She's A Poison

3

Maya was lost for words. She expected to arrive back to her home to find a sleeping, peaceful June, but that was the exact opposite of what she found. Instead, she found a furious, hot-tempered, and sleep deprived girl waiting for her outside.  

"What did you do?" June repeated herself, even more furious than she was before.

"I was out on a stroll," Maya smiled, worried that June would see right through her. And she did, June always saw right through her. June was the one person Maya had ever opened up to her in her life; she hated it, the feeling of trust and vulnerability. 

"Tell me the truth!" Not once had Maya ever heard June raise her voice, not once; until now. June was always the girl you turned to for advice and positivity, never the girl you expected to get mad.

"I visited Mr. Dern, that jerk," she shrugged and tried to walk past June, and into her apartment building, but June blocked her. Not just blocked her, June actually pushed her away. 

"You killed him, didn't you? You killed him!" June was yelling, twitching, and walking closer to Maya, trying to get up in her face. 

Maya and June had met in their sophomore year of college, right after Maya had made her third kill, a boy named Antonio. Antonio had been accused of sexually harassing multiple young children, girls and boys, and a few married women, but thanks to his father, Mr. Mayor, the police never investigated the situation. Maya had told June that she had killed Antonio, but June had laughed it off, thinking it was a joke; until a month later, when Antonio's body was found, exactly where Maya said she had hidden it. Surprisingly, June wasn't as shaken as Maya had thought she would, but she was definitely shaken a little; so Maya never told June about any of her killings, and June assumed there wasn't anymore. 

"What?" Maya walked backwards, trying to get away from June. 

"I knew it! I knew there were more! How many more?" 

"I don't know what you are talking about!" Maya had to stop moving if she moved any farther back, she would be standing in one of the busiest streets in NYC. 

"You're sick Maya! Sick! How... many... more... were there?!" June was right in front of Maya now, her hands on her chest, threatening to push her into the street. 

"Fine, June, have it your way. Before Antonio, there was Liam and Xander. Liam was my boyfriend, who actually gave me this ring," she held out her hand, but she realized that she had misplaced it. "Xander would have gone to college with us. After Antonio, there were only two more, both very recent. Sam, you remember him? My neighbour that 'moved away'," she put air quotes around "moved away." "And then there was Mr. Dern. You remember him too, right?" Maya smirked, watching as June's determined stance turned into a horror stance, too shocked to move. "Any more questions?" 

Maya was never the one to show her "crazy" side unless she absolutely had to. Most of the time she put on this act of organized and put-together. But when she did act like herself, when she let her "crazy" show, it really popped out, scaring even her sometimes. She might as well have been the real-life Joker or Harley Quinn, and for what June knew right now, she was. 

For awhile June said nothing, but she had finally managed enough courage to ask one more question, "What did Liam and Xander do? I know what the other three had done, but what did they do?" 

"Liam cheated on me, and he was a rapist," she paused. "And you really want to know what Xander did?"

June nodded, turning a pale whitish-green, the color somebody turns right before they pass out or vomit after a roller-coaster. 

"He did nothing, I just had the urge to kill," she laughed, waiting to see June's expression. 

June said nothing and did nothing. She looked down at the dirty, NYC sidewalk, then to Maya. She stared at her, trying to decode her. Trying to see if there was any human left in the person she considered her best friend for the past 8 years of her life. Soon, she fell to the ground, and muttered only two words, over and over again, "you're sick." 

"You're sick. You're sick. You're sick."

She walked past June, into the building, then into the elevator. Once she made sure she was all alone, she laughed. She laughed her crazy, demented laugh and let it all out. When she finally got onto her floor and turned the corner, she saw that Connor was standing by her door, and was waiting for her. He looked like he was holding something in his hand, but he quickly took that hand and shoved it into his pajama pocket. 

"What are you doing up? It's like 4 in the morning!" Maya asked, suspicious of what his answer would be. Although Connor had opened up a little to Maya, he was still like her, never giving any important or personal information away. 

He shrugged, "I could ask you the same." 

"You could, but it's not like I would answer anyway. Now if you don't mind, I would like to go inside and sleep, I have work in five hours," this part was actually true. She had to go to her stupid desk job at nine, which means she would have to get up in three hours.  If there was one thing in the world Maya hated more than men, it was waking up. How she dreaded waking up! 

"Fine, guess I can keep this then," Maya stopped trying to unlock her door and turned, just in time to see Connor throw her diamond ring in the air and catch it. He turned on his heel and started to walk back to his apartment right as Maya yelled for him. 

"No, no, I need that," Maya sighed and marched up to him, with as much power as she could, considering how she tired she was. 

Connor leaned down to her height, his face right in hers, so close that if one of them moved a centimeter closer to the other, they would be kissing. "Be careful what you leave behind," he dropped her ring into her hand and stood up again. 

"For all I know, you could have stolen it," Maya remarked, putting her ring onto her finger again. 

"I could have, but I didn't," and that was the end of that. 

Maya woke up to some banging at her door, forty minutes earlier than she wanted to get up. She covered her head with a pillow and laid in bed until the banging got so out of hand. 

Forcing herself out of bed, she yelled: "I'm coming!" She wrapped herself in her bathrobe and jogged to the front door. 

It was her building manager. 

"What a lovely surprise," she yawned while crossing her arms, pissed that this was the first face she saw this morning. 

"Hold the sarcasm. Last night I was getting to leave, when I found your friend outside, muttering something to herself. She looked very shaken, and she is still out there! Why don't you go check on her?" 

"Bob, I don't have friends," she slammed the door in his face when she heard him whisper something along the lines of "now, there is something I believe." 

Dreadingly making her way to the kitchen to make her daily, black coffee, there was another knock at her door.

"For the last time, I don't have any frie-"

"Hey, neighbor. Mind if I bug you for some coffee?"