Chapter 4: The Joint Session
The couch was a battlefield. The scent of lavender hand cream and stale tea rose from the cushions, and the air itself seemed stiff, charged with the aftermath of violent motion. The only sound was harsh, ragged breathing.
Eliza lay face-down across Linda’s lap, her body a long, pale line of trembling exhaustion. The librarian’s paddle, a smooth, wide piece of oak usually displayed on her cookbook shelf, had done its work with methodical precision. Across Eliza’s backside, a uniform, dark crimson bloomed, the skin tight and shiny. Linda’s hand rested lightly on the small of Eliza’s back, her fingers absently tracing a constellation of freckles.Beside them, Mia was folded over her own mother’s knees. Patricia’s heavy, silver-backed hairbrush had painted a more focused, deeper ache, the bruises already forming in stark, parallel bars. Mia’s curls were damp with sweat, plastered to her forehead and neck.The switch had been Patricia’s idea. “They need to understand it’s not personal,” she’d said, her voice cool and analytical.“It’s the consequence itself. Let them feel it from another hand.”
The experience had been disorienting, a unique layer of psychological unraveling. To be surrendered, to feel the unfamiliar weight and rhythm of another woman’s discipline, to hear your own mother’s voice not delivering pain, but commenting on it from the sidelines.“You see how she flinches right there, Linda? That’s a lack of endurance.Mia, hold still for Mrs.Vance. She’s doing you a favor.”
Now, in the ringing silence, the favor felt carved into their flesh.
Patricia stood first, the hairbrush clattering onto the glass coffee table.She smoothed her crisp linen slacks.“Alright. Up you get, Mia.Eliza.”
The command unlocked them.Moving was a clumsy, painful ballet. They pushed themselves upright, wincing as fabric—or the absence of it—brushed tortured skin.They didn’t look at each other.Not yet. The shame was too fresh, too brightly lit by the chandelier above Patricia’s immaculate living room rug.
“Go stand in the corners,” Linda said, her voice softer but no less firm.“Fifteen minutes of reflection. Then you can get dressed.”
The corners were punitive architecture. Facing the stark white walls, the patterned wallpaper a dizzying centimeter from their noses. Here, the physical pain had space to breathe, to swell into a full-throated roar. Eliza stared at a faint scuff mark, her mind blank.Mia counted the tiny roses on the wallpaper, losing track after thirty-seven.
Behind them, the mothers’ voices resumed, a mundane and brutal soundtrack.
“More tea, Patricia?”
“Please.I think my wrist is going to be sore tomorrow.”
“Mine too. But it’s for the best.University won’t tolerate curfew breaches.”
“No, it won’t. I’m thinking we should check their phone logs weekly. Make it a condition.”
The conversation flowed around them like water around stones, practical, unemotional. The girls were objects in their dialogue, subjects of a shared project.
When the timer on Patricia’s phone finally chimed, it was a relief so profound it felt like a new pain.“You may turn around,” Linda said.
They did, slowly.Their eyes met for the first time since the switch. Eliza’s green eyes were glassy with unshed tears, her usually fierce expression shattered. Mia’s hazel ones held a deep, empathetic wreckage. Without a word, they stepped toward each other, their movements stiff and careful.Their discarded clothes lay in pathetic piles on the floor.
Eliza reached for Mia’s hand first. Their fingers laced together, just as they had on the rug an eternity ago.The touch was electric, a conduit for everything unsaid: I heard. I felt it too.You’re not alone.Dressing was agony. Every slide of cotton over skin was a fresh insult.Jeans were an impossibility. They pulled on soft, loose sweatpants, the elastic waistbands a small mercy.“Alright,” Patricia said, collecting the hairbrush and paddle. “Homework.Now.And no phones outside your rooms. We’ll discuss further privileges this weekend.”
They were ushered out, not toward their own homes, but up the stairs to Eliza’s bedroom. The mothers had decided their study session would still happen, supervised by the shared silence of the floor below.Eliza’s door closed with a soft click. The second it latched, the air changed.The performed stoicism crumbled.
Eliza let out a shaky, shuddering breath and limped to her bed, lowering herself onto her stomach with a soft groan. Mia followed, arranging herself on her side facing Eliza, a mirror of their secret, listening nights, but now in brutal, open daylight.For a long minute, they just looked at each other. The wall between their houses had hidden the details.Now, nothing was hidden. The evidence was mapped across their bodies, a topography of shared failure.“Your mom’s paddle,” Eliza whispered, her voice raspy. “It’s fucking barbaric.”
“Yours uses that hairbrush like she’s drilling for oil,” Mia breathed back.A weak, watery laugh escaped Eliza.It sounded like a sob. Mia reached out, her fingers gently tracing the edge of one of the brush’s stark bars on Eliza’s hip.Eliza flinched, then relaxed into the touch.
“Does it… help?” Mia asked, her voice small. “Knowing I got it too?”
Eliza considered it, her forehead pressed into her comforter.“Yeah.In a messed up way, it does. It wasn’t just me being a fuck-up. It was us.”
“We’re fuck-ups together.”
“Always.”
They fell into a comfortable, pained silence. The sun shifted across the room.
“Did you hear,” Mia whispered later, “what your mom said about my ‘endurance’?”
Eliza snorted.“Yeah.Like we’re racehorses. Or delinquents in a military academy.”
“It’s so clinical.” Mia’s fingers found Eliza’s again on the bedsheet. “Sometimes I think mine pretends she’s just sorting books. ‘This one goes in the correction section.’”
“Mine’s filling out a disciplinary report. In triplicate.”
They lapsed into quiet again, the humour a thin shield over the raw hurt. The physical warmth of each other’s nearness was the only comfort that didn’t feel like a lie.“What do we do?” Eliza murmured, her eyes closing.
“What we always do,” Mia said softly, with a resignation that felt ancient.“We study. We pass our tests. We avoid the demerits.”
“And we don’t get caught next time.”
Mia didn’t answer that.She just tightened her grip on Eliza’s hand. There was no ‘next time’ in this moment. There was only the now, the profound ache, and the singular, precious truth that the person who understood the exact shape and weight of her shame was lying right beside her, breathing through the same fire.
Downstairs, the muffled sound of their mothers’ laughter drifted up the stairs—a warm, pleasant sound, utterly normal. It was the most terrifying sound in the world.Eliza turned her head, her cheek against the bedding. “Stay tonight,” she said, a quiet command.“Just sleep. Here.”
Mia nodded, a quick, tight movement. The idea of returning to her own room, to the other side of that listening wall, felt unbearably lonely.Here, the evidence was visible. The solidarity was tactile.“Okay,” Mia whispered.They didn’t study. They lay there in the fading light, two bruised girls mapping each other’s silent pain, building a fort from the ruins of the afternoon. The wall was still there, but for now, they were on the same side of it, and that was the only victory they were going to get.