Panic
Amity’s POV
Amity’s eyes followed Luz as she sprinted out of the precalculus room and Boscha did the same in the form of an ice cold glare.
As Luz had lowered her hood, Amity had seen the droplet fall in slow motion to where it splattered on Boscha’s desk and could tell in that moment that Luz had realized it too. For a split second, Boscha had turned her gaze onto Amity, smirked like a child who’d gotten a knife for Christmas, and wiped it off of her desk as she turned her calm, burning gaze back towards Luz.
Willow had turned back to look at Amity but froze the second she saw the look on Amity and Luz’s faces. She opened her mouth to speak but Mr. Bump beat her to it.
“Ms. Park, eyes up front if you please.” None the wiser to the psychological battle occurring in the back corner of the classroom.
Willow gave Amity one last worried glance before swallowing. “Yes, Mr. Mump,” she said softly as she turned back to face the front of the room. Luz didn’t flinch at the sound of Willow’s voice. Amity didn’t think she’d heard it at all.
Amity could practically see the anxiety shedding off of Luz by the time the bell finally rang and was thankful that she didn’t need to stop Boscha from following Luz out the door. At the same time though, that meant that whatever Boscha was planning in retaliation wasn’t going to be happening right away. Amity thought back to when she used to play soccer and Boscha had been pushed around on the field. She’d always had two ways of going about getting back at the other person. She either did it immediately, striking hard and fast and taking the penalty when or if the referee was even looking; or she’d wait, figure out the perfect time, the perfect opening, the perfect excuse to do the most damage with the least risk. Amity had once witnessed Boscha somehow break a girl’s leg without anyone else noticing and got away with it by threatening the girl further as she carried her off the field under the guise of helping. She felt her blood running cold as she recognised the smirk from a few minutes ago as the same one Boscha had flashed her before she twisted that poor girl’s leg.
Boscha didn’t spare Amity another glance as she calmly strutted out of the classroom but Amity wasn’t about to just let her walk away. She marched out of the classroom on Boscha’s heels and pushed her to the other side of the hallway so that they would be out of the way of traffic and got in close so that the girl wouldn’t be able to leave, not that Boscha seemed to have the intention of going anywhere. The taller girl seemed completely unbothered by the green haired girl glaring up at her, calmly keeping her attention on whatever app she was scrolling through on her phone.
“Boscha,” her voice was almost a growl as she confronted the root of everything that had been wrong with this school year. “I don’t care about whatever chip on your shoulder you may have that makes you think that you have a right to be so terrible but it ends now.” Amity’s anger only grew as Boscha’s focus was still solely on her phone, “I swear to god, if you lay a single finger on-”
“I like you!” Amity froze mid sentence as her own voice came out of Bocha’s phone and the blood drained from her face as Boscha finally looked her in the eye with a horrifyingly knowing look as the recording continued. “ I really, really like you, Luz.”
“‘I like your laugh, and your jokes, and the way you talk about the things that you like’” Boscha spoke in unison with the recording of Amity from that second day back at school before hitting the pause button and tilting her head with a sly smile pasted over her face. “Do I need to go on?”
“Where did you get that?” Amity’s voice had gone from a growl to nearly horse in the span of a moment.
Boscha dangled the phone in front of Amity’s face, allowing her to catch a glimpse of the video that coincided with the voice she’d just heard. “You were acting weird for months, so I figured I’d do some sleuthing.” She heaved a mock sigh of disappointment, “Little did I know, I would discover that, what was supposed to be one of the best schools in the state, was harboring not one but two dykes, and even worse, the other one rejected you.”
Amity felt her face grow hot and could hear her heart pumping blood through her ears. She swiped at the phone and surprisingly, Boscha let her snatch it but before Amity could hit the delete button Boscha spoke again. “I have an extra copy on my home computer and another on a flash drive.”
Her breathing was coming short and fast as Amity stared at the phone gripped in her hand. Her sobbing face clearly visible through whatever angle Boscha had managed to snag the video from while staying hidden. She forced herself to try to swallow the lump in her throat though it did nothing to help. “What do you want from me?” Her voice was rough, and her stomach rolled as Boscha’s smirk widened into a sneer.
“Simple,” the taller girl leaned down, more than close enough to see that Amity had begun to tremble. “I want you to let it go.” Boscha took a step forward, forcing Amity to back away. “I want you to walk away, to stop thinking that you can change any of this, and for you to go back to doing what’s best for everyone, and ignore it.” She calmly removed her phone from Amity’s hand. “I can’t hurt you, you’re too high up in spite of the company you keep. Be grateful for that.” She dusted her phone off and tucked it back into her pocket. “That doesn’t mean I can’t tell your parents that I’m ‘concerned about my best friend’s recent behavior.’” Amity felt herself freeze in place as Boscha placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed with a grip like iron. “So bug off.”
With that Boscha turned to walk toward her next class. The bell had long since rung for the start of the next period, but Amity remained frozen in place until the teacher on hallway duty came by and snapped her out of her thoughts.
Without responding to the teacher, Amity turned on her heel and marched down the hallway to the nearest bathroom. She knew what was coming and thankfully was able to lock herself in the handicap stall before collapsing into the corner and breaking completely.
No audible sobs got past the hand she had firmly pressed to her mouth but that didn’t stop her unstable breath from escaping as tears ran from her eyes. Her heartbeat was too loud, her chest hurt too much, her stomach had too many knots in it, and she couldn’t do anything about it.
Amity had no idea how long she had been sitting on the disgusting bathroom floor, hugging her knees to her chest, desperately trying to get a grip over herself when she was interrupted by a knock on the door to her stall. She hadn’t even heard the bathroom door open but she knew that there were other free stalls and was prepared to scream at whoever the hell it was for them to use one of them when the person spoke.
“Amity?” Willow.
Amity’s unstable breathing halted in place at the sound of the other girl’s voice.
“Can I come in please?”
Yes. No. Amity didn’t know, and she wouldn’t have been able to bring herself to speak even if she did. Her lungs screamed and she gasped another shaky breath.
“Okay, Amity, I’m coming in.” Willow knew from experience that when it was this bad, Amity wouldn’t be able to open the bathroom door so instead of waiting for her to do so, Willow got down to the floor and slid herself underneath the door to the stall. Amity hiccupped as a memory from the last school year flashed through her mind, when Willow had found her like this after a bad test grade and had helped her through it despite how awful she had been to her before. They’d come so far since then and yet Amity was still in the same exact place she’d been in before.
“Amity,” Willow’s calming and focused voice got her out of her thoughts and Amity already knew what Willow was going to have her do. The same as the last time. Without a word, Amity let Willow gently adjust her feet so that they were flat against the ground and took her hands so that they were out in front of her instead of gripping her clothes.
“Squeeze your hands. Squeeze your arms. Deep breath. And relax…” And then she repeated. Amity followed Willow’s instructions the same way she had a year ago and with every round, she felt her breathing and heartbeat steady out a little more until she could finally relax fully and slumped against the wall of the bathroom.
“Thank you.” Her voice was raw from crying but Willow didn’t seem to mind. The other girl slid beside her on the wall and waited until Amity was ready to speak. “Don’t you have a class to be in or something?”
“This was more important.” The two of them let that statement hang in the air for a while before Willow spoke up again. “I take it your and Boscha’s conversation didn’t go all that great?”
Amity sniffled, her eyes squeezed shut, and simply shook her head. Willow nodded understandingly and rubbed circles on her back.
“Amity?” She opened her eyes in response to her name, they still stung from the tears. “You, me, and Gus are going to go online tonight.”
She shook her head hard. “We can’t, I… I don’t want to get any farther without Luz, it wouldn’t be fair to her.”
“Then we won’t play that game,” Willow said unwaveringly. “There’s a million other video games we can play, and besides, you’re not the only one who needs this.” Willow pulled Amity into a hug and squeezed with just enough pressure to make it feel comforting instead of smothering like it sometimes felt when she would get to this state and Willow knew that. “This has been really hard for all of us. Please believe me when I say we all need this.”
Amity sniffled one more time before nodding into Willow’s shoulder. “Okay.”