Felix felt the spike sever her heart. It was sharp, the tip going through ever so slowly and painfully. The details of how horrible she felt as he soared through the air, his head pointed to the mulch as she tumbled, the terrible snap! which severed the tense atmosphere and caused her head to pound alongside her heart, the wailing of the ambulances and the frenzied explanation she'd given the EMTs while they checked his vitals, the disapproving speech she received from her father as she sat in the waiting room of Mt. Lindin, crying her eyes out when the doctors started to say, "We're sorry to tell you that --", and the impending anticipation of the court trial wherein she was dressed as the culprit, all suited up and with her lawyer accessory right at her side, whispering the words she needed to say into her ear -- all of it came rushing back to her. She knew that Tegmark would mention it, that she'd have to come back to it, but -- it's not that easy, there's something called trauma, that's why it's so importan--

"Hey," Tegmark said, shaking her shoulder. It was a small shake, though, since she was really, really tired, but Felix was drawn from her torpor. She let the tears go down her face. Sometimes it was good to cry. Sometimes it felt nice. Perhaps to be nice to her new friend, Tegmark wound her arm around Felix's protectively as the wetness slid down her face, and Felix sniffed when Tegmark's temple leant against her shoulder. Felix felt comfortable immediately, but her thoughts stopped when Tegmark spoke, "I don't blame you. You did what you thought you had to."

Felix shook her head. She drew her limbs together, legs curling up into her chest, arms wrapping tight around them. She'd had gone through this same conversation before, but it was always from someone who didn't believe it. The words were spoken out of obligation, simply because there needed to be a mediator to prevent Felix from doing something rash again.

She tried to convince them she didn't mean any of it, that it was all an accident, but belief couldn't be seen if it wasn't truthful: not over the horizon and across the self-righteous judgments, not through the thick screen of ego peppered with volatile disruption, not asprawl in the fields of apathetic, unconcerned notions. It was a legend of the soul, a faithful myth only given doubt when it affected someone significantly, an absolute leviathan ready to consume the positivity which meagerly thrives at the back of her mind.

Felix just couldn't get away from it; pushing it back was useless, ultimately futile when the ruthless, emotionless monster everyone perceived you as slowly came to be true.

She had done it.

She'd wallowed in the rancid pools of her melancholy, sat in her room with her textbooks and open laptop with tears streaming down her face and drips of mucus slipping from her flaring nostrils. She'd embraced the looks of dread and blame she received when she walked through the halls, carefully absorbing their despondent dispositions and fueling her own jaded perspective of herself. Her parents couldn't even recognize the desolate soul inhabiting their little girl's body, because their polite, respectful daughter was left waste to an dangerously unresponsive husk of a person.

No one asked if she was okay. Therefore, she didn't wish to seek anyone out, thinking that there was no one to help and nothing to do. Cheryl wouldn't even respond to her frantic voicemails, left on the home phone after dark when the family was asleep. She had sat in the frigid kitchen glowed with the dim, flickering yellow light shining above her, and waited through the automated process, and was disappointed when the sun came up from beneath the houses right outside, the streams of light barreling through the window to blind her.

And she couldn't even talk to her dad. He was out on duty right after the court trial; all the way across the world, stationed in Afghanistan or somewhere thereabouts. His calls were limited to serious, pressing matters, not the turmoil of his youngest daughter. And, when she'd been sitting at school, fiddling with the matching diamond necklace Cheryl'd bought for her, she came to realize he wouldn't have responded anyways.

The moment she'd tell him she wasn't worried about Dylan at all and more focused on how her relationship with Cheryl seemingly washed down the drain, he'd hang up, no doubt about it. He was adamant in his denial, unwilling to accept his daughter wasn't what he'd remembered from back in the day, wasn't conventional in her interests, and handwaved away any type of approval he might give for her influential advances. If he knew she was stressing out about a girl not responding to her calls and a girl who could've been the reason she was even continuing to live, his mind would be a bomb, and her words the detonator.

"It is my fault," she said. "All of it. I was the one who set it into motion, I was the one who did all of it."

"You weren't convicted guilty for murder, though. You got off free, you ain't the one to blame."

"Doesn't ignore the fact that I did it."

"Well, here, let's put it this way, then." Tegmark yawned again, putting a hand over her mouth to stifle the blasted thing. "You've got to chill with the blame. I -- I know I did some questionable things, we both did, you with your thing with Dylan and mine with Harvey (did you ever notice they look the same?), but it's not entirely our faults."

Felix sniffed. "How isn't it? We caused people trouble. There was a bunch of stupid stuff which came from our actions, and we did them -- selfishly."

click

Tegmark frowned. "Selfishly?"

Felix snapped, "Yes," with as much venom which could occupy her lips. Edging away from Tegmark, she leaned against the wall and let her hands travel to her hair, tugging anxiously at the strands. Oh gods, this is why she didn't like talking or thinking about this. It was her idea to talk about this, yeah, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to regret bringing the subject up. She regretted a lot of things, and surely, it was commonplace to experience penitence over something which racked her brain for months and plagued her with nightmares of Dylan looking up to the sky, red strands of hair falling into motionless face, shrouding unblinking eyes whilst she stood there, unknowing of her actions, scared about the consequences, about everything, oh gods --

click

"You didn't kill him."

Felix wildly shook her head, the short black strands falling into her face as she let her weak, feeble arms fall to the side and cradle on another. She wanted to curl into a smaller ball, fold in on herself until she was left with nothing but the remnant emotions drowning out all her common sense. Because it was her fault. She was the reason Dylan had died -- it wasn't anybody else's hands which led to the ginger's premature passing.

All because of --

"I did, though. I did it for Cheryl," Felix finally said, unable to keep the truth from spinning from her tongue. She'd woven lie after lie, refused to speak rightfully of her intentions, for everyone who asked or questioned her. But she was probably going to be blown to bits by the stupid bomb over there anyways, so what was the point in hiding it?

By the way that Tegmark looked at Felix, she didn't understand. Or was confused as to the why instead of the what, but the question atop her lips couldn't be spoken. Felix meant to be heard. No interrupting, no breaks or pauses, all of it had to be let out or I don't think I could stand being in here another second, I need to have something, I need to RELEASE --

"Cheryl loved Dylan," she said.

Her fingernails dug into her skin at the thought. It was so disgusting. Dylan would always come up to her and wind his arms around her waist, picking the petite girl up into the air and spin her around as Felix hung back, watching with intense disdain. He'd always approach her with a cheesy grin on his face, holding out his hand and getting on one knee to say something as equally corny as that stupid little smirk he wore, and oh, Cheryl gobbled it all up.

Even when it seemed prevalent that Dylan might be going behind their backs to speak with other females, Cheryl never believed that her strawberry cupcake would ever do that, and ugh -- Felix wanted to scream. Her pillow took most of the abuse.

"They'd been in a relationship not too long before he . . . passed," she said somberly. The tingling of her barren skin was amplified in the cold environment of the cube. She didn't mind. It was preferable to the constant numbness encumbering her body. The ripples of self-inflicted agony continued to flow like a riverbank broken in two, and the rushing sensations carried down the acrimony she'd kept to her heart since the event. "I had to watch them be all lovey-dovey with each other until the two of them got tired, or I did. Even when I left, they just wanted to follow me with their happiness. I hated their constant belief that if I'm not feeling well, it would be absolutely fucking great for them to continue flaunting their intimacy at me, because -- news flash -- nobody wants to be reminded of the things they don't have."

A pinprick made her jump, and she looked at her arm. There was indentations where she'd pressed her blunt fingernails into her arm, and some of them were deep enough to cause gouges. Picking at them seemed like a good idea, maybe to intensify the waves of anguish besetting her arms, but Tegmark reached out, and wound her fingers through Felix's. A small smile appeared on the short-haired girl's face. The memories slowly reeled in again, though, their poisonous tendrils afflicting her behavior, and it was hard for Felix to prevent closing her fingers around Tegmark's hand and hurt her, too, because oh gods, oh gods, she must hate me now, oh no.

"So Cheryl never wanted me around. She always acted like she was my friend, always wanted to hang out or have me over at her house for a night or two, but she didn't feel the connection. I think she just used me to get to Dylan, because me and him were close, and that's where the two of them came from, but other than that, I believe she just wanted to butter me up, experiment with me to see how easy it would be to make someone fall in love. And" -- Felix squeezed tightly on Tegmark's hand, careful not to cut her fragile, delicate, porcelain-like skin with her brutish nails -- "she succeeded. I had fallen, and there was no coming out of the dark abyss when you've lost your flashlight and can't remember the way you came in from."

Cheryl made it easy to fall. She slipped the carpet from underneath Felix's feet and let her slam hard against the ground, allowed her to roll down the hill of emotions which followed, kept her guessing through all of the suggestive things the two of them did. Outside of school, it got increasingly harder for Felix to remember that Dylan was her friend when she was so focused on getting Cheryl's attention.

The times they spent eating ice cream on Cheryl's bed, Felix kept staring at her lips, watching the diary product slip into her mouth with suspicious lethargy. The times they stayed up late watching Netflix, it was hard to ignore the fact Cheryl's head was pressed up against her flaming, barren thigh. It burned as stray strands of hair splayed all across, and Felix believed she was going to pass out each and every time, but she stayed up, watching the relaxed, motionless beauty laying on her thigh. The times they went to the mall and Cheryl pulled Felix into the dressing room with her, she fought hard against the raging blush invading her cheeks, eventually failing as Cheryl would undress in front of her, and oh my gods, those legs --

But the demon inside that angelic body would return whenever school came around. Compounded with the fact that AP was constantly kicking her ass, the academic prison was nigh unbearable. In Lang, she couldn't focus on the prompts for her practice essays and subsequently met the wrath of a four. In Calculus, the equations left her brain to float around while the free space was occupied with the thoughts of the angel she got to cuddle with last night. But inset were the tormenting doubts.

Because she didn't have Cheryl.

Dylan did.

"And she didn't want me. I thought she did. I had imagined us together at the end of everything, had even picked out for her one of those frilly dresses online she always talked about. I tried and tried to show her I was interested, to maybe, just maybe, find out if the things I felt were shared." Felix sighed. "But she had Dylan. And Dylan had her. The two of them were the best power couple out there apparently, recognized so easily because Cheryl wanted them to be, and because no one thought anything could happen to them. And I got --"

"Jealous," Tegmark said somberly. She seemed disappointed, her tone lowered down from the intense, argumentative demeanor she held beforehand, but as Felix looked at her, she knew Tegmark understood. It was like when Beverly was hanging out with Gordy, she thought. To see the person you love be with someone you were close with hurts harder than being stabbed through the chest with a rusty knife.

"Mhm," hummed Felix. "And when Dylan invited me to take some photos of him for the yearbook at the park, I said okay. Cheryl wasn't around, and I didn't want her to be, especially because Dylan would go all out and -- blegh, no thanks. I took my camera, we walked to the park and he got on the playset. The towering thing was high, all right? Imagine that the top of the slide, the arch where you hang onto before going down, being as high as the basketball hoop in PE. And he climbed all the way up there, so I had to follow him. I asked him some questions, most of them recalling his week and how he was, but I wanted to know how he truly, really felt about Cheryl as he stood on top of the thing. And you know what he said?"

Tegmark read Felix's disgusted face, and the grimace which appeared so appallingly on her tomboyish features. But she knew what he had said. She knew. In her eyes, Felix could notice that the guilt was there. It shrouded her cloudy blue eyes. She repeated his hollow words exactly, and Felix almost broke down right then: "'Graw? She's gotta nice ass, but that's about it. I'm glad you hooked us up, though.'"