Their Masks

The Blonde Cheerleader's Mask (Part 3)

It must have been hours since Justin left.

Lexi didn’t seem to know much about it as she was concentrating all her efforts in making her mind go blank. She had finally realized the answers to many of her questions today. Things that helped clear up a lot of the mysteries that existed in her life. Others that had been vaguely suspicious to her. And the important few that she was never expecting to know.

She finally understood that she was obsessed with Justin Mani.

That was the truth she had been hiding from. This thing she felt for him wasn’t love. It couldn’t be love. Love means that both parties involved give and take in the exchange. Ever since she had taken him to that café last summer, all Justin had been doing is taking things from her.

Taking her time…

Taking her kindness…

Taking her love…

And giving nothing at all in return.

But that wasn’t true. He had given her one very small thing. He had given her some recognition. Saying her name and asking her to stay at this hospital was a sign of recognition that he could trust her with the most important thing in his life.

But that was just another fact she had understood today. The most important thing to Justin was in that hospital, but it wasn’t her.

It was the one best friend that she had since her older sister left.

Lexi had spent fifteen minutes of solitude in the waiting room pondering on this fact. Then she spent another fifteen in the bathroom crying about it. The next thirty minutes after her ‘bathroom break’ were spent understanding exactly why Justin loved going to the café she worked at all last summer in Gwen's room.

By the time it was ten o’clock, Lexi had come to terms with the fact that she was simply not good enough for Justin Mani. Gwen had everything he needed. What exactly that was, Lexi would never find out. She had decided that she would not live her life with the poison that was Justin Mani. She would not surround herself with despicable friends like Gwen. Or live in a house with an emotionless mother.

Her sister was right in moving away from this town. Once they buried their father and she finished her high school studies, she was going to find the furthest university away from his hell.

“Lexi?”

Gwen’s voice startled her back to reality. It was weak and very fragile. That was not a tone in which Lexi had ever heard it. And it occurred to her that she greatly detested hearing it all together.

“I’m here, Gwen.”

The girl turned her head to the side and her bloodshot eyes were already tearing at the strain of the movement. Lexi was surprised that the girl thought of her name first before anyone else's. Did she not know who brought her here in the first place?

“Lexi… Lexi…” that was all Gwen spoke, her hand flipping to face palm-up on the bed. Lexi didn’t understand what the girl wanted, but it seemed she wanted the distance between them to be reduced, a deed that Lexi had already decided not a moment ago that she was against. She wanted as much distance as possible away from anything with ties to Justin Mani and her life.

“Lexi… I’m… sorry… Lexi…”

Just like that, Lexi forgot about her problems in this world. She forgot about her convictions to distance herself from people and things that were harming her mental state. She was beside the bed faster than she could decide against it.

“Stop talking nonsense, Gwen. You need to rest.”

“You don’t understand… I just wanted him to like me better… That’s why I did this... I did this so he could love me.”

She had suspected it for a while, but Lexi felt her world crush around her when she heard Gwen’s words. So she really did do this to get to Justin’s heart. She almost killed herself just so she could be in his arms.

Was this what it took to get Justin Mani in love with you? Did you have to be inches from death so that the heartless boy could finally give you his attention? She had been right all along in her thoughts. This was not love in the least bit. This was an obsession, and an unhealthy one at that.

But no matter how much she detested her friend for stooping so low to get a boy's attention, she couldn’t turn her back on her. They had been through too much together, seen the other suffer on many accounts, made promises that both of them had struggled to keep. Lexi wondered why her friend would let a boy ruin this friendship they had both invested a lot of time and love in.

“It’s ok, Gwen. We’ll get though this together,” the smile on Lexi’s face was forced. She didn’t want to show her anger to her only friend. She wanted her image of the girl to be good before she left her and everything wrong about this place behind.

But Gwen was fine with it.

She knew everyone would hate her now. She knew that the boy of her dreams would no longer like her ever again. But at least her friend would never leave her.

How was she supposed to know that the blonde cheerleader’s mask harbored a hate towards her when the only boy Gwen was guilty of loving was the one in whose arms she had collapsed in.