avoidin' interaction 'cause i just wanna get away (and maybe you got a full plate)
Rio was putting two and two together.
Agatha could see the gears turning.
Her head cocked to the side for a moment, jaw working in thought. Then that look disappeared, and she went back to chatting with Jen.
Agatha bit her lip and silently promised she would never let it happen again.
* * *
Bruises are hard to hide.
Scars are hard to hide.
Makeup gets the job done.
Her mother’s favorite targets weren’t her face, so most of her concealer happened to be on her torso or legs. Sometimes her arms. Sometimes, it was the back of her head, but you couldn’t fix that with makeup.
It just happened.
She happened to avoid shorts and T-shirts. She happened to prefer longer sleeves and jeans or leggings.
If anyone asked, she tripped in the hallway. She hit her elbow on a locker. She knocked her knee into a bar stool.
The composed, meticulous Agatha Harkness was secretly clumsy. That’s what she let her friends believe. She hid the screams, the cries, the sobs behind every mark on her skin.
She hid the pain.
* * *
She sighed. Dropped the blade. Stared at her now-red wrist.
Cried.
Why was she like this?
She grabbed gauze from the closet and got to work.
* * *
She showed up to school the next day with an oversized sweater with extra-long sleeves. In biology, she reached for a pencil, and Rio saw the gauze. Asked what was up.
It was from volleyball, she said. Her wrists just hurt from the ball.
Rio seemed to believe it.
Everyone did.
* * *
Agatha liked school better now.
Rio was there for her now.
She was competent enough to get a girlfriend.
Suck it, Evanora.
Their relationship was new, but old.
Friends from forever to now, lovers from now to forever.
Hopefully.
They held hands under the lunch table, giggled together in history, waited by each other’s lockers; it was all Agatha had dreamed of for the last year.
She was three months clean now.
Rio was there.
If Rio was there, Agatha was okay.
And if Agatha wasn’t, Rio was still there.
* * *
But the happiness had to be balanced.
Evanora was worse.
Stricter.
Harsher.
Angrier.
Agatha was her punching bag.
Her daughter, whom she claimed to love, was her personal punching bag.
But Agatha had stopped considering herself Evanora’s daughter a while back.
Now she simply lived with her, an object for Evanora to destroy.
Now she simply lived through her worst horrors.
* * *
On March 13th, Evanora was furious.
Agatha wasn’t sure at what exactly.
All she knew was she was expected to be in her room.
All she knew was that she’d be limping the next day.
* * *
On March 14, Agatha took the bus to school.
She had probably emptied her concealer and took Tylenol to deal with her unbearable pain.
Rio had been suspicious for months now, but today she looked at Agatha in a way that almost made her want to crawl into Rio’s arms and cry.
Tell her everything.
But it wasn’t Rio’s problem.
Agatha was the incompetent one.
Agatha was the one being punished.
Agatha was the one who deserved this.
Rio had no part in this. She didn’t need to be roped in.
Rio saw a giant bruise blossoming above Agatha’s hip when she reached for something across the lunch table.
Rio was putting two and two together.
Agatha could see the gears turning.
Her head cocked to the side for a moment, her jaw working in thought. Then that look disappeared, and she went back to chatting with Jen.
Agatha bit her lip and silently promised she would never let it happen again.
She cleared her throat and smiled the best she could.