FRIENDSHIP

Chapter 3: Inexa

I stood in the shower, letting the water run over me like warm comfort.

I felt so guilty for asking my friends to go to a war. So, so guilty.

Ever since we were six, I had always been asking my friends to do this and do that. I hated doing it, but I couldn't stop. It was like this; they were humans. They could do what they wanted. And they cared about me. What if they went to war, for my sake, and they ended up dying?

It had been so much pressure for me. But I knew it wasn't all my fault. My father should take all the blame. He always told me to 'use' my friends 'properly', which was just wrong. Every time I wished for Mother to back me up, she would say, "Oh, your little friends, they don't know. They're, oh, so gullible. Use that to your advantage. Have I not told you that?"

She had been saying this ever since I was eight, when I truly found out what they wanted me to do. So I was brought up to see my friends as expendable and usable, but I grew to truly care about my friends, and I couldn't do that. It was just... inhuman.

Yet Ibe and Eina listened to me every time. It was so much pressure, but my parents were very insistent, so I had to listen to them too. Honestly, I wished I could run away. But I didn't know how. The door could only be opened with a secret code to the lock that almost everyone knows except me, and the windows were double-reinforced. So the actual only choice was to stay.

I had always been wondering if I'd done something wrong, but my friends didn't mind, and my parents were always saying I was doing the right thing, which made me feel horrible.

Sometimes I wondered which one out of the three of us, Ibe, Eina and I, was the most fortunate. Was it Ibe, who had a sexist father that had three wives, a half-lunatic mother who always went on about betrayal and had nine siblings? Was it Eina, whose overprotective father shadowed her every step after experiencing the ordeal of her mother's and sister's death? Or was it me, with a mother and father who only fed and clothed me so that I could be used for their personal gains?

The water was running cold, and I turned it off. I stepped out of the shower, wondering if Father would let Ibe and Eina come with us to Fayan.

Probably he would. And both he and Mother would say that I had finally grown up and learned how to use people.

I bit my lip as I dressed, not knowing how to talk to them. I rarely had, especially after that incident...

It was a typical day when we were hanging out at my house. Mother needed us to 'help' clean the garage. Long story short, Ibe got attacked by our neighbour's dog and Eina got gasoline all over her favourite shoes...

A thousand worries ran through my mind like a stampede. I knew I had to face this sooner or later. We were leaving tomorrow. If Eina and Ibe didn't manage to convince their families before then, their efforts would be in vain. Now I regretted telling them everything. I shouldn't have told them. I should've left without any notice.

What would I do if both of them died and I stayed alive? What would I tell their families? Who would hang out with me, a friend who leads her friends to death?

I was sure they would hate me forever.

If I were Ibe or Eina, I would've hated myself. But could I choose? Could I leave my family? Could I leave my friends? Both of them couldn't happen. It didn't work this way... and it couldn't. I couldn't make four people crestfallen because of only one person, me.

So what would I do now?