“Talk to me Thea, what’s wrong with you?”
The world was shaking, or maybe it was just me. I didn’t know anymore, and I didn’t care.
“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me?!” I shouted hysterically, “What the fuck is wrong with you? I told you that you were never to bring her up again, and what do you go and do? You make her the class’ main discussion and to top it all off, you deliberately antagonized me to provoke a reaction! You’re so busy talking a million words per second, you don’t listen!”
Digging into my bag, I pulled out the napkin and threw it at him. The crumpled paper lay at his feet with the words free rant peeking out.
“Margaret “The Shark” Cunning,” I spat, “the woman everybody always praises, as if she were some sort of saint, was a conniving, manipulative, vengeful and bitter woman. She let my father go to jail for a crime he didn’t commit, while she ran off with her lover, my darling stepfather, who by the way, took great pleasure in molesting me when I was twelve. And when I told The Shark about it, she sent me off to live with my grandmother. I wet the bed for a year before I worked up the courage to tell my grandmother what had happened. By the time we went back for my sister, it was too late, he had already gotten to her and from what my mother told us, he was long gone. I suppose she must have seen it with her own eyes that time.
“My grandmother took us in, and I didn’t have to see her face again, until I got a call from her doctor. All the poison and bitterness she had been bottling up had finally started to kill her. She’d pushed everyone away, and in the end, she had no one left. So against my better judgment, I came back.
“I think I was expecting some sort of an apology, but all she wanted to talk about was the fact that her life’s work had all been in vain, because she had been forced to turn down that seat within the Supreme Court.
“So excuse me Professor Black, for not wanting praise her in front of your goddamn class. She is The Shark to me, because she eats her own young.”
I ended my free rant and grabbed my things. I moved towards the door, and he stepped aside without saying a word. I didn’t think about where I was going, I just ran. I ran from him, I ran from her, and I ran from the law.
I ran all the way home and threw myself into bed, sobbing heavily. I heard a movement next to my bed and I felt Selene crawl into bed to comfort me… she didn't bother asking. She didn’t need to.
LEVI
I entered the house, and made it to the bathroom sink just in time. My stomach was upturned, and as the reality of the situation hit me, all I could think about were her words. They haunted me.
I spat into the sink as a wave of vertigo swarmed over me. In all honesty, I wasn’t sure how I had made it all the way to my house. Everything from the moment she ran out of the bathroom to now was a blur. I saw her fighting back her tears. Her whole body language changed, like she was being run over by a car each time someone spoke of her mother. The panic, the fear, her pain, I couldn’t just turn away from her. Reason told me not to follow her, it was too risky. I could just swing by her place later. But she was in agony, and the risk meant nothing compared to that.
> Now I felt like my soul was being stoned, and the realization that I had victimized her by forcing her to endure that lecture… I retched once more. This time, nothing more than a thin thread of saliva passed my lips.
I stepped away from the sink and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. As my back pressed against the cool tile of the bathroom wall, I allowed myself to slide to the floor.
I lifted up her napkin. Of all the things I thought she would have ranted about, this was nowhere near my list.
As I sat there, lost in the painful memory of our conversation, my phone rang. Without looking at the caller ID, I answered, “This isn’t a good time.”
“Oh? Who’s over—?”
“Bethan. I’m serious.”
“What happened?” her tone changed.
I thought for a moment. “Have you ever seen a nuclear bomb go off?”
“Levi…”
“The people in the center, they don’t feel anything. One minute they’re alive, the next, they’re just ash. It’s the people who are far away that really suffer.”
“Levi, I don’t understand.”
“A bomb went off today, and it was my fault. I saw the Do Not Touch sign, and I knew that if I did, that something bad would happen, but I just wanted to know what that something was, and then the bomb went off. I never expected it to be as bad as it was…”
“I’m coming over,” she said.
“No, I’m fine.”
“No you’re not! Listen to yourself Levi, you’re talking crazy.”
“I just want to go back to that week, everything was better that week,” I said, talking more to myself than to her. “I’ll call you later. I gotta go.”
I hung up, and threw my phone away into the corner.