The car stops before me. Claire leans over and opens the door for me and I hurry to get from the relative safety of the bus stop to her car without too many water droplets hitting me.
It doesn't make much of a difference, really. I'm already drenched anyway.
"Well you look great," Claire says with a giggle. "Want to go to my place so that you can dry off and change? I'm sure that'd be more-"
"No," I interrupt her.
"No?" There's mild surprise in her smile. "Okay then... do you want me to bring you home instead? I'm sure the drive'll be long enough to talk about whatever you had in mind."
I nod, relieved. "Yeah, sure. That sounds good."
With a nod, Claire starts the motor and pulls back onto the street.
I watch her from the side, as she drives, as she squints past the water obscuring the view in spite of the windscreen wipers working to their highest capacity. It's slowly growing dark outside.
She looks so normal. Like I'd expect her to, had the last few days not happened.
How does she have the guts to act so calm and innocent when she knows what she did to me? When she knows what she did to Alex?
"So, what do you have on your mind?" she asks cheerily as the houses around us give way to meadows and occasional bits of forest.
I frown. My stomach's clenched up with anger.
"How can you act so happy?" I ask after a moment's hesitation.
I want to understand. What is it that drives a person like her?
She shrugs. "With Alex, you mean? I thought it might cheer you up a little-"
"I know it was you," I say, interrupting her. I try very hard to sound normal, to keep the shiver out of my voice but doesn't work. "I know it was you who put the knockout drops in my drink."
No reaction.
"Why? Why would you do something like that?"
Her expression hasn't changed. Her mouth lies even, the muscles in her cheeks are relaxed. Just a flicker of movement comes into her when she wets her lips and looks at the tachometer. But apart from that – nothing.
"Was it because you wanted me to break up with Alex? Was that why you said all those things about becoming a new person? So that I'd have less in common with him? To drive a wedge between us?"
Still, no reply.
My face is growing hot. Why won't she react?
"I got almost raped, you know? Was that part of your great plan to drive us apart? Was I ever something other than some plaything or rival to you? Was I ever your friend?"
I've talked myself into a rage.
"I trusted you, you know? I liked you. But now I know the real you."
No reaction.
"You're a horrible person, you know that, right?"
No reaction.
"But what you probably don't know is just how much Alex hates you. He knew right away that it'd been you who poisoned me. When you acted like you'd become my friend- you know, he thought you might've changed. But he was wrong."
Am I overdramatising? Yes. Am I taking all my guilt and self-hatred out on her? Yes. But I can't get myself to care. I just want her to react.
"Even though he already knew what a rotten person you are, you still managed to make it worse."
She breaks so suddenly and so hard that I slam forward and into my seatbelt. The car comes to a screeching hold right at the entrance to a muddy side road leading right into the forest.
In the shade of the trees, it is even darker than on the open road and in spite of the raindrops drumming against the ceiling, there's a strange silence when Claire turns off the car.
YOU ARE READING
Moonlit Waters
Romance"I'm just scared somehow that you're not even real." "And what if I wasn't? What if I wasn't, but wanted to be?" When Timothy Crow gets the ability to turn into a girl whenever he goes swimming, his first reaction is to panic, resulting in his near...
