Olivia’s breath started coming in ragged gasps and she leaned her hands on the end of her bed. She tried to breathe in deeply, but her lungs felt squashed, as they had that night. Shaking, she stood up and felt the immediate head rush. She wondered when she had last eaten or drank anything. It felt like days. Wren. His name slammed into her with force. He had been trying to help her. Pieces were slotting into place and with each piece, she became more frightened.

Justin.

She saw him, his image blurry in the low light, but she’d recognize that voice anywhere. You little fucker! I’m gonna fuck you up, then I’m gonna fuck your girl!

Wren. The black eye, the cut lip. He’d tried to help. He’d failed.

Olivia shed her clothes in her bedroom, not looking at herself in the full-length mirror, not wanting to be confronted by the haunted look in her eyes that she knew was there, before returning to the bathroom. Pillar and tea-light candles decorated the room, their fragrance perfuming the air. She pulled the matches out of the bottom shelf of the cupboard, lighting one candle at a time, the little flames flickering to life, beginning to melt the wax. She watched the growing swirls, the smell of roses and vanilla rising up to meet her. Soon they would all be ablaze, glowing heartily in the small bathroom. She had spent many hours in here since they arrived, just relaxing in the bath, sometimes reading, sometimes just marveling at how the world had seemed to turn right-side up here: changing towns, schools and meeting Wren.

Wren.

Olivia loved him, didn’t she? She wrote it in her diary often enough to believe that it was true. The water gushed from the tap, hot; the large gold-gilded mirror steamed up, finally obscuring the animalistic, feral look in her eyes. When the bath was almost full, she reached her hand into the very back of the cupboard, pulling something out. Something supposed to be hidden, something she had forgotten about but then found in the move.

Her hand tightened around a bottle of sleeping tablets. Olivia reached back in and grabbed a second bottle – the anti-anxiety medication that her previous doctor had given her to cope with the bullying at her old school. She’d never taken any, so thirty little white tablets rolled around when she shook her hand. Her dad probably didn’t know where the originally prescribed supply was kept, let alone know that there was more medication at her disposal.

Olivia took the glass beside the tap, filling it to the brim with water. She had to let the tap run for a bit until the water cooled down. She put the glass beside the bottles. Sixty tablets. A couple of handfuls and the pain would end. No dad to save her this time.