Everywhere Everything Everyone by Katy Warner

Author:Katy Warner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Hardie Grant Children's Publishing
Published: 2019-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

I was late. Of course.

Last time I’d stood out the front of school, Z had been right next to me. The school looked exactly the same now as it had then. I don’t know why I’d expected it to be different. Probably because everything else in my life was. It felt strange to stare at something so familiar.

I wanted to talk to Beth about it. Which was weird cos I never wanted to talk to her. But now I had a list of things I needed to figure out. Like, how was I going to survive this? And, what is a Processing Centre? And, can you get a message to my mum? And, how can I feel so lonely and sad but also be sort-of-maybe-possibly falling in love? I imagined her not wanting to give me answers and instead making me do annoying exercises to figure it out for myself. But this time, I would do the exercises and find the answers. I had to.

The school corridors were quiet. Too quiet. I wondered (actually, I wished and hoped) if perhaps we weren’t meant to be back at school yet. If we had the date wrong. I made it to Beth’s office without one teacher seeing me and knocked at her door and waited. She had a bright poster stuck on the door that said: All feelings are OK, it’s what you do with them that matters. I hated that poster.

A man stood where Beth was supposed to be. Tall. Bald. Pale. With glasses that made his eyes look huge. I hated him the moment I saw him. He frowned at me.

‘Come in,’ he said, and held the door open a little wider.

I didn’t want to come in but there was something about him that made me think I didn’t have a choice.

There were people in Beth’s office, but none of them were Beth. One sat at her computer and scrolled through the screen. Others went through the endless paperwork that filled her drawers and filing cabinets. Pages and pages of scribbled notes. I knew there had to be a file or three of notes about me.

‘Sit,’ the bald man said. I sat. ‘Name?’

I told him. And someone shoved some files into his hands. My files. He flicked through them as if I wasn’t even there. Every now and then he made this hmm noise and then kept scanning the pages Beth had written about me. Those notes were private. Personal. My face grew hot. He put the papers down and stared at me. It felt like he could see right through me. Through my clothes. My skin. And into me. I wanted to rip his stupid, ugly glasses off his stupid, ugly face and smash them into pieces. He’d just read about my impulse control issues and meltdowns and physical violence. He should be ready for it.

I stood up quickly.

‘Sit,’ he said.

‘Why?’ I said. It felt like the office was pulsating and moving and the air was thick and I wanted to get out.

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