In The Shadow Of Her Smile

Chapter 7 - Let The Light In

We were walking home in silence, the weight of my confession still lingering in the air. She was looking up, and I was looking down.

Then she spoke.

"I lost my best friend too." - I looked at her, surprise and concern mixed in my eyes.

She didn't even look at me, but like she sensed what I was feeling, she put on a small smile, that was there for only a moment.

"Not like you did, no. But sometimes I wonder if it would be easier if it was like that." - I looked at her, now completely confused but... Curious too.

She was finally opening up to me.

"This is the second time I changed schools, you know, this one is the third I've attended. And I've become like this in the middle of my second one.

In the first one, there were three of us, and we were best friends in the whole world, but one of them started to distance as the years passed.

When I changed schools for the first time, I was seperated from one of them. Not from the one who started to distance, though.

The change hit me the hardest, and I wanted to hold onto everything I could so that I wouldn't feel the change so much, and as I had my best friend there with me, I decided to hold on to her as if there was no tomorrow. Because for me, there wasn't.

And as she started to treat me like trash, use me and make me feel like I wasn't important at all, I started to make excuses for her. I always had some good reason why she did it in my head, even though those excuses were never what was really going on."

This time she had to pause.

I saw the tears in her eyes, heard then in her voice, felt them in my own eyes from just a little while ago.

But I didn't say anything. I knew how hard it was to speak, how your throat almost closes and how you are afraid to speak, afraid of how will your voice sound once you do... I was not going to make it harder for her by saying something.

This was something she had to do. Alone. I was going to be there for her, but she had to finish what she started by herself, it is the only way someone can recover.

She loosened a big breath, preparing to continue. So I looked at her.

"Things got bad. For a year I didn't talk to anyone, didn't think I deserved it. Didn't think they deserved a punishment that was my presence."

She closed her eyes and then lowered her head, tears rolling down her face.

"I was a shadow. Not talking to anyone, not wanting to exist. But no one ever came to me either, never cared enough to remember I was still there, never found me important enough to even say hi when we saw each other in the hallways."

She stopped walking.

I turned my head to her, and then my whole body.

She was still looking at the floor.

"And my so called best feiend? She forgot about me, just like I never existed. Told me that I am just being some drama queen when I tried to open up to her.

And after that, I swore to myself never to open up to anyone ever again, because why would anyone care? Rhey only care while they have some use of you, but when they finally break you, then what? They turn around and walk away. They go to find someone else they can use. And they never once feel bad about it."

She stopped. But just as I wanted to say something, even if I didn't yet know what, she started to laugh. And it was not a pretty laugh.

It was terrifying.

A mixture of tears and maniacal laugh, to be precise, and it made a sound quite a lot of humans would run away from.

I almost wanted to run away too.

Almost.

She laughed again, and started to cry, still laughing, as she finally looked up at me - "And what then gives them the right to tell me I'm a bad person because I manipulate them?"

There was no regret in her eyes, just anger and sadness, mixed with something psychotic, something that came with keeping things like that inside for years and then spilling them all out in the matter of minutes.

And for the first time since I met Alycia Collins, I was scared.

Scared to death.