𝐀𝐥𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 | 𝔞 𝔰𝔥𝔬𝔯𝔱 𝔰𝔱𝔬𝔯𝔶

« 🥀 » 𝐜𝚑. 9

-͟͟͞͞➳ 𝐦𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐚

(𝑛.) 𝑑𝑒𝑒𝑝 𝑠𝑎𝑑𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑜𝑟 𝑔𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑚; 𝑚𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑦

She doesn't know how she makes it back to her dorm room. She'd tried to stay at the hospital but they wouldn't let her.

Emma's there when she gets back, and like the angel she is, makes her a cup of chamomile tea and peppers her with hugs without questioning the tears that well up and stream down her face in rivulets. She recognizes the question Emma's holding back, and her phone buzzes from Samar's texts, but she can't do it. She isn't willing to tell her friends something she herself can't believe.

"Did someone do something? I can legally sue them for slander or libel or harassment, depending on the evidence I can collect," Emma says, but her ever-honest gaze is worried.

Bomi shakes her head, still trembling with disbelief and shock. She can't trust herself to speak.

Wiping her nose, she stumbles to the bathroom to wash her face and change. When she looks down at her shirt, dark red has blossomed on the bottom. Bloodstains. Ethan's bloodstains.

She thinks that this must be what it's like to have someone's blood on your hands- even though she knows it wasn't her fault.

She takes the shirt off and lobs it into the trash bin, but Bomi can still see phantom stains in the gray shirt she pulls on, blood red flickering in dark spots swaying in the edge of her vision.

She grabs onto the edge of the bathroom sink and sinks down onto her knees, clutching the pendant around her neck with the other hand, and her eyes are flooding again like those cartoon characters whose eyes turn to faucets and fill rooms when they cry.

She can still see the stained red of her discarded shirt from where it tilts out of the garbage bin.