Free I Am Her Revenge by Meredith Moore

room, I curl up in a blanket on my bed and write a quick email to Mother, telling her that I got closer to Ben while implementing my desirable and intriguing outsider status. I recount the scenes from the literary magazine meeting and dinner the night before and hope that will be enough. I close the laptop before I can read her reply and take out a notebook.
    Mother sent several notebooks along with my textbooks so that I could take notes, or at least pretend to, in class, but I’ll appropriate one as a sketchbook. My fingers itch as soon as I touch the paper, and when I find a pencil, I let it fly across the page. I’m sketching my cottage, my new refuge, so that when I can’t visit it, at least I can see it. I can see the rough wooden walls, the wide hearthside, the bit of remaining roof that shelters me from the rain. It’s different from my usual drawings, the ones that show a harsh, cruel world—the world as it truly is.
    I keep going, losing myself in these drawings, sketching one of the trees I have seen clinging to the land. And then I sketch Ben. I look for the arrogant features in his face, drawing the enemy as I need to see him. I want to draw Arthur. But I don’t. I can’t quite capture him yet. He’s too unfamiliar, too wild. Instead, I draw an abstract of him, a figure bearing down on the viewer, blocking the way. He’s a force trying to stop me, and that’s how I need to think of him.
    The Arthur I used to know was the one person who knew about my art, and he would write poems to go along with my drawings. Ekphrasis, he called it, poetry to echo the beauty of visual art. His poems were like bursts of fresh air in the stillness. We would hide away and spend hours trading sketches and poems, making our own conversation, responding to each other’s creativity. He made my art matter.
    I’m so wrapped up in thinking about the way things used to be between us that I don’t even notice when Claire comes in.
    “Thank goodness you’re all right!” she yells, startling the pencil from my grasp. “Where’d you go?”
    She’s standing over me, glancing down curiously at my sketchbook. I cover the drawing of Ben’s conceited face with my hand, but I’m not quick enough. I see a flash of recognition in her eyes.
    She looks up to meet my gaze, and I shake my head, silently begging her not to say anything. She doesn’t. She just waits for an answer to her initial question.
    I tell her what I told Harriford about my getting lost in the moors.
    “Are you okay?” she asks, genuinely concerned. Her forehead wrinkles as she peers down at me.
    I nod. “I’m fine. Just stupid, that’s all.”
    She looks like she wants to keep lecturing me, but she keeps her mouth shut. Instead, she hands me a small package wrapped in napkins. “I thought you might be hungry.”
    She’s made me a sandwich, sliced chicken breast and cheese on thick wheat bread. My stomach rumbles, and I look up at her with what I hope is a thankful expression. “This is perfect,” I say before tearing into it, barely chewing before I swallow.
    Claire looks pleased as she settles down at her desk. I don’t understand this girl. But I begin to think that if I had been raised as a normal human being, if I wasn’t a weapon constantly aimed at others, I would truly want her to be my friend.



CHAPTER 7
    On Sundays we’re allowed to go into town, and I’m the first one in line for the shuttle. Loworth, the nearest village, is a ten-minute drive, and as soon as I step off the bus onto a muddy sidewalk, I know there won’t be much here for me.
    The village is only a small collection of short stone buildings, little more than an intersection of two streets. There are a few generic shops, a pub, and a post office. All of the buildings are frighteningly close to the road, and as I walk past what must be a couple of apartment buildings, I can see right into the windows, where one family is gathered around a kitchen table and one man watches a