Soulless

One | Crimson

Lunden Evergreen

I watch as it drips, the crimson red slowly leaking from my nose. It brushes against my lip, continuing its journey down my chin and onto my neck.

I stare at it for a moment, then swiftly wipe the blood away. The dryness of today's weather was getting to me. One would presume early September to bring moisture. Instead, it left me dry and the grass surrounding me dead from a drought.

Clearing my throat as I step back, the door opens, and another woman goes into a stall. I swipe my sheer lipgloss over my lips, pull my hair back, take a deep breath, and turn to the door.

Pushing it open I'm greeted back to my campus common. I watch as two jocks throw footballs at each other and then watch as it ultimately hits an innocent girl walking on the sidewalk.

It hits her; she stumbles and then falls to the ground. The boys glance at her, shocked as she doesn't move and remains frozen. Like the fools they are, they run instead, leaving this girl injured on the ground.

I make my way over, as do others. Blood leaks to the ground from her mouth. She clutched the back of her head as she slowly sat up.

Her front teeth are knocked out clean, and I can see them against the hot pavement.

What dicks.

"Here, let's get you to the health center." A man behind me swoops in to take my place. She doesn't have time to disagree before they begin walking slowly. He collects her missing teeth and begins to head towards the medical center.

"Are you okay?" I quickly asked her, and before I could get an answer, they were gone. I'm only left with the blood stain on the sidewalk. I bend down and press my finger into the smallest puddle that remains.

I look up to where the boys once were and head that way forward. I recognized one of them, the star running back of the team here at Boston City College. Apologies didn't seem necessary for guys like him, they simply never thought they did anything wrong.

Even if it means knocking a girl's teeth out clean and running instead of checking in on how she's doing.

"Lunden!" The sound of Eleanor's voice prompts me to stop and I turn to see her racing to catch up to me.

"How's your first day of semester classes?" she stands awkwardly, smiling. I liked Eleanor; she was my awkward friend, but she was there to hang out when nobody else was.

It was my Junior year here; friendships weren't a key thing to me. I'd rather not be social at all if I could, but my therapist and mother encourage it. But being an hour and a half away makes it easier for her comments on it to be less frequent.

Sometimes, I felt like my mother's only friend. She struggled socially, and my dad, on the other hand, was almost too extroverted. They both lived in Connecticut, but socializing together wasn't their strong suit.

I swear the last time they were in a room talking together was in 2008. I was four then, and that's when they divorced. But leaving me with no siblings also didn't help. At points, I was a stranger to my father. My mother's only friend, really, and nobody to vent to.

I liked living alone here; it brought me peace in a world of chaos. Nothing was ever easy, and I hated holidays, especially my birthday. I would fight with my dad because I wanted to spend it with Mom.