Trust No Bitch: Part 2

Clara Wright: Friday, 4th December, 2015

Evil whore. I'll bring her down. My brain cannot comprehend how that fucking sket gets away with the shit she does.

She'd played it down in hospital for Gemma's sake but the words Clara had read on Sasha Evans' blog had gone round and round in her head all night long, like the lyrics of some appalling boyband's latest instalment of pop drivel that every local radio station insisted on playing ad nauseam, needing a sledgehammer to knock them out. She wasn't one to readily miss out on sleep but by the time she turned up for her 9AM lecture, puffing away on her morning cigarette, she'd had a maximum of 2 hours and was running on little more than an untamed yearning to punch Sasha in the face. She'd got a lot, lot better at keeping her rage in lately, carefully nursing it and tending to it, just so it'd sting its unsuspecting recipient more in the long run. But seeing Sasha's pontifical smirk as she went to walk into the lecture hall, Lilly, Gemma and Alice drifting behind? Clara saw no benefit in waiting. Before the other 3 could hold her back, she was stopping Sasha in her tracks and slamming the door to the lecture hall shut, almost hitting a scowling Tess Rowe on the arse in the process. It left the 5 of them hovering expectantly in the empty corridor, all jaundiced gazes and curled upper lips.

"Clara, please, not this morning..." Gemma murmured, massaging her bandaged arm with the other exposed one. Despite the demurring of the other 3, her parents, and even the doctors, Gemma had asseverated the importance of her going straight back to normal life the minute she was released from hospital, less than 96 hours after the attack. Whether it was brave or straight up moronic, Clara had yet to decide. There was little she could do about the decision, however, other than commend Gemma for it once she'd made the decision and pretend that the mass of dressings on her arm wasn't actually there. Sasha, on the other hand, didn't bother with any of that. She looked straight at it as if it were a photo hanging in an art gallery or some wondrous sunset, as if it were the most compelling thing she'd seen in weeks.

"How's your arm, Gemma?" She asked sweetly, her twisted face conflicting with the saccharine tone of her voice. "I heard about the attack. I'm really, really sorry. But it's amazing of you to come straight back. I could never have done it."

"Oh, piss off." Gemma muttered, Clara taking her declaration of hostility as a green light to launch into the polemic Gemma had interrupted moments before.

"We saw your blog, Sasha." She sneered, stepping so close that she could smell the coffee on Sasha's breath. "You know the one? About Cleo? Whether it has anything to do with what happened to her or not it's still the most fucking pathetic thing of this century. I mean, what inspired you? Is the Burn Book too noughties for your pretentious arse? Thought you'd go all high tech?" She waved her hands about derisively. "You wouldn't say any of that shit to her face, would you? Because you know she would annihilate you in a second. I would annihilate you in a second. A fucking second." Clara hadn't known what she'd expected Sasha to do once she'd finished talking, but what she did do was eerily reminiscent of Cleo. It was a laugh, one completely bereft of affability, and uncomfortably familiar.

"Forgot to take your anti-psychotic meds today, did you? I have no idea what you're talking about, Clara." She said, head tilting to the side, auburn tresses swinging and glowing in the early morning sunlight. It was like she hadn't heard anything Clara had said, none of it hurting her in the way Clara had anticipated it to. What now? Clara asked herself. She'd led the charge and now they were all standing there stupidly, waiting for the next person to make some snide comment. It was Alice that stepped forward, Clara's heart stopping momentarily.

"You forget, Sasha. I have an impeccable memory." She said coldly. Even Sasha failed to veil the shock of Alice, the one she had most likely silently considered to be her only ally there, speaking against her. "I saw your blog first. I saw the things that the person who ran it wrote and they sounded just a little bit too familiar for it to be coincidence. So, you have 2 options. Just be honest, or stand here and pretend that you have no idea what we're talking about. But bear in mind that if I really wanted to, I could prove not only that you know exactly what we're talking about but also that you run the whole account and manage every single thing that's posted on there in about 5 minutes, if that's what it has to come down to." Sasha opened her mouth but then closed it again, substituting what Clara expected to be a vituperative comment for a stammer and a further narrowing of the eyes. It was all she needed to get her going again.