I wiped the beads of water dripping from my hair down to my face. In a moment of desperation, I blamed my eyes. I assumed they might be blurry from the water and didn't see the towel hanging on the hook.
'Maybe it fell off?' I thought.
But it didn't have a reason to fall off.
I knew that I placed it in a way that it wouldn't. Furthermore, to debunk my thoughts, the towel was nowhere to be seen on the tiles of the communal shower room in case it did fall from its hanger.
My stomach lurched. I poked my head outside the shower curtains and looked at the sink, only to see that my clothes weren't there either.
This can't be happening.
I felt the blood draining from my face. This was one of those moments when I thought I wasn't happy that my overthinking had become a reality.
"Look at her face!"
My head quickly spun around to look at the source of the voice.
It was Boggart and her minions, laughing as their phones were out and ready to take a picture or video of my naked form. The shower curtain covered my body, so they could only see my head popping out of the shower room.
Immediately, I pulled her head back inside, not wanting them to see how much she was shaking because of intense feelings of anger and embarrassment.
"Whatchu doin', Vermillion?" Boggart asked in a sing-song voice. "Can't show yourself?"
"I wonder why?" Peggie placed her hand on her chest, feigning ignorance. "Oh, yeah! It's because you're naked!"
They burst out in sniggers, feeling schadenfreude at my misfortune.
I sat behind the shower curtains, hiding myself from their condemnatory eyes.
'What should I do?'
I was about to cry. No, I was already crying and was merely suppressing my sobs.
"You could just sit here forever until they go away." Death suggested, getting my attention from the pitiful sight before us. "It's morning. They're hungry. Of course, they'll leave if you wait it out."
"But that girl!" I argued, about to cry myself. The secondhand embarrassment from this memory made me feel all sorts of emotions. "She had it out for me since I confessed to Crash."
Even though the shower curtain was a barrier between me, Boggart, and her friends, I could hear them snickering behind the curtains like they were plotting her next move when I hadn't done anything to her.
It's not like I stole Boggart's boyfriend! I didn't even know that Crash had a girlfriend in the first place. If I did, I wouldn't have bothered to confess at all.
"But alas, middle school girls were unforgiving and in their worst stage of growing up." Death commented, shaking his head in pity for young me's adversity. "I wish I could help you, but we're simply bystanders in the In-Between, watching your memories unravel before us."
"I know that..." I said through gritted teeth, my hands balling into tight fists. I could feel my nails digging deep into my palms. "But it still makes me angry that I was treated this way when I was young!"
"Why did this happen?" The younger me finally sobbed, hugging my naked body as I continued to squat on the tiled floor of the shower room. "Why are bad things happening to me? I did all I could to please the people around me, yet I still get hated…"
"This was one of the first instances when you wanted to die." Death said it in such a low voice that I barely heard him.
But I didn't need to hear him say what he said. As we were watching this memory, I felt a strong sense of dread, pity, shame, and other feelings whirling inside my chest.
Bullying is indeed a traumatic experience. People who say you should forgive your bullies and accept that it's part of childhood are a bunch of imbeciles. At the young age of fourteen years old, the thought of dying entered my mind.
But the difference between the Evangeline of the past and the Evangeline now was that the past me still had a fire in my heart.
A few minutes later, I inhaled deeply, allowing cold air to enter my system. I needed to calm down. I won't give my bullies the chance to rejoice at my moment of weakness. I knew that Dad wouldn't want me to be a weakling.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
By now, I had stopped crying. The laughter from the other side of the room ceased. They sounded surprised that the pitiful me could calm down shortly.
I pulled the curtain, revealing my naked (and censored) body to my bullies. Four girls were before me: Boggart, Bob, Dick, and Peggie. They were all prepared with their phones to destroy my reputation.
"There she is!" Boggart pointed at me. "Quick, take a picture!"
"No way!" Bob guffawed until tears were forming in her eyes.
"Quick!" Dick shouted. "Send it to—"
Before Dick could finish her sentence, I slapped Dick's phone from her hand. The poor cellular device landed on the slightly wet surface of the dressing room. I didn't notice it back then, but now that she was on the sidelines, she might have heard it make a cracking sound.
"Hey!" Dick sneered at me and was about to pick up her phone when she heard several phones dropping on the ground.
I didn't care anymore. I kicked their phones away until they were in the farthest corner of the dressing room.
"What's your problem?!" Peggie shouted.
"What's my problem?" My voice was seething in anger. "Really? You're asking me that?"
They all looked taken aback by my booming voice. For the few people who knew me, my trademark voice was so small and soft-spoken that they often compared me to a mouse. But this time, my voice was deep and angry.
"Where are my clothes?" I demanded.
Boggart pointed to her left. I followed her hand but was met with a slap from that direction.
"Oops." Boggart taunted. "Sorry. Not there."
I glared at her and then glanced at the others. At that moment, I wasn't sure what the name of that specific minion was, but I saw her trying to pick up their phones.
I returned my gaze to Boggart.
I gave her a sweet smile before giving her the strongest punch in the face.
Boggart fell to the ground like a rag doll, and the lights were knocked out of her. Her minions screamed, and Bob (she wasn't sure) tried to go to Boggart, but I stopped her.
"B*tch, what are you—"
I grabbed her by the hair and rammed her forehead to Bob's. Bob made the weirdest sound I had ever heard.
If she weren't so angry, she would've laughed.
But she was.
So when Bob staggered back a few steps away, I took hold of her and head-butted her again. This time, she fell to the ground.
"I'll ask again." I turned her eyes to the other menaces, smiling grimly at them. "Where are my clothes?"
The two other girls—Dick and Peggie—started crying. Before I could do more damage, the teacher arrived and asked what the hell was going on and why I was butt naked.
"To cut a long story short," I cleared my throat, the memory ending and melting from our sight. "We almost didn't graduate because of what happened.
"Thankfully, another classmate heard Boggart's sinister plan and told the teachers I was probably acting in self-defense, so I didn't get the harsher punishment."
Death didn't know how to react. So, instead, he laughed so hard that he fell to the ground, slapping the pitch-dark floor with his hand.
"What the fuck did I just witness?"
"I don't know myself," I answered, shrugging.
It was odd how the younger me was stronger than the current me because I now had a fire that was fully extinguished.