Spades and Angels

Once a Ghetto Chick, Always a Ghetto Chick, Right?

Lolita

The world seems to go quiet when I finish reading the article. Almost as if it's holding its breath for the fallout. For the house of cards Mads and I had created to tumble down as this lie...this secret shakes its foundations. Where I never wanted it to but can't ignore the truth.

Shutting my phone off the screen gives a soft click as I drop it onto my dress, hands shaking too badly to figure out how to make it reconcile with what Mads had told me before. With his promise not to lie, never to lie to me about something like this. I sigh, the logical part of my brain chipping in to say he didn't lie per se but that he'd still kept it from me. Also that I'd never asked but maybe...maybe I didn't want to. Didn't want to know what or who he could have been before we met. I didn't ask because who he was didn't match what I'd been told for years. It wasn't who he was. Or so I'd thought.

"Lo?" Someone calls for me but I don't look away from the wall to see who, tears making my vision blurry as the pain slams into me over what happened. What Connor told me that I'd wanted to believe so badly was nothing more than a lie. A cheap trick. A ploy to make me doubt the person I loved. But when I'd looked it up....when I'd looked it up and seen the facts in black and white I couldn't deny what was right in front of me. Couldn't stop the hurt, the fear and the anger that rushed through me. "Lo, hey what happened?"

Someone tapping my shoulder has my eyes finally tear away from the wall to see Mal, Pey and Hali all standing together. No Ash or Mads in sight. Mal whistles softly, "SHit what happened Lo? Are-are you ok?" She sits next to me with Pey on her other side. Hali is on my left. "Lo? Did something happen?"

"Did-did you know," I mumble looking between them with a hurt expression. One they seem confused to see. "About Mariana? The investigation last - sorry two -years ago? That Ma-" I choke over his name then, pain making me feel sick. But I swallow it down, "That Mads was questioned about it as a suspect?"

Now they give me an odd look, "We knew a little for sure, but it wasn't our place to tell you and he didn't do it." I give them an odd look, Pey sighing and breaking the silence. "Look we knew some of it since Mads is one of our closest friends and whatever the articles say he didn't do it. She went missing. That's it. Plus it wasn't as the media advertised since they neglected to include a lot of the details in most reports. Such as that she left town. She didn't vanish. Not like they seem to suggest. He had nothing to do with it. We swear."

I sigh, knowing she's probably right - possibly right - but I can't help but feel hurt that he wouldn't tell me. That I had to find out from my ex of all people. But I don't say anything, just bite my lip to try not to cry as heartache slams into me again and again. Chipping at me inside I try to hide it but can't. Not from my friends who all sit with their arms around me. Hugging me as if that can make it all better. Something that as much as I wish it could have done won't be a magic solution. The magic solution I needed was for the articles to vanish. For the suspicions to vanish and it to have never happened. But I know better than that. The past is the past, I'd known that better than anyone, the past was done and none of us could change it.

None of us talked much after that. Not at the start at least since I know I'm not the best company and the others don't know how to help given the veracity of what Connor had said. Turning it from a simple, spiteful rumour to a truth I never wanted to see. To face. The others stick with me but we don't speak since I think they can see I need space to process it. However, the problem with space is it lets me think, making me feel angry as well as afraid and upset over it. They just stay with me as I try to and eventually manage to stop crying. Just staring blankly at the wall even as the others eventually come out to find us.

But I don't hear them. I see the girls get up to talk to the guys but I don't look away from the wall. Too lost in the words I'd read, and what I'd heard, to want to talk without exploding at the wrong person. The right person is conveniently not here. The others try again, valiantly, to get me to talk but I'm numb to it now, anger batting the sadness from the heartbreak over this one big painful lie.