Olivia's Strange Week

A Hard Choice

My place is a disaster, the glass door has been broken to pieces and so has the coffee table. Stray shards were making the floor of my apartment a deathtrap for anyone daring to go barefoot, so I had to pick them up with care and throw them into the trash.

Emily lies on my sofa, clad only in her blue underwear. I removed her shirt and sweatpants to tend to her wounds, and now she has a piece of cotton with oxygenated water pressed against her eyebrow cut and two others on the wound on her thigh and her shoulder. I have no fucking clue how she managed to survive all that, let alone walk herself to my apartment. She refused to call an ambulance, and told me not to contact the police about Belinda shooting her either.

It's well past one now, but I'm too full of questions to go to sleep.

I wear a black pajama shirt to replace the red mini-dress my teacher tore open. My eyes explore the fridge, trying to find something, but I've already eaten all my brownies. What an idiot. If I had known this was going to happen, I wouldn't have emptied the fucking tray. As it stood, I could only bring the bottle of water that Emily had asked for. It's actually a bottle of strawberry milk I repurposed by filling it with water.

"Everything okay?" I ask, gently. I take a seat on a chair I'd dragged next to the sofa, to better tend to Emily.

"Okay as can be," she sighs, holding out a hand. I give her the water. She removes the tap and pours whatever is on her canteen inside, then replaces the tap and shakes the bottle. She starts gulping the resulting cocktail so fast I'm afraid she'll drown, but after a few long, terrifying seconds she takes the bottle away from her mouth, letting out a sigh. Her eye, the one not blocked by the cotton ball on her eyebrow, looks at me. Sounding reluctant, Emily says, "I suppose you'll want an explanation."

"Of course I want an explanation," I try to speak as calmly as possible in case her head is hurting, but my boiling frustration at the lack of answers leaks through my voice. "One second I'm lying here, having a good time, and the next some buff dude or woman or whatever pops out of my fucking balcony, breaks my door, tries to kidnap or rape or who the hell knows what, I escape by pure damn luck and just before I get into Mrs. Adelle's car, you come out of nowhere, all hurt and bleeding, and our teacher fucking shoots you!"

"I know you are feeling confused-"

"You think?" I snap.

"-but an explanation may make things worse."

"I don't see how that's possible."

"Because you haven't heard it yet. So before I'll start, I'm gonna ask you to make a decision."

"I'm listening," I say, arms crossed.

"What happened tonight will have repercussions in the following weeks, or the rest of your life if the worst happens. The explanation I'll give you, the explanation you choose to hear... it will shape the way you see those repercussions, and how you approach them going forward."

"Huh..." there is something ominous in her little speech, something that makes a bead of cold sweat slithers down the side of my head. "What's the choice, then?"

Emily takes a deep breath, then starts speaking. "I can give you an explanation that makes sense, one that fits into the box of what you consider normal and that won't shatter your perception of reality. You'll see your teacher over the shoulder, knowing she shot me and other bad things she's done, but never getting the full context nor the ability to do anything about it. You'll walk on the street and see someone following, you'll think it is a stalker or a weirdo, but you won't ever understand what is really happening. Something like what happened tonight may happen again, but the results will be worse for everyone involved. Including you. Especially you."