Wildlings

30: Educate Yourself

The first thing Sannah remembered when she woke up was her happiness. She was cold, and shifted on the blanket to bury herself into Saint. He wasn't there. He was gone.

She sat up, looking around, wild eyed. The warehouse was empty. The blinds were open on a small high window, and weak sunlight filtered in.

"Saint?" she said, uncertainly. The cavernous room echoed his absence back to her. She pulled on her clothes as quickly as she could, her breath jagged, and searched for some sign of him. There was no note, nothing. No sign of his existence.

What had she done? Fear and dread curdled in Sannah's stomach. She touched herself gently between the legs. She felt delicate and inflamed. She'd slept with him, and it was wonderful, but also terrible. He was in her now, tied around her guts, soaking her brain, saturating her flesh. Her tang for him was more powerful than she was, by an order of magnitude. She was just a conduit for her feeling for Saint. She felt like she was caught in the current of a fast-flowing river.

She couldn't escape. But it was wrong, all wrong, and she wanted to. This was bad. She was bad. Everything Lox had accused her of was true now, even if it wasn't true then, and timing didn't matter, not really.

She'd left the Metropol early to find Saint, when if she stayed she could have made all her digits and even been on her way to Judit already. She'd thrown herself at him. She'd spent all night coming on to different men, getting naked, tanging them up, then just given herself, begging, to some tilted stranger. She was a selfish sluttish bedswerver, just like her mum. She couldn't escape it. It was who she was. And it was him, him, that brought it all out.

A parade of unwelcome thoughts marched sombre in Sannah's mind. He does this. You're not different, so don't think you are. Feona, Carin. A threesome. A monster in bed. Screaming behind a bin.

The images became more random, but the emotion was the same, all mixed up, all as one. Her mum, her mum's many boyfriends. The Devil, his silky bed, on her trip to the chang house. The eyes of that girl in his room. Saint, the one who took her there. Saint, seeming like the Devil when she was under the chang. He was a demon, his name was a lie. He'd done this to her. Led her astray.

He's only ever spoken to me when he's tilted, Sannah realised. His meagre, piecemeal companionship only ever granted when he was out of his mind. The rest of the time he acted like she didn't exist. She'd thrown herself at him last night, without him ever giving any indication at all that he had feelings for her. Of course he hadn't pushed her away, what man would say no to a no-strings rub when it's handed to him on a plate?

She'd thought she felt a connection to his art—but that was meaningless. Just because it meant something to her, why would that mean she meant something to him? All that crank fancy about moths and hearts and fate was wild imagination, nothing but coincidence. Her 'love' was based on a mirage, the delusions of loneliness and cabin-fever. It was an illness, out of control.

Sannah thought about Dierdra's words, God knows what she's got, and felt sick. The fact he'd slept with Rade, with skit-knows who else. Her first time, and so squalid: a quick rub in a derelict building with a bedswerving chang-head. He had used a condom—no thanks to me, Sannah chastised herself bitterly, I would have done it without—but still. The seediness of her life now, of who she was, disgusted her.

What was she going to do? She couldn't go back to the flat. She couldn't see him there, with his horrific friends. But where else could she go? She had no-one to help her at all. The only person who'd been even remotely friendly to her was Dierdra.

Could she? She thought for a moment. It was a huge imposition, way too much to ask from someone she barely knew. Back at school, Sannah would have rather died than ask one of the other students if she could do something as insignificant as plug into their screen charger.