Heart over Brain

Part 13

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Monday morning I do not take my exam.

I sit in the waiting area of the police station. It is a spacey, mostly empty room. Few metal chairs stand along the white walls, a clock and framed certificates of achievements of police officers that must work here hang above.

Elly sits next to me and clings to my arm. She cries bitterly and I can't quite grasp why. Maybe she feels guilty she practically pushed me into the arms of a criminal, maybe she was scared for my life when she realized her mistake, maybe my emotions are magically transferred to her.

Because I don't cry. I didn't cry sitting alone in the car, not when the police came and took me home, not when I tossed and turned alone in my bed instead of getting at least a few hours of sleep, not when I came here.

I am broken, I think.

My eyes drift to the phone screen of a bald man sitting next to me. He watches the rerun of last night's debate. The expert explaining details to the public is Dr-whats-his-name who always comments those kind of events.

Let's just say I am not a fan.

I blink and look at the clock on the far wall in the room. 9:27 am. Right about the time I should be sitting down to the table to answer questions on a sheet of paper to determine the future of my career.

I snort.

Career? What career could possibly wait for someone like me? Even if I was not only a high school graduate, even if I had gone to college or done what my father had wanted, even if I would pass that exam, I am still me.

I am still a weird, crazy person who chases after emotionally unavailable men like her life depends on it. I ruined my life that weekend, absolutely and undeniably, regardless of any logic and consequences.

But, hey, at least I had the time of my life on the backseat of a car.

I close my eyes, rub with my fingers over the closed lids. I am tired.

"Miss?" Someone shakes my shoulder. "Do you hear me?"

No. "Yes?" I say.

The police officer looks to her partner with concern. "Call for a psych eval," the tall woman whispers, probably thinking I can't hear.

"I am fine," I say.

Elly sniffles her cute, tiny nose and rubs my arm tangled in hers. Her face twists with misplaced emotions.

"I am fine," I repeat. "No one hurt me, touched me or did anything against my will."

No one.

No, no-one did nothing against my will. I wanted it all and I wanted him, and I had him and now I am broken.

I rise from the chair in the waiting room, before anyone can say anything more. "Let's get this over with."

The police officers throw a glance with tons of hidden meaning at each other, then the woman ushers me to follow her down a short hallway into a small room.

It looks nothing like an interrogation room in the movies. No video recorder, no creepy glass front. It is more like an office, with a desk in the back and a computer and paper piles. A picture of a family hangs on a white wall, a boy and two women, one of them is the officer in a flower-pattern dress instead of the marine blue uniform. A second table stands in the middle of the room, we sit down there opposite of each other.