Almost all of the time I was the calm before the storm.

Soundless, tense, unreadable and incomprehensible calm. Silence. I was limiting myself, tolerating what was thrown at me like an extra, unnecessary ballast. I held back the tightening of my arm, swallowed the sound of my own voice, and drowned the outpouring of emotion beneath a layer of ice. Everything was stable then. Under control. Nothing I couldn't handle.

Although there were times when I was just a storm.

A hellish, unbridled storm.

I've never been so angry.

Usually everything made me annoyed and pushed me to the limit of my patience. They all got in my way and imposed themselves with no end. They wanted my attention, my anger. They wanted to know what I was doing, what I was breathing with, what my weak point was, and what my deepest secrets were. It was possible to ignore it as usual.

However, at this point, the limit of patience was exceeded, and my legs themselves carried me under the familiar house from the neighborhood. I felt like I was literally going to explode, and my gaze would turn everything into a cold stone. Of all the emotions that had been building up in me before, only t h a t was left.

Fury.

"How could you?!" I screamed when the silhouette of the girl appeared on the street.

She didn't seem surprised. However, I definitely sensed misunderstanding and irritation from her, which only added fuel to the fire. In addition, she rested her hands on her hips, freely shifting the weight of her body to one side. She raised her eyebrow, fully confused.

"How could I what?"

And she knew exactly what I meant. I burst out laughing, bitter and mocking.

"Not only did you betray me at the least expected moment, you used  t h a t  against me. You!" I pointed my finger at her, barely holding it up. "You don't even know how screwed you are!"

She frowned at me as she came closer.

"It was  h i m  who told her. Not me."

I stepped away with the clatter of my heels, grabbing my head. It was all so absurd. Unreal, and yet so much in the style of all these losers. In her style. In his style. They were all so damn good, I didn't know if I wanted to cry out of laughter or scream in anger.

"You really think that's a good excuse?" I put my hand up, looking at her like she was the last moron on earth. "Why don't you tell me they made you do it, and even better! Tell me you weren't even there."

She tried to interfere, but I wouldn't let her. Oh, no. All she could do was get out of my sight or drown in the ocean of my hatred and contempt. She might as well have been anyone else. A stranger, a stalker, a nerd, an old lady, even my cousin. She had no way of avoiding what I was about to tell her anyway.

Me neither.

"You know what? You better stick to being an impartial, conflict-free witness. It suits you. You never had the courage to face me," I turned around, heading back home. "Your place has always been in my shadow."

And that one sentence made everything turn out very differently. In the blink of an eye.

I tried to calm down, which I only managed to do when I got back to the apartment. I closed my eyes, enjoying the silence of my four walls. The phone call with my mother stuck in my head like an old tape stuck on replay. Luckily, I already had the idea to occupy my frazzled hands with another task from the course or making a quick dinner.

But halfway to the kitchen, I got a message. The only people I had in my contacts were my family, and they usually preferred to talk by calls. As I took out my phone, I recalled another of the few people who weren't my family, and I closed my eyes, agitated again.

The workers from the club.

And the incoming text was from Britt herself. Because who else could I have gotten a message from that was long enough that it didn't fit on the lock screen?

In this long message was only the information that that day we all had to be an hour earlier for reasons unknown to Britt. It was supposed to be something "bigger and more exclusive", or whatever the author meant. It meant that you could only bring along your closest friends and not to let them in on the details.

Something else was going to surprise me. It just had to.

Because of the limited by my mom time, I didn't have much of it left to dress up and do the things I had planned. I was on the verge of emotional collapse and I couldn't think straight. This, in return, affected the enlargement of the just put to rest irritation. Wonderful, ironic cycle. The only thing I did in peace was dinner.

And as soon as I put on my coat, the anger spread again in my body, just waiting for the first opportunity to escape.

I couldn't believe my ears.

When I finally arrived at the venue and crossed the threshold of the event, which was completely empty at that moment, I could already see a small group of young people and the whole hit six not far from the bar. Britt was half-sitting on the lower counter, talking vividly with her friends. The music was quieter than it had been at the usual party, and I had to walk towards the bar to hear it clearly. It was coming out of a blue wireless speaker on the counter and it was rap, hip-hop, rather than club remixes with unhealthy amount of techno. The smell of cigarettes was quite perceptible.

"There's Glass!" Britt shouted at my sight, raising cheerful hands high in the air. She was answered by the loud, unidentified by me voices of the people all around her.

It was all out of place. I didn't see a team of employees anywhere, not including Britt, or anyone who could've been responsible for everything that was in front of me. Because it was definitely not something that could be considered a planned event. Cluelessness was annoying.

"What's going on here?" I asked tensed, looking at the assembled group of people. There could have been about 50 of them.

When Britt got down to the ground, I looked briefly at her friends. Valentia Latina and Chucks the Tattoo created intense smoke with joints, probably of their own making, barely understanding each other. The Perfect Haircut girl looked at the two of them with exasperation and amusement at the same time, sitting on a bar stool near Britt. Kendrick, on the other hand, was sitting a little further away from the first two, but almost in front of the curly-haired girl, who was now about to put her hands on my neck, but fortunately stopped herself just before that.

"I let myself have a little before party." She shrugged innocently with a wide, snow-toothed smile, and I felt a blow of consciousness right on my forehead. "Where are your friends?"

And that's when I couldn't believe my ears.

"So, the manager doesn't know?" I pointed my finger at the space around me, feeling that there was more and more negative energy growing in me.

And even though I knew the answer, Britt graciously decided to give it anyways.

"Well, duh! You know, it's normally forbidden to be here outside of work hours, or at least without permission."

I wanted to grab my head and scream it all out of me at once, but I knew I wasn't going to get any benefit from it. I just sucked in more air, lowering my arm. It was beyond my capabilities. Britt was beyond my capabilities. If returning to the apartment and leaving again didn't carry the risk of me being late for the actual hour of my shift, I wouldn't be already gone. I wouldn't risk being fired for even a minute.

But after all, I did it. I risked being fired.

"Hey, you're not mad at me for inviting you, are you?" She frowned, seeing no signs of joy on my face.

Mad because she plotted to lure me to a not-quite-legal party for her and her friends from which I had no real escape?

"I am," I replied in a washed-out tone and, murdering her with my cold gaze, I began to walk away. If only I really had a place to walk away to.

"Maybe you'll get better soon." She sat down in her previous place with a resigned attitude.

And I just took the furthest bar chair, intending to spend the next hour looking at people I didn't know and using all the apps of my phone. In all this, trying not to crush the phone screen with my fingers, channeling all the overwhelming emotions. However, it was obvious, o b v i o u s  that my plans wouldn't have come to fruition, because tradition had to be done.

"Let's skip the small talk. Tell me, how you did it?"

After counting to three, I opened my previously closed eyes and looked up at the not so agitated, as it seemed to me, Valentia. Her eyebrow raised with curiosity threw me off. This girl definitely had bipolar disorder. And I didn't have the patience.

"Simply."

"Then you can simply stop playing Elsa from Frozen and grab yourself some wine." The Braid Guy placed a glass of the aforementioned drink on my left, putting accent on all his words. He gave me a stink eye. "Maybe it'll melt your stone heart."

Britt's friends had one thing in common. They were definitely focusing too much on me.

"Stone cold, not stone... Damn it, Tristan, did you just get another bottle from the bar?!" The latina girl was looking over her friend's head. "You know you're poor as a church mouse, biting the dirt, and you can't even afford a drop. Pull yourself together."

And she took the bottle from his hand, which he had been holding all this time, unbeknownst to me, on the other side of the counter. However, instead of putting it away, Latina threw her loose hair back with her hand and took a good gulp straight from the bottle. Then she wiped her mouth, looking at me.

"But stupid as he is, he's right. It'll help you relax. It's very obvious you don't want to be here."

"Good," I responded to her observation, ignoring them both and looking at the people behind them. They were callous and pathetic.

"But seriously, the kid from Ken confessed to provoking the other kid and took all the blame for the fight. Why?"

I was deeply relieved for a moment, but it was maybe a second. Then it all came back.

"Let her be." The two friends were joined by the previously mentioned Kendrick, the only one currently occupying the chair. Valentia and Tristan still stood before me, not moving an inch. "The important thing is, it's over."

And though he still had that sceptical look in his eyes, there was something like gratitude slightly blinking in the honey eyes. Of course, under a lot of mistrust, but still. I didn't want to see it, for some reason.

I turned my gaze to the two interviewers, seething with impatience. And I think the feeling radiated to them, because Tristan, grabbing Valentia by the elbow, took a step back, not affected by my cold, and pointed at the glass of wine as he did so. Plus, he tripped on the way.

"Remember, you have to melt your stone heart!"

"Stone cold, Tristan. Stone cold..."

And the two of them reached Britt, settled somewhere on the far left. Then I grabbed the liquor glass and poured the wine in it to the sink to my right. Thanks to that, I got a second of not facing the guy still sitting in the same spot.

I was hoping he'd leave me alone as well. I needed to isolate myself, weirdly enough. To be alone. In quiet. Far from intrusive, curious glances. I didn't miss it and already dreaded going back to the shadow I was in not so long ago. But alas, I was there. With Britt and her friends I could stand. From a distance. But every next person was asking me questions that made my blood pressure go up and it was harder for me to keep cool. Every next person evoked in me a lot of dusted emotions.

Too many of them.

"Are you always this snippy?" And his question was the thing that turned my last pieces of patience into ashes.

"Are you always this nosy?"

I turned around, colliding with his intense gaze. The previously seen flash of gratitude was drowned in the well-known inquisitiveness and distrust towards me.

"We don't trust you. You have this strange relationship with Benjamin, you're not a local and you don't have any friends here. You spend a lot of time around Britt and no wonder-"

"You're worried about her?" I raised my eyebrow, finishing his sentence with a dry tone. Because that was probably the end of that speech. "If these are reasons to think of me in terms of  s o c i o p a t h  and  p o s i n g  a  t h r e a t, then try harder."

I realized I was still holding the liquor glass in my hand. I turned back to the sink to wash it, holding on to my last remainings of strength. I felt bad with the emotions beaming out of me. But also good. I had to stop before the feeling of relief triumphed over logic and strategy. I definitely didn't want that.

"You're caging yourself."

Savage.

Snap.

I blinked my eyes, looking at my hands. Or rather, at a glass that fell to pieces involuntarily under my hands' pressure. The blood started to run out of my skin quickly. Lots of blood.

But instead of any pain, all I felt was dangerously low levels of oxygen in my lungs.

"Glass?"

I couldn't say anything, but everything around me was interrupted anyway by the roar of a police siren, dramatically increasing in strength.

It was bad.

Very bad.