Glass [ENG]

28. Time

I knew where I was going. Exactly, without hesitation.

However, I definitely did not know what was I going to find on the spot. And that, of all things, was suffocating me more than it was physically possible. The hands without gloves on the wheel of my grandmother's car kept me from forgetting what had happened last night. And today.

So much that it seemed like a decade.

This time, in all these emotions, there was a new one, growing stronger with each passing moment. It brightened the field of vision, gave direction and removed the weight that was sitting on my lungs. It was pushing the gas pedal. It made my tormented thoughts about people from the past less hurtful.

Not knowing where Estera had gone after she left the club was a glowing red bulb somewhere at the back of my mind. The bitterness in my throat at the thought of Rita was no better. The truth that Kade released changed the memories of a few months, like the curtain being taken away from the window. And although everything became clearer, the sun rays fell straight into my eyes, making it difficult to accept.

Including the way it exposed me.

And all this at a moment when I wanted to forget about it once and for all.

The phone in the cup holder started ringing. At that moment, every phone call required my attention, so I decided to pull over on a not so wide, earthy side road. When the car stopped, I grabbed my phone, and just when I thought I wouldn't be surprised by the name on the phone, I was disturbingly wrong.

I got a call from the landlord.

And when I finally picked it up and started talking, I was more and more shocked with every second of it. Full of confusion. Strange excitement and a shadow of relief. Still mostly shocked. I was looking at the cars passing me, trying to piece it all together.

"Thank you very much... Goodbye." With these words, I hesitantly hung up, slowly putting the phone back to its previous place.

I shook my head, not believing that anything else could surprise me so much and redirect my plans to a completely different track. After a good while, I started the engine, grabbed the steering wheel more firmly and carefully lowered my foot on the gas. I kept going.

On the way, my plan took on sharper outlines and a few lighter colors.

A few days were enough to make the sights I knew seem so old and distant. I was easily going round the corners of the streets, getting closer to the designated address. I was here for the first time almost three months ago. Packed with luggage, accompanied by my parents, and hoping that the past eternally disappeared behind the curtain and the future would spare me another bunch of hatred-filled looks.

The apartment I rented. The one that was just ashes.

I started to slow down, driving partially onto the sidewalk. I turned off the engine and reached for my phone in a rush of anxiety. I went back to the messages to see if I'd given the right time and place. And even if I did, I could wait forever, and Britt would still have the right not to show up.

After a few minutes, another car passed me and slowed down, and I instantly recognized it. The pressure in my stomach just got stronger. I saw this car outside the hospital, after the incident with the broken glass in my hands, the illegal party and the police out of nowhere.

Meters away, the engine died, and the driver's side door quickly opened. I unbuckled my seatbelt myself and stepped outside with my heart pounding. I didn't think she'd show up. I didn't think I'd see her so soon. Deep down, I wanted to explain everything to her that I didn't fully understand.

And if the chaos of my thoughts wasn't enough to determine the complexity of this whole situation, Britt wasn't the one to get out of the car. It was Valentia.

Lacking make-up and her characteristic style, she was wearing an oversized black blouse, the same color sweatpants and ordinary sneakers, and her hair was barely tied up in a hanging ponytail. This hairstyle resembled the one she had as we came across each other in the town square.

However, her vision was completely different. The coffee shade was consumed by a black anger. And because of that, I knew that nothing was predictable.

"You thought Britt would come because you wrote her one stupid message?" Valentia, full of emotion, slowly got a few steps closer. No less, no more.

"I did not expect that anyone would appear," I answered honestly after a moment of shock. I didn't move, overwhelmed by the girl's emotions.

Valentia sniggered without amusement.

"I came here to find out what you want from her and not very politely ask you to be out of our sight forever."

I expected it, but it didn't change the intensity of the pain. But despite a certain failure hanging over me, I was still looking for something else in her gaze. In her gestures. In her words. I was looking for hope.

Hope that trust was the key, not the last resort. Even if what I was doing looked like a complete opposite.

"Before you do, I need to show you something," I said, swallowing a lump in the throat. Valentia deserved the truth as much as anyone else, but it didn't make my job any easier.

At these words, Valentia frowned, looking suspiciously at the building, and then looked boldly into my eyes, without a shadow of surprise.

"You mean the apartment that burned down?"

And then I frowned, caught off guard.

"How do you know?"

A moment of tense silence. Apparently, she hesitated before revealing her truth. Unlike my emotions, hers did not block the truth, but pushed the girl to the next words.

"From your cousin, who enjoyed it until..."

She stopped abruptly, gritting her teeth in anger and directing her gaze at my block, once again, away from me. To do this, she crossed her arms and slightly hunched, hiding her hands under her shoulders. She looked very tense, so much so that she was almost locked in her own body.

I got a whole new piece of the puzzle from her. It sounded like the perspective I was missing.

Involuntarily, I went back to last night and quickly analyzed the moment when I first saw Valentia. Outside the club. I remember the look on her face before everything started falling apart. She was the only one more angry than surprised to see Estera. She was furious. However, not surprised.

And suddenly the bruise on Estera's cheek made sense, and at the same time it was like a complete abstraction. Part of a surreal film. Valentia and I were not best friends, so the magnitude of the anger went beyond her impulsiveness.

It was at this point that I abandoned the analysis.

Valentia began to shake her head, giving vent to her emotions. But I knew that it only brought the rest of the unwanted thoughts along that push themselves into the worst place: reality.

And a collision like that had never been benign.

"Shit! Why do I always have to be on the wrong side, huh?!" She looked at me, boiling with anger. "You said you weren't like her, and it turns out you are. How could you know that without even knowing her?" She asked when she appeared in front of me and pushed me back with her arm. I took two steps back involuntarily.

Although the depth of the whole statement was more than I was able to perceive, it took me as long as those two steps to get to the bottom of it. I remembered what I said. And I remembered who she was comparing me to and when she did it for the first time. When she caught me puncturing the tires of cars coming from my city. I saw that memory in her coffee eyes.

"If you were afraid of the idea that I might be like her, it wasn't hard to tell what she was like to you." My voice remained calm and without a trace of coldness. The shorter distance made it even quieter.

"So don't be surprised if defending  y o u   makes me furious." The tone of this sentence, in contrast to the content, was somewhat quieter and no longer exuded the same confidence and strength as before. Accompanied by a flash of pain in the agitated gaze.

I had to take a breath, hearing another comparison and information that revealed another unknown.

A certain person in Valentia's life didn't just hurt her. They brought her a trauma that would come back uninvited and turn upside down everything she'd just pieced together. In an infinite circle. She took what was good, sticking to the darkest places. The ones she couldn't let go of on her own.

This kind of trauma could only be brought by someone close to you.

"You had a good feeling," I began to speak, openly and without masks. I felt like it had to be said. "I've hurt a lot of people. A lot of innocent people. Repeatedly. It's always going to leave ugly marks on me. Worse than what's on my face right now."

Valentia looked at me with conflicting emotions. She was clearly struggling with something. But she didn't turn on her heel and walk away. She stood still. She let me go on.

"I may never forgive myself for this. You don't want to know me anymore. Others dream that something bad will happen to me." Words like that out loud hurt more than thoughts coming back. But there was something healing about this confrontation. "But I'm not what I was then. Or like your friend."

"Why?" Valentia asked suddenly, and I fell silent.

The question, though simple, did not have equally simple answer.

When no words would come, I raised my hands a little, to then slowly turn the insides of the palms in her direction. I didn't look at the scars. I didn't have to.

"If you want to find my weakest point to bring me down, it's too late. The others found it before you."

She looked from my face to my outstretched hands. She looked at them intently, and I could almost feel the places she was looking at. With a frown, she was lost deep in thought. The silence between us was getting heavier, but it was also getting calmer. At that moment, Valentia showed no anger, and it seemed to me that she had shed something hurtful, which revealed another, equally sensitive part of her soul.

I was sure she was the one who hit Estera. The reasons for this may have been different, but she did not stand on the wrong side. She wasn't on either side. She was there with her friends, unaware of what she was about to learn and from whom. She couldn't have acted any differently.

From these thoughts, she woke me when she raised her hand and, to my surprise, hesitantly grasped one of my hands. She held it up for me. She was still watching all the traces of the past. A permanent mark of revenge.

"Lorelei," she broke the silence gently, using a completely different tone. "She pretended to be a friend, really dragging us into an ever-bigger mess, making ever more cruel excuses, and doing whatever it took to keep us from leaving her. She knew our weakest points and used them whenever she wanted. And we were still deluding ourselves."

It was just the tip of the iceberg. But I didn't want to ask for more than I'd already revealed. Even though the plural she used made me feel involuntary contractions in my body. Because it meant there were more victims, and I suspected who they were.

Not wanting to make any more wounds, I decided to share something else, not so old. To distract her mind from a sad place.

"You're leaving soon, aren't you?"

Valentia at these words woke up a bit and raised her eyes to me. Calmer, but alert glare. She lowered her hand, showing that her delicate state was over.

"Yes, the end of September," she replied without emotion. However, something in her eyes was not so obvious. She took the first step back, and I knew it was some sort of a goodbye. "That's why you don't have much time."

And she turned, walking away toward the car before I could read anything more from her face.

She was right, not for the first time. I didn't have much time for everything.

With the information I got on the way to town, things looked very different. The scenarios were different, the possibilities were different. After receiving the last things organized and collected by the landlord, I had a lot of options. Consequences - even more.

And I didn't drive for two hours just to choose just one option and waste valuable time. The fact that Britt didn't text me back and Valentia showed up on her behalf helped me pick my order. Because the feelings and memories that had been pushed to the bottom began to come back with more force.

After putting everything in the car, which seemed like an eternity, I got behind the wheel again. I entered an address into the phone's navigation system, which I had a moment's trouble retrieving from memory.

I wasn't ready for another confrontation, but the ticking time clock and the pressure in my chest made me move. It also helped me to inadvertently see my own reflection when looking in the overhead mirror.

"Did you think for a moment what the neighbors would think? School? Have you even thought about how much this is going to cost us?"

At one point, the road seemed familiar to me, and I only looked at the navigation from time to time, just to be sure. I wish the route wasn't so short. Remembering the mistake I made with the bus, I stopped on the side of the road at the right moment when I noticed the target.

Another disappointment was the lack of any car in the parking lot. Ever since Valentia mentioned the passage of time, the tension had returned. And where there was tension, there wasn't much room for sanity or focus. Situations like this were what I didn't want the most. Wasted time.

Time, time, time.

I forced myself to find a solution. Another place. I couldn't accept defeat. Not when I got the chance. When I saw that light at the end of a swirling, cold tunnel.

I turned around and picked up speed. I went where my gut told me to go. Roads intersected from the known to the unknown. I passed an area surrounded by greenery that brought back memories. Cascades of memories.

My hands started sweating on the steering wheel. It was so problematic that it was difficult to drive perfectly even without it, let alone with it. The sweat combined with the material on the handlebar reacted with the still sensitive skin of the hand, causing a burning sensation.

Turns were obstacles, thoughts the worst enemies, and time: an indelible burden.

That was why one moment of inattention knocked everything over, freezing it in place.