“Clean it up.”

I lift my hands in front of me. “I don’t have⁠—”

“With this.”

He holds a toothbrush. Whose is this? It’s been used—I can tell that from how the bristles are sticking out. It’s not mine. I thought I was used to the horrible things they did here, but my stomach clenches.

I take the toothbrush.

It’s dry, not wet, so he didn’t pull this out of someone’s mouth.

“Get down on your knees.”

I get down on my knees at the edge of the mess. “I don’t have anything to⁠—”

“Start scrubbing.”

The dry toothbrush can’t clean the blood and dirt off concrete but I do as I’m told. “Spit,” he orders and I do. It doesn’t take long for my knees to ache from my position on the floor. When I try to balance on my heels, Mr. Jay barks at me to get back on my knees.

He tells me how worthless I am. But I already knew he would say things like that. It means nothing now. His opinion is shit.

Even through my pants, my knees hurt like the skin is being cut.

Both my knees will be bruised and raw by the time he lets me out of here. That’s what always happens. That’s probably why there are concrete floors and no rugs anywhere. Students spend too much time on their knees. Rugs would only make that easier, and we’re not here for things to be easy.

My knuckles get scraped, too. My hand is cramped around the toothbrush when a bucket thuds down next to me.

“Keep going. And this time, use the soap.”

I answer diligently, “Yes, sir.”

The warm, soapy water does a better job on the filth, but all I have is a toothbrush. I don’t have a mop or even a rag, so the water just gets dirty and red and collects in a pool on the floor. I tried my best to push it toward the drain with the toothbrush. The floor isn’t slanted like it normally would be in a room with a drain, so I have to do it one toothbrush-sweep at a time.

I stop thinking about how long it will take. I’ll be in here as long as Mr. Jay wants me to be. The floor and the mess are just his excuses. I could probably clean it until it was spotless, and he’d walk across it again with mud on his shoes just so I had to start over.

I go through the alphabet while I scrub, then count to a hundred. I try to remember science facts I learned in school. In my real school, not this one—I don’t think I’ve ever learned anything here except cruelty.

But then I think of him. Of a different life where we’re together and there’s no pain.