Chapter 47: Karma

"My brother's in hospital," Chrissie sat down next to me on the old wooden bench.

"What happened?" I had never been a really good liar, and I hoped Chrissie wouldn't notice the way my voice shook. My parents were easy to fool, but when Chrissie paid attention she missed absolutely nothing.

"He got into a fight with someone," she told me, gazing off into the distance. The gaze was so intense and so unlike her, that made it seem like she knew. Her eyeshadow was smudged, like she had hurriedly put it on.

"Who?" I gulped nervously.

She hesitated, before shrugging. "He wouldn't say."

"Oh." I was surprised, but unsurprised; he could hardly say who had messed up his face, because then I would tell everyone what he had tried. It was kind of like an unspoken truce. "He's ok, right?" I tried to act concerned, not for James but for Chrissie. I was hoping it would help if I acted like I cared about James's well-being.

"He's got a black eye and a fractured arm, but yeah he's going to be alright." She forced a smile.

"Good." I was surprised to see I was relieved; again not for James, but for Caspian. He would never be able forgive himself for causing permanent damage to someone, no matter who that someone was.

"Hey." Caspian came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my chest, resting his head on my shoulder.

Chrissie glared at him, thinking I wouldn't notice.

"How was class?" Caspian asked, coming to sit down next to me.

I groaned and titled my head back. "Biology is set on killing me." I tried to lighten the mood. "I don't care about what's inside my body, I just care that my body works."

"Then why did you take Bio?" Chrissie snapped. Her palm was instantly splayed over her mouth. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that." Her bottom lip quivered. "I'm sorry," she repeated, burying her face in her hands.

"Umm," I raised my eyebrow at Caspian and thankfully he got my unspoken message. I needed to speak to Chrissie alone; make her understand that whatever happened wasn't my fault or Caspian's. James was the instigator.

He got up and quietly backed away, raising his hand (that was now shaped like a cell phone) to his ear.

I subtly nodded my head.

I wrapped an arm around my tearful best friend and hugged her tightly, rubbing circles on her back to calm her down. It worked after a while: her body stopped vibrating and her sobs quietened.

"I shouldn't have said that." She dried her eyes, her mascara blackening her knuckles. "It's not your fault."

Wait, what? She knew it wasn't my fault?

"It's just been so hard," she continued. "Seeing you with Caspian; how happy you two are. It pains me that I can never have that. I keep screwing everything up. First Levi dies and then Shawn. And now James is in the hospital. Makes you wonder."

I gave her a questioning look, trying to puzzle out where this was going.

"Everyone that gets close to me," she explained, " is doomed. Something bad ends up happening to them: Karma."

"Karma," I repeated, like I understood everything, when in actual fact I was so lost, it was unreal.

"I moved from Shawn to Levi, like this," she said as she clicked her fingers. "I'm boy crazy, and this is the universe's way of punishing me," she added. "And then when I failed to grieve after Shawn's death, karma punished my brother."

"No, it's not your fault." I tried to soothe her, knowing those words were said too often to mean much. "You weren't even that close to Levi or Shawn." Part of me was relieved that she didn't know about what actually went down between Caspian and James, and part of me was upset that my best friend was blaming herself for something someone else purposefully did.

"I kissed Levi," she explained, her eyes swollen. "And Shawn," she added.

"That's means nothing. I kissed Brian Fidler and we weren't close." I shivered thinking about the way his stubble left a rash that lasted for a week.

"That's different, you were dared to," she argued.

"Still," I shrugged. It was safe to say I was staying away from any game that was remotely close to 'Truth or Dare'. "Who put this idea of Karma into your head anyway?"

"The fortune teller at my cousin's party," she confessed.

"And you believe a fortune teller," I chided.

She nodded her head, trying to hide her tear-stained face from me by looking at her lap. "It makes sense."

"Not really," I disagreed. "The two of us are close and I'm not dead," I told her. "Or in hospital," I added.

Chrissie's eyes opened wide as she realised the implications of her theory. "If something did happen to you..." she paused, and then carried on softly, "....I would never be able to forgive myself."

"Nothing is going to happen to me," I assured her.

"You don't know that," she countered.

"Yes, I do," I replied. "If Karma's going to strike anyone it's Amber Arnold." I gestured across the soccer field at Amber who was flirting with one of the jocks.

"True," Chrissie shrugged. "But she's boy crazy like me."

I rolled my eyes. "She's also a mean girl, who feeds off others pain," I stated. "And she's a cheerleader," I added, like the thought of cheerleading was despicable. Technically this was true in a way, since all cheerleaders rubbed their cheerleading abilities in everyone's faces; not to mention the fact that most of them were anorexic and suffered from bulimia.

"Then I guess karma doesn't exist," Chrissie shrugged, telling me she was sick of this topic of conversation, even though she was the one who had brought it up.

"Yeah," I agreed. Because if it had then Janet would be long dead by now. But the thing was Asher was dead. Maybe that was the universe's way of inflicting karma upon him, for murdering Hugh. Whether or not karma existed, it didn't change the fact that I was the only one who could stop Maid Marian. Maybe I was Janet Swift's version of karma.

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