Glass [ENG]

7. The Calm After the Storm

Almost all of the time I was the calm before the storm.

Soundless, tense, unreadable and incomprehensible calm. Silence. I was limiting myself, tolerating what was thrown at me like an extra, unnecessary ballast. I held back the tightening of my arm, swallowed the sound of my own voice, and drowned the outpouring of emotion beneath a layer of ice. Everything was stable then. Under control. Nothing I couldn't handle.

Although there were times when I was just a storm.

A hellish, unbridled storm.

I've never been so angry.

Usually everything made me annoyed and pushed me to the limit of my patience. They all got in my way and imposed themselves with no end. They wanted my attention, my anger. They wanted to know what I was doing, what I was breathing with, what my weak point was, and what my deepest secrets were. It was possible to ignore it as usual.

However, at this point, the limit of patience was exceeded, and my legs themselves carried me under the familiar house from the neighborhood. I felt like I was literally going to explode, and my gaze would turn everything into a cold stone. Of all the emotions that had been building up in me before, only t h a t was left.

Fury.

"How could you?!" I screamed when the silhouette of the girl appeared on the street.

She didn't seem surprised. However, I definitely sensed misunderstanding and irritation from her, which only added fuel to the fire. In addition, she rested her hands on her hips, freely shifting the weight of her body to one side. She raised her eyebrow, fully confused.

"How could I what?"

And she knew exactly what I meant. I burst out laughing, bitter and mocking.

"Not only did you betray me at the least expected moment, you used  t h a t  against me. You!" I pointed my finger at her, barely holding it up. "You don't even know how screwed you are!"

She frowned at me as she came closer.

"It was  h i m  who told her. Not me."

I stepped away with the clatter of my heels, grabbing my head. It was all so absurd. Unreal, and yet so much in the style of all these losers. In her style. In his style. They were all so damn good, I didn't know if I wanted to cry out of laughter or scream in anger.

"You really think that's a good excuse?" I put my hand up, looking at her like she was the last moron on earth. "Why don't you tell me they made you do it, and even better! Tell me you weren't even there."

She tried to interfere, but I wouldn't let her. Oh, no. All she could do was get out of my sight or drown in the ocean of my hatred and contempt. She might as well have been anyone else. A stranger, a stalker, a nerd, an old lady, even my cousin. She had no way of avoiding what I was about to tell her anyway.

Me neither.

"You know what? You better stick to being an impartial, conflict-free witness. It suits you. You never had the courage to face me," I turned around, heading back home. "Your place has always been in my shadow."

And that one sentence made everything turn out very differently. In the blink of an eye.

I tried to calm down, which I only managed to do when I got back to the apartment. I closed my eyes, enjoying the silence of my four walls. The phone call with my mother stuck in my head like an old tape stuck on replay. Luckily, I already had the idea to occupy my frazzled hands with another task from the course or making a quick dinner.

But halfway to the kitchen, I got a message. The only people I had in my contacts were my family, and they usually preferred to talk by calls. As I took out my phone, I recalled another of the few people who weren't my family, and I closed my eyes, agitated again.

The workers from the club.

And the incoming text was from Britt herself. Because who else could I have gotten a message from that was long enough that it didn't fit on the lock screen?

In this long message was only the information that that day we all had to be an hour earlier for reasons unknown to Britt. It was supposed to be something "bigger and more exclusive", or whatever the author meant. It meant that you could only bring along your closest friends and not to let them in on the details.

Something else was going to surprise me. It just had to.

Because of the limited by my mom time, I didn't have much of it left to dress up and do the things I had planned. I was on the verge of emotional collapse and I couldn't think straight. This, in return, affected the enlargement of the just put to rest irritation. Wonderful, ironic cycle. The only thing I did in peace was dinner.

And as soon as I put on my coat, the anger spread again in my body, just waiting for the first opportunity to escape.