Into the Flames

CHAPTER TWO

MYoon3: Yah! Emmy! It's been a week since I've heard from you! You'd better be ok!

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After returning from Fort Worth I immediately lock myself in my shitty apartment and refuse to come out. Mr. Tucker visits three times to tell me that if I don't get my ass downstairs I am going to be fired. I couldn't care less.

It’s like drowning, this pain in my chest. Struggling to breathe against the tidal waves that are my emotions. And I am alone. Miles below the surface where the water is calm and cold and dark.

But it doesn't matter if I die like this. Trapped in the cold metaphorical sea that is my feelings. No one will rescue me.

Six days pass and I am still locked within my pathetic abode. Apparently his threats are empty. No matter how long I sit there, curled into myself, I can't get it out of my brain. Sarah Tucker is gone. Replaced with a barbie wanna be.

For fucks sake, that one coffee cost more than I spend in toilet paper in a month! Once upon a time I had a friend who would have laughed with me about such a thing. A friend who wouldn't have hesitated to call the very person she had become the epitome of snobbery.

Why did she change? How did she change? Or maybe I never really knew her at all. Maybe she has been fake all along. So much. I have sacrificed so much just to protect the smile on that face. For her I cornered myself into this ass-ended job.

For so long everything I have done has been for her. Me? I am a lost cause anyways. I'll never have a future. But maybe... Maybe it is better this way? How could someone with no future remain friends with someone who intended to go places, to be someone?

As I sit on my bed, huddled beneath my blankets and knees to my chest, I cry. I cry and all the memories shared with her play before my eyes.

Sarah dragging me to the mall. Sarah buying me lunch because I was hungry. Sarah promising never to give up on me... Liar.

"Everyone is a liar" I tell myself. "Trust no one."

But a small part of me is glad. I won't be dragging her down anymore.

My stomach really can't bear another minute without food. Grudgingly I rise, wash my face, and then make my way downstairs. I haven't even stepped through the door to the restaurant proper when a bowl of spaghetti is placed upon the table nearest the kitchen and Mrs. Tucker gestures for me to sit down.

"I know you must be starving" she says.

I sit and begin scarfing down the spaghetti. Forkful after forkful of pasta enters my mouth, and for every bite there are at least two more questions. It isn't until the bowl is empty though that I manage to find my voice and settle upon one particular question.

"You knew didn't you?"

I look up at her now. The woman that gave birth to the world's most ungrateful friend. Mrs.Tucker looks so uncomfortable in this moment. She begins to open her mouth, denial on the tip of her tongue, when her husband answers for her.

Mr.Tucker, it seems, has materialized out of thin air with one simple word.

"Yes"

He looks me in the eyes and there is no remorse. No guilt. This man is very good at not showing emotions at all, but I realize that it is more than that.

"You thought I'd leave if I found out didn't you?"

The couple before me don't even need to voice it for me to know that my assumption is correct. Mrs.Tucker is looking at anything and everything except for me, and Mr.Tucker's hard gaze never wavers.