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Back The Things We Don't See Save as PDF
Chapters (45)
  1. TITLE PAGE
  2. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  3. PART ONE: Who is She if Not Everyone Else’s?
  4. CHAPTER 1
  5. CHAPTER 2
  6. CHAPTER 3
  7. CHAPTER 4
  8. CHAPTER 5
  9. CHAPTER 6
  10. CHAPTER 7
  11. CHAPTER 8
  12. PART TWO: Take the Bullet Out
  13. CHAPTER 9
  14. CHAPTER 10
  15. CHAPTER 11
  16. CHAPTER 12
  17. CHAPTER 13
  18. CHAPTER 14
  19. CHAPTER 15
  20. CHAPTER 16
  21. CHAPTER 17
  22. CHAPTER 18
  23. CHAPTER 19
  24. CHAPTER 20
  25. CHAPTER 21
  26. CHAPTER 22
  27. CHAPTER 23
  28. CHAPTER 24
  29. CHAPTER 25
  30. CHAPTER 26
  31. CHAPTER 27
  32. CHAPTER 28
  33. PART THREE: Orion Waves
  34. CHAPTER 29
  35. CHAPTER 30
  36. CHAPTER 31
  37. CHAPTER 32
  38. CHAPTER 33
  39. CHAPTER 34
  40. CHAPTER 35
  41. CHAPTER 36
  42. CHAPTER 37
  43. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  44. AUTHOR INTERVIEW
  45. COPYRIGHT

I turn on my heels and stomp off in the direction of the dorms, seething, new barbs slashing my insides. What Peyton doesn’t understand is that the comparison doesn’t work. Trauma is never benign, never simply sitting there. If Roxy’s Sandown’s bullet, then she’s leaking fatal quantities of lead. Even if she weren’t, is that really any better? To leave the bullet? Spend the rest of your life walking around tacked by that unnatural metal mass, its origins in violence, and know it’s there forever and there’s nothing you can do about it? A symptomless infection changing you from the inside. Changing you. There’d be nothing more satisfying than to see that alien object finally emerge, red and wet and glistening. Even if its removal were a terrible risk. Even if you might rupture.

I’m dizzy with horror at the thought of Celeste having left an actual, physical thing inside me – how I’d revel in tearing it out with my fingernails, with my teeth.

Take the bullet out. That’s what I’d want. Gouge the flesh, if necessary. Even if, maybe, there’s nothing left of me by the end.

Take the bullet out.

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 19

SUNDAY 6 JUNE

Work’s busy today, packed with the hangover crowd, which I’m sort of grateful for – I don’t feel like thinking. My mind keeps flicking back to Peyton despite this. She was friendly enough in the morning but I could tell she’d been especially hurt by last night, slinking through the dorm with a sort of quiet and pathetic resignation, changing in the bathroom instead of her usual move of making a point of doing it in front of me.

Peyton had said it herself: she doesn’t even know me. But if she doesn’t know me, she certainly doesn’t know Ellis either, or what’s best for him, or for this place. Faux-ethical, holier-than-thou posturing, and for what? So she can feel like she knew best all along? So she can pretend that this whole place isn’t fracturing underneath something more sinister than she could ever even conceive of?

I refuse to waste time on her.

What does matter is that whoever left that note all those years ago could still be here on Sandown Bay.

I have my guard up the whole day, wondering if Sylvia mentioned to Mary Anne what had happened, but she doesn’t seem any the wiser, her usual grumpy detachment plastered on her face; on good form, the only interaction we have is when she shouts at me after I get distracted and burn a round of toast.