The Vituperator (NaNoWriMo 2015)

thirteen \\ heart

THERE'S A DREADFUL, pitched buzzing going on in a dark corner of my mind, growing louder and louder with each passing thought; irrelevant to the passing of time. I'm fucked, I think. There's no way she can't know — why else would she be talking to me about this?

"You suspect someone?" I hear myself say, but it sounds so distant.

"I wish I did," she says, and I start breathing again. "Someone took it; I'm so sure, but I don't know who to think of. It could be any of us, or it could be someone random from the party who just wandered up in here," she shrugs, "It's a little naïve to think this, but it could just be a stupid coincidence."

Coincidence. The irony leaves a bitter taste on my tongue — that's practically how I found the diary. Me, looking for the bathroom; stepping into Sasha's room and deciding, what the hell I'll just explore; a flash of bright pink underneath hiding underneath her cabinet catching my eye; my goddamn curiosity — it's all just coincidence. I want to laugh at myself right now.

"Anything's possible," I say, shrugging. I don't want to lean the conversation in any particular direction.

She laughs — bitter and mirthless. I take a moment to really look at Sasha, how tired she looks. She looks like she quite possibly spent the whole day in bed, perhaps sickly, or rolling around in some kind of guilt. There's just something on her face that looks like she wants doesn't want to keep things in anymore.

I'd seen faces like that before, most recently on my mother. It was a look for guilt for the possibility of tearing apart her family, maybe becoming ostracized by my grandparents. It's only now when I see her with Pauline, and my father relaxing in the single life with significantly less responsibilities (but still happier than when he was married), I know that letting the consuming secrets spill is the only way out. In my mother's case, however, it was an issue of sexuality, that perhaps only endangered herself. Sasha's secrets could most likely endanger someone else; Alona, perhaps, or quite possibly the entire gang itself.

I still don't know half the shit that's going on. I need to make more progress in the now, focus less on Alona's past and start working on the present.

"I don't know why I called you here," Sasha says, "I just saw you walking by, I guess and... I just need to talk to a girl. Since Alona stopped being our friend, I've been surrounded by testosterone 24/7. It gets old real fast."

"I'm sure you can find people who are easier to talk to. Try Tae."

She bats a hand dismissively. "Tae wouldn't get. Anyway, I mean, what if I wanted to talk shit about Nick? Tae wouldn't have that."

"You and Alona talked a lot of shit, I presume?"

"The shit would clog toilets."

I nod my head slowly in a kind of wow gesture with eyebrows raised. Sasha almost beams, the nostalgia clear on her face.

"So she stopped being your friend?" I ask.

"Yeah, I mean you probably heard about the fight. It was way before she packed up and left," She pauses for a moment. "Well, not way before, but the fight was probably one of the things that led up to it."

What was it about? I want to ask, but I don't want her to clam up. I need to try to get her to say it on her own. "Sounds like it was bad."

"She screwed me over," she says darkly. "Twice."

"The stuff she stole at the party?"

Sasha snickers, ducking her head down to look at her bare feet. She puts the tails of her robe over them, as if her feet were cold. She looks up at me — still standing in the middle of the room — and pats at the spot of her bed in front of her. "Sit. Jesus Christ, you're making me nervous."