’s speaking animatedly with Louis and the other boys, his cheeks taking on a red tint as they rag on him about something. When he looks over, our eyes lock together in one single moment, blue against green. He raises an eyebrow, a single question, asking me if I was okay, and I nod.

I’m the first to break the connection. I hate referring to it like that. A connection. He’s supervising me on a mission I could complete in my sleep. I don’t need him to baby me.

“Olivia,” I say softly, staring into her empty eyes and taking one of her hands in my own, “I need to do this. I need to prove myself again. Not just to the higher-ups, but to myself. I’m not broken.” The last words leave my lips as a lie.

I can see that she still wants to protest, but then Harry ghosts over and tells me for the thousandth time that we need to leave.

So instead Olivia throws her bony arms around my neck and pulls me in close and I embrace her back. My heart twists with thoughts of the accident, of her being shot and hit by a truck, of thinking she was dead and gone while I was helpless to save her. I know she feels like the situation is almost reversed now, but I really have to do this.

I have to do this for me.

“Here, take this water bottle. They only have alcohol on the company plane,” she gives me a half-hearted smile and I return it.

“See you guys around,” I say, Harry calling out something similar.

“Call us in case you guys decide you want to elope!” Louis hollers across the mess hall and I shoot him the finger while he returns with something much, much worse.

“Ignore him,” Harry says, his voice husky with embarrassment as we cross the quad.

“Oh believe me, I’ve tried, it’s impossible.”

“At least he hasn’t gone on to you about carrots.”

“Carrots? What the fucking hell?”

Harry chuckles. “The past two bloody days, Lou’s been staring at this same carrot because he swears on his life that that exact carrot must have been significant to him in some different universe.”

I burst out laughing, unable to get the image of Louis having a stare down with an innocent carrot out of my head. “Someone has to get him off the drugs.”

“The sad part is, I really don’t think he’s on any.”

We laugh together, the sounds collectively mixing in the air before drifting off into the rising sun and atmosphere.

I don’t know what to make of this sudden friendly attitude, but no matter how much I hate it, there’s a part of me screaming that this actually feels nice.

I hate nice.

***

“Holly. Holly. Hoooollllllllyyyyy. Wake the fuck up. The plane’s landed.” I feel someone poking at my face, tugging on pieces of my hair and lifting up my eyelids.

“Stop touching my face, Styles, before I fucking destroy yours,” I say, opening my eyes to find him glaring at me.

“You’re not very pleasant when you wake up, are you? Or is it just me?”

I sit up in my plush airplane seat (perks of CIA: first class always.) and stretch, cracking my back, neck, knuckles, toes, anything you can name.

Harry looks at me with disgust written all over his handsome face. “That was probably the most unattractive thing I’ve ever seen you do. And I’ve seen you first thing in the morning.”

I look at him and grin.

“Do you think I care about what you think, Styles?”