I have precisely 22 minutes, 13.8 seconds until my first lesson – enough time to go back to my room, get out of this itchy uniform and dump my handbook from the looney bin in its rightful place under my bed.
Erinn’s here: The protein shake blender is out and I can hear her workout playlist blaring from the speakers. Task number one: turn off that techno garble. She stops her workout and glares at me as soon as I do.
“Hey! I was mid squat!” She’s already ready for our first lesson; gym shorts, sports top, long black hair tied neatly in a ponytail. I’m still in my blouse, skirt, tie and blazer.
“Sorry, you know how much that music irritates me.”
She rolls her eyes and chucks me my sports top and gym shorts,
“I’m your best friend, I’ve heard you say it at least 100 times, of course I know,” she’s made her way over to the counter and is pouring the protein shake in her favourite cup, “So, how was this morning’s meeting? Did you make this one cry?”
“The usual,” I’m changing in front of Erinn like it’s nothing – when you’ve been best friends and roommates for as long as we have it is nothing, “Another woman tried to get me to open up, but I ended it before she had the chance. When’s your next appointment?”
2 days after it was revealed that Marcus was gone, the three of us were pushed into weekly sessions with a grief counsellor. It was "attend the sessions or face exclusion”. 3 weeks after the counselling begun, they claimed that we were developing serious disorders due to grief and were forced into counselling sessions 3 times a week.
Since then, Dylan has been diagnosed with 'depression' and is monitored during every class, Erinn has been told she’s 'developed an exercise addiction to distract from the grief' and has been banned from the school gym, and I refuse to let any counsellor get that far with me. I don't need to know what they think of me. They don't matter to me. What matters to me is getting where I need to be.
"My appointment's not until Wednesday, but they expect that stupid training journal completed by then"

The journals – bright yellow books with rainbows on the cover and the words “Exploring my problems – Who am I?” sprawled across the front, provided by counsellors to help the academy monitor our behavioural patterns. Each one of us has one: Dylan - to write down every time he feels sad during the day, Erinn - to document every time she exercises and me - to let them see everything I don’t eat.
At the beginning, it was hard to lie. I mean, our school is an academy designed to train assassins, there's CCTV everywhere - dorm rooms and toilets included, spontaneous bag checks at least once a day, and rubbish is searched when it is disposed of. However, after a while, you find ways around these, like the blind spot in our room where Erinn can exercise without being seen, or the fact that I can give my food to Erinn and Dylan, my human disposal systems. As for Dylan, he's clever enough to fake a positive attitude when they're watching.
"Oh tough, how’s the handbook going? How much have you claimed to have exercised?"
"Do you think 8 times this week is enough?"
"No way, they're going to expect you to still be bad, at least twice a day"
"Cool, I'll go with 15 times, 14 will make them too suspicious"
“True. Hey, you want an orange?”
“It depends, have you eaten?”
“Erinn. Stop worrying, my brain can’t function without food, I eat, I just don’t do oranges.”
She still looks sceptical. To be honest, if I were her I’d be too. But, I’m an amazing liar. I can get away with practically anything.
“...Ok, fine I’ll have your orange, you know that we have 3 minutes until first lesson, right?”
“Oh yeah, we should go.”
My timetable for today: Self-defence, Tactical operations, break, computer hacking, maths, lunch, algorithm application and undercover operations. The three hours after your final lesson each day are expected to be spent studying and training, you are then permitted an hour of free time before dinner at 20:00.
Self-defence and tactical ops are both practical, so first 2 lessons are done in grey gym shorts and orange sports tops. From break onwards I’m in classrooms, so therefore in uniform: Grey pleated skirt, cream blouse, orange blazer, orange and grey tie. Extracurricular activities such as appointments with onsite counsellors, therapists, nutritionists or life coaches must be attended in school uniform and any extra use of academy sports facilities such as the gym or the shooting range must be done in sports kit.
Saturdays from 11 to 2 and Sundays from 11 to 1 are the only hours that students are permitted to leave the academy, and in these hours they must remain in a 1 mile radius from the school. This narrows down all out of school activities to the little village near the academy, where you can find a jam shop, a church, a charity shop, a health foods store and a mini supermarket. When leaving the academy, any clothes or belongings you wish to take out must be searched thoroughly and scanned underneath the metal detectors. Groups leaving the school during these times must be monitored by a teacher from the school.
We have no freedom. And no out of school life.

This is the second term into 6th year, so self-defence right now consists of finding a partner, grabbing a mat and attempting to pin your partner down in less than 20 seconds. As always, Erinn and I are together.
“So,” We always talk as we fight... We always talk in general. She’s way better than she was last week. She has more moves than she did last week and her reaction times have improved drastically “How many hours have you actually spent training this week?”
I strike twice more. She blocks both and grins, “Savannah! You admitting defeat?”
Finally, with a quick kick of my foot against the right part of her ankle she’s off balance, making it easy for me to strike just below her rib. She keels over momentarily.
“I never admit defeat, I’m asking because your reaction times are better than they were a few weeks ago.”
I’ve let my guard down, giving her enough time to pin my arms behind my back. She’s definitely improved.
“I dunno, I guess I’ve trained around 5, 6 hours a day?”
A brisk elbow strike to her pelvic bone and my arms are free, we’re face to face again “Cool, I can tell”
“Stop it!”
“Stop what?”
“Acting like that wasn’t hard for you! Admit it – I’m getting better than you.”
Over a year ago, before it all happened, Erinn didn’t care about trying. She was the girly one who barely passed self-defence, but could get away with it because she has the looks to flirt with anyone that she needs to kill, get them to trust her and then strike. She and Marcus were the two that didn’t care, they would laugh about it with each other when monthly rankings came in. Marcus would say;
“Hey, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger – at this rate, we’ll be the strongest in this dump!”
He was the light hearted one. The one that made us all feel better about ourselves. He turned any problem we had into a small issue that we could joke about.
When the person that makes problems disappear is gone, every small issue becomes something that you need to drastically change, so as soon as Erinn looked at the first monthly ranking after the incident, she immediately threw herself into extra work, determined to be the best of the best.
“I’ll admit to the fact that you are definitely improving,”
And I’m on the floor. I don’t know what she did, but after I said that, she did something and I felt my feet leave the ground and my head smack the mat with an almighty thud. Erinn’s standing over me grinning.
“Erinn! Ouch!”
“Savannah! That’s the point of the assignment!”
She’s standing over me, eyebrow raised, smirking. This is the first time I’ve been pinned down by her, she’s always the one that I pin.
“Whatever, just help me up please?”
Great, another thing I can't do right.

“So I reckon, a couple more fake confessions, a few more weeks of hiding my workouts, and I’ll be back in the gym in no time.”
It’s lunchtime. We’re sitting in the same place we sit every lunch – Our little bench outside, just out of reach of the cameras. Erinn is spending her lunch planning her route back into the gym. It’s the first time I’ve seen Dylan all day – Girls and boys take all lessons apart from Survival and Fitness separately. He looks sad. He always looks sad. He’s been sad for a year.
“Hey, Dylan?”
“Yup?”
“You want my rice cake?”
“Oh, right, yeah, sure. Thanks Sav.”
“...I’m sorry! Was my story not interesting for the two of you?” Erinn’s staring, eyebrow raised again, waiting for a response from us.
“No, it really wasn’t” And I’ve been hit by a ham sandwich. Erinn’s ham sandwich, “What?! You want me to lie to you? Ok, yes Erinn, Dylan and I really want to spend our lunch hearing all about how well you’re deceiving your counsellor.”
It’s a good thing I’ve been trained to have cat like reflexes – otherwise I would have been hit with the bottle of energy drink Erinn threw. She’s smirking,
“Fine Sav, let’s talk about you! Go on, tell us the last time you ate!”
Touché. This is why Erinn and I are best friends – we could both talk back to someone for hours.
“Wait – Sav! I thought you were getting better!” Dylan’s always been worried about my lack of food – so I may have told him a little white lie about me eating 3 meals a day. “You know what? I’m giving you your rice cake back and I’m going to watch you eat all of it!”
Wow.
“Thanks for that Erinn! Now you’ve got Dylan acting like a parent again!”
She looks all smug – typical Erinn face, “That was the plan! You need to eat more!”
“And you 2 need to stop being my parents! I don’t need the rice cake, I had a big breakfast!”
“As your roommate and best friend I know for a fact that you ate nothing this morning!”
Friends. You love and you hate how well they know you. It’s a strength and a weakness... It’s strange. Yet, I don’t think I’d want it any differently. For the past 5 years we’ve been each other’s safety nets – making sure no one had the chance for that fatal crack. I think that’s why Marcus caused such a crack – we all blame ourselves for not knowing it was going to happen. We failed as a safety net.
It’s why Dylan is so over-protective. He refuses to fail as a safety net again. I understand.
But the thing is, there’s nothing wrong with me. I know all about eating disorders – it was one of the first weaknesses we learned to spot in first year. I know the symptoms, and I don’t follow them. I don’t have a compulsion to lose weight, I really couldn’t care less about how I looked, I just... I don’t know. I’ve lost my appetite, and I don’t see the point. Why waste time eating when you could train, or study? If you ask me, it just gets in the way.