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HOW VALENTINA VARNER ended up in the Fair Mart in the middle of the afternoon, purchasing an ice-cold soda can to soothe the wounds of her ex-best friend, the world may never know.
Her hands shook when they reached for the black door handle of the commercial refrigerator, decorated in blood and pale skin where the acrylic nails of Carol Perkins had clawed their way in.
The metal handle was cold and alleviating to the blonde, but nothing could settle the bustling activity that ambushed her mind like a tornado.
Her best friend hadn't taken her side. Instead, she even agreed with the one who hurt Valentina like no other.
Carol Perkins was the one who took her in freshman year, who introduced her to a new life where she didn't have to feel suffocated by Steve's absence, who made her feel whole again. Now she felt empty, like the entirety of who she'd become was bleeding from the wound of where she'd been stabbed in the back, again.
It was a never-ending cycle. She's found, she's hurt, she's lost, then she bleeds, and it never stops. That knife in her back, where little Stevie became simply just her neighbor; that scab, where the monster cut her open like a stuffed doll; that scar, that reopened when another knife reentered.
An eternal bleed that will forever haunt her with an aching burn, deep in her spine.
Grasping the shiny, red, aluminum can, the liquid fizzed with movement as it splashed against the inner lining that protected the girl's frail hand from sticking with soda.
She lowered it in her hands down to her side, letting the door fall closed on its own while she stared at the condensation of where the heat from her world had mixed with the chill of the freezer.
Her reflection stared back through the white smog, clouding the edges of the foggy window. A shell of who she'd become looking at the ghost of what she'd lost. Identical blue eyes that seemed so dark and pure to the exterior, but one was swimming with the troubles of the past and the other churned with fear of the future. A mirror of everything that's happened and everything to come; a simple reflection of Valentina Varner, and it was all it took for a single tear to roll down her dull, sunken cheeks.
In the background-going unacknowledged by the blonde, who found the blinding white of her shoes far more interesting than the rest of her vision-the bell above the entrance rang loudly as another customer entered the convenience store.
Tommy H walked casually with his hands in the pockets of his light-wash jeans and whistling the tune of some song he'd played for Carol last night. He went toward the familiar blonde who'd been missing for over ten minutes, far longer than it should take anyone to retrieve a single soda can.
"Yo, you good?" he called.
Three simple words-one barely counting in the English dictionary-yet, still, the cause of an explosion in aisle three at the feet of some brand new, white Converse.
