Read The Protected for Free Online Page B

hobbies?’ She keeps her focus on the folders as if it’s just a casual conversation and she’s not going to analyse my response.
    â€˜There’s nothing really. Anymore.’
    â€˜What did you used to like to do?’
    I swallow. ‘Swim.’
    â€˜Good. Where do you like to swim? Ultimate destination: beach or pool?’
    â€˜Either. Anywhere. I just, I like being in the water.’
    â€˜Have you been swimming lately?’
    I close my eyes and shake my head.
    â€˜No, Hannah. Open your eyes. Come on, stay with me. Open them.’
    I take a deep breath and do as she tells me.
    â€˜We don’t have to talk about that. We’ll come back to it. What else do you like to do?’
    I shrug my shoulders and she smiles and shrugs her shoulders back at me.
    â€˜What’s something you do a lot?’
    Another deep breath. ‘I like to make lists.’
    Anne widens her eyes. ‘Oooh good. What do you make lists of?’
    I look at the carpet. ‘Just … stuff.’
    â€˜Stuff, hey?’
    â€˜Do you think it’s a problem that I do that? Like, is there something … wrong with me?’
    â€˜No, I don’t think there’s something wrong with you. Do you make lists obsessively? Like are you always listing things in your head? Do you feel anxious and making lists is the only thing that makes you feel better?’
    I shake my head.
    â€˜Then it’s probably a good thing. Maybe it’s helping you process things.’
    â€˜Okay.’
    â€˜Now. It’s going to be the end of the period soon. I’m going to go and find you another shirt from lost property. Your job is to sit here and breathe. Then, when you feel ready you can go to your next class, okay?’
    I agree because I know today it won’t get any worse. And I am right. When I walk into Biology class Tara looks up but no one says a word about me. No one hands me a note with a drawing of something obscene. No one even makes a comment about me being in the girls’ toilets with Ms Thorne.
    Later my dad pulls the shirt out of the dirty clothes basket and holds it at arm’s length.
    â€˜Han? What happened?’ he asks.
    It’s the first time something like this has happened since Katie died.
    â€˜It was an accident.’
    That is true. It was an accident. The fruit wasn’t meant for me.
    â€˜Did someone do this? Did something get thrown at you?’ He looks at the shirt. ‘Obviously someone threw something at you. Who? Who was it?’
    â€˜Just some guy … He didn’t mean to hit me.’
    â€˜I thought school was going okay.’
    â€˜It is. It’s nothing, Dad. It was an accident.’
    ***
    I wish I could rewind and start high school again, go back and do things differently – just small, seemingly insignificant things. Details. I’m not talking about what happened to Katie, either. The worst thing that could happen would be for my life to go back to how it was before Katie died. That fact is a horrible silent thing that hangs in my head and seeps into everything like thick black silt.
    Before the accident it was nearly every day that I’d have to sneak into the laundry and scrub food or pen marks from my shirt. I would tell Mum I got paint on them in art class.
    But there’s always someone at the bottom of the pile isn’t there?
    From the moment you walk through the front gates of a school you are judged. Assessments of your worth are made by your peers and once they are made you can’t shift them. We are meat-eating pack animals, us humans. The weakest are identified and when food is scarce they are the first to be eaten by their peers.
    Both Katie and Mum gave me a pep talk the night before I started high school. Mum was first. She sat next to me on my bed.
    â€˜Hannah, I know you’re nervous, but you have to think of this as the first part of a wonderful adventure.’
    She handed me a flat