one
I never putmuch stock in the phrase ‘too angry to think straight’ until I experienced it. Pure, unadulterated rage swept through me as I stormed across my school’s football field. Everybody in my path jumped out of the way, and if my thoughts had been working in that moment, I would have wondered what on earth my face looked like that made people so afraid. I slammed open the back door of the school so hard that I nearly hit a grade nine student in the face, but I didn’t stop to apologize as I zeroed in on my targeted room: the senior common room at the end of the hall. Once again, I slammed the door open, but this time, the people on the other side were not poor little grade nine students but rather my best friends.
“What’s wrong with you?” Madison asked, putting a hand to her heart as if I had shocked her.
“I am going to kill somebody,” I announced loudly. I threw myself on the couch between her and Eli, my arms instinctively crossing over my chest. Now that I was stationary and, more importantly, away from the problem, my anger was very slowly starting to ebb away.
“Oh, well, that explains it,” she muttered. Beside me, I felt Eli turn to glare at Madison. He was doing it over my head, and Iwas sure he thought I couldn’t see him. Another wave of anger washed over me at the thought that he was trying to defend me like that, but I managed to push it away just as quickly. I was just misdirecting my anger — I actually appreciated Eli trying to help, even if it wasn’t strictly necessary right then.
“What’s wrong, Violet?” Eli asked nicely. As a general rule, he was much gentler than Madison was. Where she was brash and loud, he was sweet and soft-spoken. Normally, I appreciated those qualities in him but right then, as furious as I was, I would have preferred Madison’s approach.
“I had an argument with Lewis,” I muttered darkly. I didn’t elaborate as I glared holes at the coffee table in front of me. Lewis’s words replayed in my mind over and over again, like some broken record that I couldn’t shut off.
“What did the jerk do now?” Madison asked. Eli didn’t even try to be subtle this time, and he reached over me and smacked her upside the head. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the pointed look he gave her. Madison clearly got the hint because she cleared her throat and said, “I, um… Sorry. That’s not to say that he isn’t… a… nice… person… To you… specifically.”
The words were awkward and forced, and she was clearly struggling to find a good adjective to describe Lewis Stone. I wasn’t surprised in the least; Madison had never been a fan of Lewis from the time that we met him back in primary school. Eli had never liked him much either, though they met much later, in high school. I couldn’t entirely blame him. Lewis and I had been best friends since preschool, but there had been many times that I wondered whether we would have become friends if we’d met later in life. We’d been similar as kids, in the way that most kids are really, but had become very different as we grew up and met other people. I mostly held onto his friendship because it felt safe to me. I regret that now.
I stretched out, putting my feet up on the coffee table, and said, “No, it’s fine. Jerk is right.”
Silence reigned in the room. I glanced at Madison and Eli in turn. They were both clearly very taken aback by my words, and rightfully so. I normally got very angry when my friends said anything bad about Lewis; while I knew he wasn’t always the nicest person in the world, I still thought they could treat him with basic respect as my close friend.
“What happened, Violet?” Eli asked. He stared at me with his big brown eyes. When he looked at me like that, I often got the intense urge to tell him all my secrets. I’d suggested to him on numerous occasions that he should be a therapist because he would have no issue getting patients to open up to him. I thought I was slowly beginning to convince him, mostly because we were leaving for university in three months, and he still had no idea what he wanted to do with his life.
I pulled my gaze away from his and forced myself to hold the words back. I didn’t want him to know what had happened between Lewis and me. Not yet at least.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “The only thing that matters is that you two were right about him, and I never—” I took a deep breath after my voice cracked. “I never want to see him again.”
If I thought they had looked shocked before, it was nothing compared to now. I was actually a little proud of myself for managing to surprise them so much. It was unfortunate that the accomplishment had to come at the expense of my oldest friendship but it was a nice silver lining or whatever. I was especially proud to see that I shocked Madison into silence. If you had asked me before, I would have said that was impossible.
“Violet,” Eli said. He waited until I looked at him to continue. “Are you sure you’re okay? It’s really okay if you’re not.”
Really, he was born to be a therapist. It’s okay to not be okay? He was a walking mental health poster. I wanted to jokeabout that, but I could tell that he wanted a serious answer and probably wouldn’t appreciate my attempt at humor right then.
I rubbed a tired hand over my face and then dropped it into my lap.
“I will be,” I said.
“Do you want a chocolate milk?” Madison asked in the same tone one might use to calm down a screaming child.
“I…” I frowned. “Sure?”
She looked around quickly, even though there was nobody else in the lounge, then pulled a 1-liter carton of chocolate milk out of her backpack. I glanced at Eli, hoping he might have a better understanding than me of what on earth was going on, but he looked hopelessly confused.
“Uh, Madison?” I asked. She ignored me as she then pulled out a tall, black cup with the school’s name and crest printed on the side. I recognized that as something she could buy in the school bookstore, though I still didn’t understand why it was in her bag. “Madison, why do you have a carton of chocolate milk in your backpack?”
“Because they don’t sell it in the cafeteria,” she said simply. She handed me the cup, now filled with chocolate milk. “Bottoms up.”
“Right, but why?” I asked. I stared at the cup distastefully. Could milk sit in a backpack for hours and still be okay to drink?
She grimaced. “Something about making students healthier. I’ve never really understood that. I mean, by the time you’re in high school, you can make your own decisions about whether or not you’re all right with the sugar content in a drink, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” I said. I didn’t realize she cared about that so strongly, but that was a topic for another time. “But I meant why did you need a carton of chocolate milk in the first place?”
“Oh!” she said. She frowned and looked at the carton in her hand, then at the cup I was holding. “Honestly, I don’t remember. I feel like there was an important reason…”
“Naturally,” Eli said flatly. He leaned forward. “You should probably hide it, though. We’re not supposed to have food from the outside in here.”
Madison nodded and put the carton back in her bag.
