A Known Stranger

Chapter 35

Chapter 35

Three months later: May.

             I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that in less than a week, I would be a high school graduate. It seemed as if just a month ago, I had been entering my senior year in high school but I wasn’t. In fact, I was a week away from ending my final year as a high school student. The year had been full of surprises: both good ones and bad ones.

                If you would have told me at the beginning of my high school career that the group of friends that I surrounded myself would no longer be a part of my life by the time I graduated, I would have doubted you and told you that the group of friends that I had, were real and would never hurt me.

                Well, I was wrong. The people that I surrounded myself were more complicated than the part of me that I hid from everybody else in my life. Kimberly had willingly been the other women Ryder had been seeing behind my back. Zoe had pushed me away after the accident her sister had when she fell off my porch and then when things fell apart she tried being there but facing the facts, we all knew that things would never be the same ever again.

                Although Zoe and I occasionally talked, it wasn’t the same. Nothing ever would be again. There would always be that one event between us that changed the friendship we once had. We would never be able to go back and hang out like we used to. Study and gossip between breaks, she wouldn’t bother me at work until my boss told her to ‘buy something or get to steppin’.’ Nothing between Zoe and I would be the same, just like things between Kim would be non-existent.

                Even though, Ryder’s death had hit Kimberly the hardest out of everyone else- aside from Ryder’s family- and it somehow showed me that Kim hadn’t been lying when she said she had been in love with Ryder, but nothing between her and I would be fixed.

                Sure I forgave her, but forgiveness didn’t mean that things between her and I would go back to the way they were before senior year. She had lost my trust. She had done the unthinkable. She had slept with my boyfriend and lied to me about. She had acted as if what she had done was okay when it wasn’t. She had called me things that no ‘best friend’ would ever say and had done things that were unforgivable; yet I had forgiven her.

                I had forgiven her because life was too short to hold grudges.

                “Do you already have your outfit planned out?” My mother questioned, walking into my bedroom with a bundle of clothing in her arms nearly reaching up to her chin in height.

                I looked up from my laptop; my glasses perched on my nose as I scrolled through my Tumblr account. It was Sunday night, five nights before I was a high school graduate and finally free from the horrid place.

                “Not really,” I admitted closing my laptop screen before sliding off my bed. Dropping the bundle of clothing in her hands onto my bed she huffed and placed both of her hands on her lips. Today had been her day off so she had been cleaning the entire day, keeping herself busy instead of just sitting down to relax for once.

                “Well do you have something in mind?” she questioned looking up at me with a small smile. Since Ryder’s death, and my older brother’s birth and death anniversary, she had been working less hours at the hospital and making a bigger effort at being more involved in my life.

                I shrugged and scratched my thigh as I stood next to her eyeing the pile of clothes with curiosity. The pile was large and different colors stood out, making me wonder what exactly was hiding within the depths of it. “I was thinking about a dress, but then I pondered on the idea of jeans.”