Mine First

by A. J. Marchant

  Heat rose in her cheeks when she thought about what happened later that night, the next morning and everything after. And then anger took over, marvelling at the blundering idiot she’d been for letting it get this far.

  Lori wandered in a few steps and then jumped at a knock, spinning around to the pinched face of a faculty administrator peeking around the door. ‘Dean DeLuca wants to see you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now.’

  Any other time, Lori would have asked what it was about. Considering her office floor and its new wall decorations, it was obvious. She dumped her bag and slumped into her chair, delaying the confrontation, the explaining and grovelling she’d have to do.

  The only surface free from photos was the window. Outside, a bunch of students were playing rugby with a ball made of snow. One of them made a flying tackle, and the ball disintegrated in a white explosion. The guy on the ground rolled over onto his back and made a snow angel, his whole body squirming with silent laughter.

  Still not ready, Lori spun up and out of her chair, leaving the door wide open, the photos fluttering in her wake. ‘Time to face the music.’

  53

  RETURNING FROM THE Dean’s office, Lori paused outside her now closed door. She heard a shuffling of papers, a grunt and then something being knocked to the floor. She gave the door a hard push. It bounced off the wall with a bang, startling a person standing with one foot on a wheelie chair, the other on the edge of a filing cabinet. They both froze. A piece of paper floated down to the ground. And Lori’s heart beat again. It was only Em.

  ‘Hey. You seen this? Addy’s outdone herself with the creepy this time.’ Em was taking down the photos, working at each one so carefully and peeling the tape so slowly, as if the whole room was a bomb about to explode.

  Too late, Lori thought, as she sank into the chair she normally offered her students. She’d never sat on this side of her desk before and it felt weird, wrong. ‘Why’re you doing that?’

  Without stopping, Em glanced over her shoulder. ‘Cos I’m trying to be helpful.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bother.’

  Em had a photo halfway off the wall, but she stopped and turned, awkwardly trying to keep her balance. The photo slowly folded down, coming to rest against the back of Em’s head as she questioned Lori with a silent raise of her eyebrow.

  ‘They fired me.’ Lori prodded at the pile of photos Em had been collecting on her desk and watched as they fanned out in front of her, every moment of bad judgment on display. ‘I guess there’s a site outing teacher-student relationships.’

  ‘What? No way.’ All care abandoned, Em yanked the photo. Each taped corner took a satisfying patch of paint with it. ‘Pretty sure they can’t fire you with only that as proof. Can’t believe everything you see on social media…’

  ‘It was backed by a formal report of misconduct. There’s no coming back from that, Em.’

  Em dropped another stack of photos on the pile, their thud sending the others skittering further over the surface. She sat down in Lori’s chair and they stared at each other across her desk. The desk, Lori thought. Not her desk anymore. Not her chair, not her office.

  ‘What’re you gonna do?’

  ‘It’s just a job, right?’ Lori smiled, trying to look unfazed, hoping it sounded rhetorical. In truth, she was desperate for Em to reassure her it really was just a job, no big deal, no big loss. She hadn’t even told her the worst part yet, the big deal, the big loss. It spilled out, short and clipped. ‘They kicked me off the clinic.’

  ‘Shit, Lori. I’m sorry. I know how much that place meant to you—’

  Sympathy wouldn’t help, so Lori waved it off, tugging on her earlobe. ‘You haven’t said it yet.’

  ‘What? That I told you so? Warned you not to do exactly what you did, anyway? That Addison Brooke is batshit crazy?’ Em coughed up a laugh, ‘Too late now.’

  Em stood, ripping photos off the wall, scrunching and dumping them into the wastepaper basket. She shot one from across the room, but the normal gloating celebration went forgotten. Instead, she held her hands out in fists, tense and shaking. ‘I just wanna…’ It took a moment to recognise she was imagining throttling Addy’s neck.

  ‘Don’t do anything. Please. Don’t make it worse.’

  ‘You’re letting her get away with too much, Lori. Anyway, what were you thinking? Out in a public place like that.’ Em held a photo up, as if Lori wasn’t already aware of how stupid she’d been. ‘Where did she even get these?’

  ‘I don’t—’ Lori had been racking her brain, asking herself the same question the whole walk back.

  Only now it hit her. Folding her forward with her head in her hands, fingertips pressing into closed eyes. Lori couldn’t stop the groan, words mangled by her palms pressed into her cheeks. ‘My phone.’

  ‘What?’

  Anger at herself forced her to sit up, enunciating loud and clear. ‘She got them from my phone. My cloud storage. There was a notification about storage access a couple days ago but the thing has been playing up and I didn’t think anything of it.’

  Em opened her mouth, but Lori stood up. ‘Don’t say it. I know.’

  They spent the next few minutes in quiet work. Em pulled photos off the wall while Lori wandered the office, dumping the crumpled photos out of the wastepaper basket and onto the floor, gathering some of her stuff in it instead.

  Em broke the silence. ‘Have you talked to Marina yet?’

  Lori searched the floor for her bag and dug the photo out, passing it over. ‘Someone left it at my door.’

  Em studied it for a moment. ‘This is at that brunch, right? How’d Addy get this one? Not from your phone, surely.’

  ‘I don’t think it was Addy.’

  Em passed it back, puzzled. ‘Where’d it come from then?’

  ‘I have an idea of who, but it doesn’t matter… Marina. She saw it, saw the date… We talked, and I thought it was fine, I thought we were fine, that we’d talk more about it after she’d… Anyway, I came downstairs this morning to this and her house key on the kitchen bench, no Marina. I’ve been trying to call her but her phone is off or dead or she’s ignoring me…’

  Em went back to stripping photos off the wall with a sucking rip of tape and tearing corners. Lori stared down at the wastepaper basket full of her stuff, and then around the room at everything she was leaving behind. ‘Leave it. I wanna get outta here.’

  54

  WALKING THROUGH CAMPUS, Lori kept her head down and her focus on the wastepaper basket hugged to her chest, her bag banging against the back of her thigh.

  She didn’t stop until she was outside the gate, standing on the footpath. She looked back along the tree-lined path she’d walked most days. A lot of places had become home since she was a kid. But this place had been home the longest. And now she couldn’t believe she was no longer part of it.

  Behind the trees she spotted the front of the hall, the banner for the clinic draped across the entrance, and her heart sank. She wondered who would take over, hoping that they didn’t scrap it altogether. Maybe in time they’d let her come back, give her some minor role, or maybe she could be a volunteer—‘Dinner?’

  Lori turned, startled. She’d forgotten Em was standing next to her.

  ‘I don’t think I can face it.’

  ‘Okay. How about the trail run tomorrow? Marina might be there, you could talk to her?’

  If it wasn’t for the chance that Marina could show, she would have said no. But she nodded. ‘Yeah. Okay.’

  ‘Wanna come to mine tonight, hang out? Probably shouldn’t be alone, just in case Addy tries something.’

  But Lori was already moving away along the footpath. ‘I’ll be alright. I need to get my head together. And if Marina comes over, I wanna be there.’

  ‘She’s not coming back, Lori,’ Em argued bluntly.

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘Because the same thing happened with Lena.’ Em sounded so defeated, s
o sure.

  But Lori stood by her hope that Marina would show, calling back as she walked away. ‘Pick me up in the morning, okay?’

  55

  THE FIRST QUESTION Em asked when Lori got into the car was whether she’d heard from Marina. Lori used silence to give both an answer and an indication of her mood.

  Marina had been a no-show. No Addy either, not even to rub in her success at getting her fired. Beanie had made an appearance, purring outside the kitchen window. Lori had replaced the missing screws in the hinge and tightened the others, stopping him or anyone else from being able to push their way in. He’d sat on the windowsill, staring at her while she stared straight through him, until he’d abandoned hope of getting her attention and left.

  Lori had stared for hours at the photograph of her and Addy out on the balcony, trying to figure out if it was a warning or a threat.

  In hindsight, now that she’d lost her job, the photo seemed like a warning. She should have done something about it as soon as she saw it. But what, Lori didn’t know.

  Maybe it had been Addy who left the envelope and photo at her door, an attempt to sabotage her and Marina. If it was, then it worked. She’d ruined another good thing in Lori’s life. One thing she couldn’t figure out was how Addy got her hands on it? Maybe she’d gotten someone to take it for her?

  Or maybe it was just someone trying to warn her she needed to be more careful. If so, they were a little too late.

  And now here she was in the passenger seat, sleepless and mind-numb, Em prattling on in the background. But Lori wasn’t listening. She was staring out the window.

  The roads were quiet for a Saturday morning. Fog crept between houses, climbing tree trunks and curling around bare branches, hiding strangers walking the footpaths until they were suddenly right outside her window. It grew thicker the higher they went up the mountain.

  Lori sat up as they drove over the last rise into the carpark, searching the group gathered by the mouth of the trail.

  ‘Dammit.’

  Marina wasn’t there.

  Just Josie, waving as they drove past and pulled into a parking spot. Lori could still hear Josie’s voice, Dean DeLuca’s voice, as she read out the misconduct report. She could still see her face as they’d sat in silence, looking at each other over the desk spread out with copies of the photos, each waiting for the other to speak but neither knowing what to say. To remain professional, they had put aside their short personal history, but it still hung between them like a dark cloud. There was defeat in Josie’s eyes as she told Lori that, despite her own protestations to the board, the university had to let her go.

  Sitting in the parked car with its engine ticking as it cooled, Lori realised she’d overlooked an important detail. In her naïve hope that Marina would be there, she’d forgotten who made up most of the group; university staff.

  ‘She might just be late.’ Em squeezed Lori’s arm, but she hardly felt it through her layers.

  Bracing against the cold, Lori leant against the side of the car, keeping a desperate eye out for Marina. Em fussed around in the boot, organising her backpack and changing her shoes, her fingers working on the laces as fast as she could but her bare skin still turning pink and then red.

  Lori almost changed her mind, lost her nerve. But Em pointed out it’d be worse to wait in the car, that it would give people something more to talk about. So, Lori walked over with her.

  As they neared the group Lori felt the tension, the flicker of their gaze, heard the moments of halted conversation, only picked back up after they remembered what they were talking about.

  Even the people Lori didn’t know were trying hard not to look in her direction. She may as well have been standing there naked, trying to cover up her embarrassment and shame at the thought of them knowing everything.

  Making herself small, Lori stepped back from the group and sat at a picnic table with a view of the carpark entrance.

  56

  THE CARPARK HAD been ploughed clear, creating dunes of snow around the edges. Fog hung heavy in the forest, not venturing further than a few feet from the trees. There was hardly any snow on the ground underneath or around the trunks, most of it collecting on the canopy, sprays of white along the trail where it had fallen through, sifted by the branches and leaves.

  The final few runners arrived, minus Marina, and the group got smaller, partnering off and making their way along the trail.

  Lori motioned that she was fine for her to go, but Em hesitated, nodding at Josie to go on ahead and then walking over to the table. ‘Aren’t you gonna run? You’ll freeze just sitting here.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. I might just go for a walk soon.’

  Em seemed unsure about leaving her, but Lori nudged her. ‘Meet back in the carpark? If you beat me, I’ll let you buy me dinner.’

  Sealing the deal with a quick handshake, Em disappeared into the trees, along with the last of the group.

  Eyes heavy, Lori cradled her chin in her palm, scanning the names and dates and profanities scratched into the wooden table, lost in the memory of her own scarred dining table.

  She looked up at the crunch of tyres approaching. But it was only a carful of tourists, pulling up in the middle of the carpark before turning around and leaving without getting out.

  Accepting that Marina wouldn’t show, Lori dug her hands into her pockets and trudged toward the trail. She took little notice of her surroundings, mind blank and her eyes scanning the ground for her next step.

  Reaching the lookout, Lori paused, surprised at how she’d gotten there. She looked up the stone steps, half expecting to see Marina waiting for her at the top, like she had on the day they’d met. A shiver ran through her, and anger pushed her up the steps. A blanket of fog covered the view, mists of cloud blending and skipping past, obscuring the mountains and valleys below. It was impossible to see anything, so Lori made her way back down.

  Reversing the trail was disorientating. Lori could hardly believe she’d made her way to the lookout without getting lost. Drifts of snow had fallen from the trees and Lori lost the path for a minute, picking it up again in the leaf litter a little further on.

  She made her way slowly, losing and finding it again and again. The trail came to a bend and then disappeared. There was no snow or leaves covering it or branches cutting it off. The path just stopped, no obvious gaps between the trees and no sign of it starting again further on. Lori thought maybe she’d taken a wrong turn somewhere. She turned back and retraced her steps along the path, looking for a gap or a turn onto another trail.

  When she didn’t find any and when she didn’t end up back at the lookout, Lori couldn’t ignore the thought she’d been discounting as paranoia. She hadn’t gotten lost because of a lack of direction or awareness, but because someone had wanted her to get lost, and had made sure that she had. It could have been her growing anxiety or just her sleep-deprived brain playing tricks on her, but Lori could have sworn she felt someone watching, heard footsteps not far behind. It had to be Addy.

  57

  LORI SOFTENED HER step, choosing soft leaves over the crunch of the gravel trail, and then stopped. Nothing but the static of a winter forest. She moved again, suspicious of the echo underneath her own footsteps. She heard it again; a footstep behind her, a split second out of time with her own.

  She stopped, and Addy stopped. Moving again, the footsteps were louder. Lori stopped again, but this time Addy didn’t, only gaining pace, getting closer. When Lori started running, so did Addy.

  Ducking under branches, weaving between gnarled trunks that reached out with their roots, unseen until almost a moment too late. Icy water and snow fell down her collar and soaked through her clothes with each branch grazed.

  Each quick glance behind spurred her on further and faster; a patch of colour, too bright, not far behind, the blur of movement, a flash of black darting behind a tree and the forest growing still and quiet.

  After a quick change in direction followed by
another, Lori no longer knew where the path was, in what direction the carpark lay, or in which direction to go now that the footsteps had fallen silent.

  Paranoid that Addy was still following her, Lori slowed only enough to catch her breath, the cold air stinging. She wound her way along the side of the mountain, angling across and up with the hope she’d either stumble out into the carpark or somehow loose Addy, who was no longer bothering to hide the sound of her steps, still at a distance where Lori couldn’t see her.

  Again, knowing who it was, and not knowing what she would do, was enough to spur Lori on. Aware of the thickening fog, the diminishing light, she hurried blindly, climbing until she was halfway along a ledge, only to realise too late that boulders had tumbled down and wedged up in a pile, held there by a half broken chain-link fence installed to stop hikers from slipping off the edge. The boulders blocked the path.

  On one side of the ledge was a cliff face climbing straight up to another chain-link fence. Lori sidestepped carefully to see what the drop was like on the other side, testing the ground before she leaned, peering over the edge.

  The remains of the fence hung down the sheer drop. Rubble dislodged by her sliding foot tumbled down through the fog, crashing on the jutting cliff face and dislodging snow from the treetops below.

  The only way to go was back, but Lori could hear Addy now, each crisp crunch of snow, the soft slick of leaf litter under foot, unhurried but purposeful, and getting closer.

  There was nowhere to hide. The boulders were slippery with moss and too tall to climb. All the fallen branches had rotted down into crumbling splinters, useless to defend herself with. Lori searched through the smaller pieces of rock around the boulders, kicking smaller ones away until she found one big and heavy enough, one she could grip in her hand. The muscles in her forearms protested after a minute of waiting, listening carefully, gauging the distance and getting ready to launch. The rock was heavy and awkward, her grip was loosening on her only hope of defence. She couldn’t stand the waiting any longer. ‘Addy!’