LJ Idol Week 3: In another castle

The bag of colored crispies in my hand, I walked towards her. Brisk and bright sunlight was urging its way into the room with every time the curtain was pushed aside by the wind. “Come closer!” Emma encouraged me. She looked very tired. The hasty tries of applying makeup to hide those traces of exhaustion had clearly failed. “Just take a seat beside me, will you?” Emma, pointing to an empty chair next to the one she sat on, then turned her face again to the pale fragile creature in the cable-framed hospital bed: Laurie, her daughter, former captain of our volleyball team. I had an uneasy feeling inside my stomach, as if some badly cooked food, salted with guilt was refusing to be digested. I held the bag of crispies like a shield to my unprotected self as I sat down next to Emma.

“It is is so nice to see some of her friends here.” Emma’s eyelids started to flutter. The wings of a crushed butterfly attempting one last escape.
I just nodded, as a fresh wave of nausea flooded my intestines. I was not a friend, not even close. I did not hug her goodbye the last time I saw her, in a way you would hug your friends. Instead, we had a terrible fight about my position in the team. Laurie pointed at me with one of her perfectly shaped acrylic fingernails, accusing me of not contributing to the team spirit. How could I be part of a team that never was one? Laurie, the all-mighty, fresh, mistress-of-all-trades, had accepted no one beside her. Her almost inhuman level of perfection seemed to discourage her surroundings. Nobody had questioned her, she was everybody’s queen with an irrevocable throne above the world that was her castle.

“She is so silent.”

Emma whispered and softly held one of Laurie's pale hands. Laurie had been dressed and draped on the cushions, a bandage around her head, one red bruise under her left eye. Emma seemed to guess my thoughts and questions. “I don’t know why she did not see that van coming.” She turned her face away as two tears had started to roll down her cheeks. The blood in my ears boiled up to a terribly rushing sound.

“We fought over ridiculous things. She is a good driver. It was my fault.”

Those were the words in my head. My hands on the plastic crispies bag were sweating. I could not tell her.

Emma looked at me again, in an attempt to regain her composure. “I wonder where she is now. Can there be another place we do not see?” She wiped her cheeks with the back of her left hand.
I shook my head, helplessly confronted by the things I should confess and my real actions. “I am sorry, but I need to go”. I got up, left the crispies on Laurie’s bedsheet and headed for the door.

“I can understand how hard this is for you.”

Emma’s words hit me like a cannonball. I walked out of the room into the inevitable light of day.