Glass [ENG]

25.2. Scars

If it hadn't been for the coat, I picked up from the locker room, I wouldn't have known how much I needed it all this time. I couldn't avoid the significant stares of the security guards and the frowns of the brown-haired attendant. It was inevitable. I didn't look glamorous.

Just as inevitable was a collision with frost. With Kendrick's help, we quickly found ourselves outside the club, standing in the middle of a wide sidewalk where the only source of light was an old, yellow traffic light. The well-known cold made me shiver.

Involuntarily before my eyes I saw a clenched fist, broken glass and bars of the gate. I took a deep breath through my nose, seeing it later turn into clouds of steam. The stress was building up in my body and I couldn't stop it. I was looking around when Kendrick put his phone in his coat pocket.

"Britt's leaving the club. She should be here in a minute."

Britt. She was there, too. At this news, in my chest pressure began to follow itself, rippling through my lungs. I didn't understand much of it. I didn't think to ask about anything. Too many things happened at the same time, bending dimensions. I haven't felt this way in a long time.

I haven't felt any of the emotions currently deep inside of me for a very long time.

Figures appeared in my line of sight, lurching in the shadows of the parking lot. There were maybe three people there. All gathered around some car. Someone was raising a voice, and I instantly recognized its tone.

"Estera," I said, simultaneously feeling the venom on my tongue at every pronounced syllable. I heard my heart beating. I was about to explode.

Like a boomerang, my resolve returned.

I carefully removed my hand from Kendrick's neck, still mesmerized by the distant view. I took a few steps in that direction, fighting the weakness of my legs. The boy next to me followed my footsteps. After less than a minute, someone from an increasingly visible group pointed a finger at us, drawing all eyes. I stifled a hiss as my stomach wrapped itself in a knot.

At the front was my cousin herself. With each step, she became more and more visible. The dark blue eyes in that weak, rotting light took on a shade of glaring emptiness. They looked like Katiya's black irises. Every second, more and more similarities came out.

"Gigi! I've been waiting for you! Couldn't you have come a little earlier?" Her mocking laugh spread out in the bitterly cold air.

She stood a meter away from me, just like the others. Katiya with a completely different expression, with her arms crossed on her chest. Not in the posture of confidence. She was hiding her bloody hand, hunched over in the cold. Next to her stood Rita, who, since she saw me, could not take her eyes off my face.

If that wasn't enough, Valentia, Britt, and Chucks appeared out of nowhere on our left, looking at me in disbelief and relief at the same time, and at other times turning their gaze to the group standing right next to me. Those weren't positive stares. Chucks was very skeptical, watching over his friends, Britt was incredibly confused, and Valentia with her coffee-colored eyes practically burned the girls alive.

They were here. Four people I totally didn't expect. How did they get there? Why? I couldn't believe in the whole situation, and I was able to blame it on my dizziness.

"You don't look so good, why don't we reschedule our meeting?" Estera did not relent, drawing my gaze back to her. Then I noticed more specifically a slight bruise on her left cheek. Nothing made sense.

The only thing that made it was my desire to end everything that had anything to do with my cousin and the two people around her. The certainty of it warmed my body, almost overcoming the cold.

"From you it began, on you it will end," I said, in my mind replaying everything, from the very beginning. "I'm not gonna cover for you in front of our family. They'll find out everything."

I noticed that brief moment where a flash of surprise blinked in her eyes. However, she covered it with a grotesque covering of her mouth and a look full of faked fear. Manipulation of emotion has been her specialty since I can remember. Both of her own and others'.

"Seriously?" She revealed a smile hidden behind her hand. "The questions that come to my mind are: Did you threaten people at school like that, too? Or maybe you were blackmailing them for fun? Or did you lock them in lockers because you were in such a mood?"

These words came faster than I could have expected. Drastically, painfully and with thunder. Maybe I was never ready for them. The pressure in my whole body was just building up. The spiral of memories thickened; the realities mingled so much that I wasn't sure where I ended up being. On the sidewalk, in an apartment covered in ashes, a school hallway drained in coffee, a pool covered in blood or on the shore of an ice-cold lake.

The image blurred before my eyes. But I couldn't take my eyes off the navy-blue abyss. It wanted to absorb me, doing whatever it wanted with me. Blackness surrounded everything. The dark blue surrounded everything.

I was jolted out of my trance by the distant echo of quick footsteps on my left. As the tears ran down my cheeks and into my wounds, I turned to see Valentia disappearing into the darkness. Chucks, seeing this, followed his friend, before leaving, giving me a resentful look. I started paying for all the cruel secrets. The tightness in my chest was unbearable.

Britt was looking at me with tears in her eyes. No. I didn't want this. The girl with the eternal smile on her face, at that moment she was on the verge of being lost. She didn't believe what she saw. What she heard and why I didn't deny it. She put needles in my heart because it made me realize how different she thought of me before.

I put out the flame of her ever-burning hope, and it made her choke on the smoke.

I was so afraid to look over my shoulder to see the last person of the four.

I did it after a moment that seemed like an eternity, colliding with a view.

He didn't even notice I was looking at him. His eyes were wandering in nothingness, somewhere on the ground. He was frowning as hard as he was clenching his jaw. He was thinking harder than ever. He was like a rock. Practically immobile, unreadable and completely independent of reality.

It was enough to crush a thick layer of ice into tiny pieces.

I've lost ground. Everything started falling apart. I couldn't stop the tears cascading down my face. I ignored the pain they caused when they hit my injured skin.

"No way? Haven't you told your new friends how wonderful you are?" Estera spoke again, momentarily distracting my attention. She put her arms on her chest, pretending to be sad. "Oh, you thought you could get away with it, like with everything else."

I took a deep breath and saw what happened. I stopped feeling her words. They bypassed me, fleeing with the chill of the wind. There was no sense in what she said. Estera lost control of my feelings. Simply. They all came out with bitter tears. Left in the minds of four betrayed people. Drowned in the blood of my wounds.

I looked at Katiya, filled with a resonant emptiness.

"Where's Kade?"

And the girl, for one second surprised by the sudden question, in the second she lowered her gaze, saying nothing. She swallowed her saliva, avoiding confrontation. The silence was incredibly meaningful. Louder than any sound.

"See?" My smile was created from the echo of the void that was created in my heart. "You went down the same road. You ended up where I did. You've become the same person I did."

We weren't the same. We were at different stages of the same journey.

She looked up at me, and I saw glassy flashes. First time she didn't kill me with her gaze. She was trying to get to the root of my thoughts. To their bottom. She understood all this better than words could express it. The sorrow beaming from her was overwhelming. The spirit of vengeance was dying before my eyes.

My words were the last ones I directed at her.

The parts of us died, melting into thin air.

"I hope you wake up faster than I did."

Tears welled up in her eyes as she turned and walked away at a brisk pace, diminishing on her way to her car. She was fading away, making me more and more convinced that this was the last time I'd seen her.

Then I looked at my cousin, whose mood had changed drastically. Black fire was coming out of her eyes. She was silent, breathing deeply. I saw her trying to hit another soft spot.

Then I found the words that had probably been at the bottom of my mind for centuries.

"You're worse because you don't change, Estera. You're just as damaged as you were a few months ago. Like years ago."

And I saw something change in her, just for a split second. Her face relaxed for that one moment. For a moment, I saw the mirror image of her twisted soul. Then she covered it with anger, returning to her typical attitude. She always came back to the same point.

I've realized what I've missed all along. All this time, I wanted to start over without closing the old chapters. We both circled each other, throwing punches and avoiding confrontation. We threw out endless, incomprehensible emotions for us, not seeing that they had to collide to stop. To be transformed.

I could feel the change even though Estera covered it up. She gave me a mocking laugh, grabbing her head with a smile that was close to madness. She came up to me quickly, her hand outstretched, ready to attack, but just as quickly and unexpectedly she broke off her stride. She clenched her fist, holding back all her anger. She stood like a statue. Emotions boiled inside her, suffocating her from the inside. Her eyes couldn't help but reflect it.

She started to shake her head, then at a lightning pace began to move away.

"Let's go, Rita!"

And only those words tempted me to look at the last of the three. Her cheeks were red from the cold, and cascading tears. I felt it in the chest. I didn't want to see that. I didn't want to feel anything at all, seeing her reaction. I couldn't feel it. I shouldn't feel it.

Rita didn't respond to the call and instead spoke to me.

"I reached out to your friends."

As my breath got caught in my throat, Estera stopped, but she was still facing the parking lot. She stood still for a good while, frozen with emotion, but suddenly she laughed loudly and uneasily. She threw her hands up, screaming:

"Why am I not surprised?!"

And without a word more, she turned to her car, in a flash lit the engine and chaotically, almost driving into the cars next to her, drove out into the street. The screech of tires cut through the silence, and there was no trace of her in just a few seconds. The sound of the car was gone, and the silence was broken by a sudden sniff.

Rita with tears in her eyes wanted to approach me, and then I involuntarily took a step back. I couldn't. I wasn't ready. It was too much. Of the three, she was the freshest wound. Keeping it underwater, I didn't let it heal. I couldn't.

"Georgia..."

"Just leave me alone."

For the first time that night, my voice broke.

Rita closed her mouth, breathing nervously, but she didn't oppose. She closed her eyes, then looked up, trying to control her tears. Without looking in my direction any further, she walked away, quietly spreading the sound of her heels. I listened to it, unable to move. The pain spread through every part of my body.

And the worst was yet to come.

"I don't believe it... I don't believe it!"

Britt put her hands on her head and started walking from left to right. She couldn't stay still. She couldn't comprehend what had happened. She couldn't believe a word of it. Her eyes were still filled with tears, but she never let them out. There was a disturbing energy about her.

"To come all this way, risk getting fired, look all over the club for you to... I can't believe you were with us all this time... To think I worked with you for weeks..." Britt was throwing out incomplete sentences, each causing more pressure in my chest. I let her, knowing she was telling nothing but the truth. She finally stopped and looked at me, pointing her finger at her friend. "Kendrick let you into his house! He let you get close to Benjamin!"

I was forced to look at him, and nothing hurt more than that.

All this time he stood motionless, without a word. His eyes were fixed on the ground, as before, but when his name was mentioned, he raised his eyes and crossed them with mine. As if he was dissociated. I saw the effort he put into combining all the elements that were thrown at him in one moment. Frowning, his breathing was remarkably even and slow. I didn't see anything in his eyes.

He was thousands of miles away from me. Our reality was blown up in a second, crushing us with rubble. The raised ashes hovered between us, suffocating and separating us from everything.

Amber eyes stared at me through the fog.

I already knew what the pain in my chest was.

I cared about them.

I cared about them so much, and still I broke their hearts mercilessly.

"I'm sorry," I started, barely hearing my voice. Two pairs of eyes focused on my every word. At the moment they saw them completely differently. They saw me differently. "I don't expect anything. Not forgiveness, not that you'll ever talk to me again."

When Britt looked away, blinking a few times, I had to swallow the lump in my throat to continue.

"I never wanted to put it on you," I said, as Britt continued to look everywhere but at me. "I told you I'd take my problems away from you because I knew how much risk I'd put on you so far. I wanted to cut myself off from all this, and I moved to your town, naively thinking that I would. I was delusional thinking that my mistakes could be erased and I would be able to start over. With a fresh, clean page."

The girl clamped her mouth shut, looking at me from the corner of her eye. Even though it was better than not looking at me at all, I couldn't bear the hurt that was gushing from her pupils.

I returned my gaze to Kendrick, but the man with the clenched jaw was staring again at an indeterminate area of the sidewalk. He was thinking. He kept thinking. It drove me crazy. I was losing hope for any change. It was shutting down more and more, and I couldn't do anything to stop it.

It was a couple of wounds too late for everything.

"Please, go back to your town and forget about all this," I said quietly, losing all strength. It was all in their hands, not mine. I lowered my gaze, feeling the echo hit the walls of my lungs, eating away at the emptiness. There was only room for the cold, stinging air. "You'll never hear from me again. I'll leave you alone, I swear."

And without hearing any response, with my stomach cramped to the limit, I turned around, returning to the club. Back to the beginning. The sound of footsteps moving away made me blink, fighting back tears. They were gone. I couldn't stand the chaos of my life in that one moment. That one night.

I didn't register putting out a hand with a stamp, I didn't register completely passing by the locker room, I didn't notice a crowd of people not responding to anything around them, suddenly surrounding me from every side. No one paid attention to the tears, the blood, or the stillness in the chaos.

I closed my eyes, standing and listening to the vibration of every bone in my body. The hits of the sounds beat against my ears, despite their strength, not drowning out the voices in my head. Not drowning out the voices speaking of loss, gain and change. Telling me about the price that the new beginning really brought. Telling me about the impact of every seemingly small decision. Of the meaning of the past. Of its influence. Its weight. Its constancy.

About how the pain spread faster than the plague.

How sensitive were human souls.

How fluid were human hearts, evaporating, growing and unstable.

How strongly you could desire, naively ignoring reality.

How mundane, insignificant matters took the control away.

How control was just an excuse.

How cold was just a mask.

How evil was only pain.

I felt a warm hand on my wrist and instantly lifted my eyelids, losing my senses.

"I know why I could never trust you."

The amber eyes reflected the brilliance of all colors. The pupils, covered with darkness, pierced me with incomprehensible understanding, exuded calmness, crushed me with deep-hidden pain, and reflected the range of all other emotions that I saw as if in a mirror. Without a shadow of a doubt.

The tightness in my chest took my breath away.

All of a sudden, I saw him. I saw his whole soul.

It was the color of a warm, rising sun.

"You've never let me."