Unintentional

Alyssa POV

I am now watching the local news, and Joy makes news. They suspect that it might be arson, but no known leads. My heart races. How could I have done that? Will there be anything I left behind that might incriminate me? Did I make the right decision? I have no answers to these questions, but it was the only thing I felt I could do at the time.

It's now 11:30 pm, and I feel so restless. I can't sleep. I really thought that I would have been able to set her house on fire and feel ok with it, but that's not how it is now. Every kind of negative thought crosses my mind. I don't even know if I will be able to sleep without nightmares of it.

I go to work feeling tired. I barely had any sleep throughout the night. I was so worried that I was up for most of the night. I can't take this anymore. I need to talk to Amy. I wanted to do it since last night, but I didn't want to risk any chance of Joy having new evidence. Since she obviously can't get on the school compound, I decided to see Amy here.

Finally, it's the English class of the day I've been waiting on. My students pour in, and I do my best to function. I'm sure to them everything seems normal, but on the inside, I am shaky. I hand out their papers from the previous day. I attach a short note on the top of Amy's paper.

See me after classes.

I'm packing my things to leave work when Amy walks in. She looks a bit worried. I run to her and hug her. I just need to feel her warmth. She hugs me back, running her hands up and down my back. She puts space between us and holds my hands.

"Is everything ok?"

The tears just seem to form out of nowhere.

"Amy, I have done something terrible. I found out who the person was who sent me the note about us. It was Joy. I was being followed by her for a while now, but only figured out two days ago. I took off work yesterday afternoon, and I went to her house. She was at work. I went inside her bedroom and on all the walls and her desk are pictures of me and pictures of us. I knew in my heart that she would use those against me, so I set her house on fire..."

"What? You did what? Damn, Alyssa. Why didn't you tell me? Maybe we could have gone there together and just taken all the evidence rather than setting her place on fire. I don't think that was a very smart move on your behalf."

I start pacing again. Amy takes hold of my hands and pushes me back towards my desk. I sit on the edge.

"Listen, what's done is done. You can't undo that. What you have to do now is just carry on normally. Joy probably isn't even thinking you would do that."

"We need to act smart, Amy. We need to not allow her to have any more chance to incriminate us."

We agree on not meeting publicly for a while. We want things to cool off and see if Joy will give up. Things will be difficult this way, because we won't get much time together, but it's something we have to do.