My Life in Rosewood

Chapter Forty-Seven

WARNING - This chapter is going to get intense.

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After a few minutes of her being out of sight, Mona eventually comes back out of the bathroom. She no longer has on her hoodie, just a black t-shirt now, her gloves off as she sets them onto the desk and places her hoodie onto the back of the chair she had been sitting on. Then she walks off towards the other end of the room, mesmerized by her collection of photos, her eyes clouded. I just sit here quietly, so tired from her beating, my head hanging but I watch her through my good eye to the best of my ability. Even if I had been wearing my glasses this is probably the clearest it can get for me right now.

A few more seconds of her staring aimlessly before she finally looks at me and her eyes soften a little, coming towards me. When she's closer I notice she has a rag in her hand, looking a little damp. That's when she raises her hand and holds my head up for me by my chin, dabbing it onto my face. This makes me wince and now I realize she's cleaning me up. But the damage is done for whoever she plans to trick into coming here, she will see what Mona did to me.

Silence on both ends for a while as she continues to clean the blood, my breathing faint, then she finally speaks. "What do you want to know?"

This takes me off guard. Not the fact she spoke to me, but the way she asked in her normal tone of concern. "You mean besides the fact that you took me hostage?" I say weakly, taking a painful breath.

"I'm really sorry about this, Jessie." she pulls away now and I'm able to keep my head up a little better now as she watches me with a sigh before grabbing her chair again and sitting back down. "I needed you, but I couldn't exactly ask." Obviously being A makes asking for help complicated. I mean, stalking people and being batshit crazy enough to blackmail them on top of everything she's done till now would put her into the loony bin.

I stare at her with my unswollen eye, thinking carefully on how to ask the right questions. "Then why? Why do it at all?"

Mona smiles sadly, but a hint of anger behind her eyes as she tells her story, about how she only started this cyberbullying to get the girl's attention. She made sure that they knew bullying others was going to bite them in the ass and helping the meanest girl do it wouldn't sit well with their friend A. She wanted to make sure they knew that just because they were once popular that things they did would eventually creep up on them. But she didn't mean to take it to the extent that she did, she just wanted to make them see her side and then it escalated and she got too invested. It wasn't fully about payback anymore, it was about playing a game she was good at. And I swear she sounded completely and utterly convinced that she's been doing the right thing.

"I knew a lot of things they did in their past, and secrets they never even told each other. I needed to make sure they were listening."

"And to do that you ran over your best friend?" I say in a slow tone, barely even able to continue talking as I refer to her birthday party when I realize that her being A means she was the one who ran down Hanna with her car.

She flinches and shifts her eyes away from me, the guilt so noticeable I actually see the friend I knew once. "I didn't mean to do that."

"But you did. You almost killed her."

"I didn't mean for Hanna to get hurt. She's my best friend, I just wanted her back."

"What do you mean you wanted her back?"

She just watches me for a bit and then says. "I regret what I did to her every day."

That doesn't exactly answer my question as I take another painful breath, trying to keep my head up from how tired I am. But I shift my body a bit, trying to get free. "You can change this, Mona. Just...let me out of here and I'll help you explain. It's not too late to get help and be you again."