Searching for a Perfect Day

A Rock and a Hard Place

Chapter Fifteen: A Rock and a Hard Place

“Elsa, answer the door. Kareem, walk back to the model. Ben, seriously, sit the hell back down. Andrew…just stay where you are.” 

Hayley’s words are firm, but the meaning passes over Elsa easily, the blonde still frozen in her original spot as her eyes linger towards a looming, black screen where she can still see Anna staring right back at her. 

Diffuse the situation. 

Her inner voice is frantic and trembling, so similar to the trepidation thrumming all over her extremities that it makes the same action she wants enabled to become near impossible. 

They can’t leave here tonight knowing what they know. 

But unless some miracle comes upon her, the likeliest being the massive earthquake Californian residents have been promised for decades to strike or, the least likelier: a time machine…

I can’t rectify this. 

Her fingers claw through her hair, sending blonde strands to sprawl in messy disarray. She’s quite aware of everyone’s wary eye on her, but her own is stuck on the wooden planks on the floor, teeth gritting, fists balling, head throbbing at how this has spiraled into unfixable proportions. 

The knock issues from the door again, this time with more urgency. She turns towards the sound, resolutely ignores her classmates and heeds Hayley’s command, taking slow, defeated steps to the front door—a prisoner to the execution block. 

She takes the pies from the unassuming deliverer, remembers through her muddled mind to tip, before closing the door and making her way back to the waiting party, half throwing the boxes atop the dining table. 

She looks at all of them from her faraway spot, her heart thumping out of her chest and her breaths coming in despairingly short almost gasps. 

Hayley’s green eyes are locked on hers, hands still clasped on the television’s power cord. Kareem can’t meet her stare. He looks almost…disappointed (in himself? In her? She’s not sure), almond eyes grazing over a model that won’t give anyone any answers. Andrew seems the most relaxed, both hands snaked in his jean’s pocket and eyeing her, then Ben, then Kareem in an almost patterned manner. And Ben…

The hard smirk gives his youthful face an almost sinister look, and it’s a good reminder that none of them—especially the blond, isn’t her friend. Maybe Kareem could be something of a close resemblance to that endearment—only time will reveal that course to its inevitable conclusion, but everyone else is at best, a teammate…a rival in a competitive school with a just as competitive job market. 

And their team, as of thirty minutes back, no longer needs to be its once cohesive unit. The project is finished. Formality can be thrown into the wind and begrudging respect with it. Elsa has no clout, no advantage, no ground to stand on…and she knows that Ben knows this as well. 

Her mind provides her the memory of two weeks back when Kareem had divulged his knowledge of the same subject, the palpitations running through her burnt synapses and the rushing of her heartbeat so similar to that scorching day. The back of her throat feels sticky, the overwhelming urge to vomit making the task of breathing that much harder. She’s only glad she hasn’t eaten anything, although the bitter bile taste of a sip of beer coming back up would also prove her wrong.