Black In the Water

"Okay, hit me." I hear my neighbour Karlie Simmons say. She sits on the carpeted floor of the living room in the apartment I share with my sister Krissy, eyeing the three cards splayed tediously between her painter's hands in front of her.

Krissy's boyfriend, Bradley Tiller, is sitting across the coffee table, and as Karlie snaps her fingers, he pulls out a card from the stack and hands it to her. His hand returns to the table mechanically to take a handful of his non-fried, salt-free cassava chips in a bowl next to the stack of cards. The chips are his own creation, as one of the weekly health plans in his journey to achieve his desired 'lean-but-bulky' form. Whatever that even is.

"Hit me again," Karlie orders.

They've been playing for an hour, bantering back and forth like first-grade bullies in the playground. Though I'm not so surprised. Karlie's running on a few cans of our cheap beer, and when she runs on a few cans of cheap beer, her eccentrically rude demeanour thickens. I watch them from behind the kitchen counter, brows raised and elbows resting in front of me in an attempt to signal how un-amused I am. They don't notice.

A tall figure enters the living room from the only bathroom in the apartment, and he chuckles as he shakes out his hands in front of him, causing water droplets to fly in my direction.

"You're out of paper towels," Ash informs me.

I shrug a reply. "Didn't get a chance to go to the shop today."

I have to tilt my head up to look at him. Ash is a tower of a man. Taller than any man I know. But he also has a habit of making himself smaller, lesser than the 190 cm that he is. He walks in a soundless, controlled manner—as if his own gravity weighs him less than the rest of us—and stealth, it seems, is something he was born with.

It was during one of Krissy's college parties—held at the mansion of some rich Westington law student with too much of daddy's money to spend—that I met Ash for the first time. That night, he had put on one of his obnoxious rich boy demeanour, and I couldn't even stand being in his company for more than five minutes. Little did I know that it was only an act.

"You know, I was promised there would be delicious dinner in addition to the booze," Karlie suddenly says, her eyes still glued to the cards in her hands. "So why is it almost seven and I don't smell anything cookin' over there."

Brad gives her a knowing look. "She's waiting for Krissy."

"Right," Karlie mumbles, then eyes me warily for a second. "Sorry."

I narrow my eyes at her but, as per usual, it goes unnoticed. Ash acknowledges my annoyance by shaking his head, before leaning his back on the counter beside me, his hands folded in front of him.

The overcast sky darkens as I watch through the window. We've been granted bad weather for almost a week. As twilight fades behind rolling grey clouds, the city below gets ready for the night. Street lights start to glow from one row to another, aiding the walking pedestrians likely on their way home. I can see a few hastening their paces, trying to avoid getting caught in the impending bad weather. As my sister, Krissy should have been doing an hour ago.

"Still no word from your sister?" Ash asks me.

"Nope."

Krissy has an office job in the heart of the city, in an area we all like to call 'steel n'glass'. 'Gotta pick up my friend from steel n'glass'. 'I was driving through steel n'glass'—we'd say. There's no resemblance to the actual name of the street, but it's been part of the city's jargon for so long that little know any better anymore. I don't know how the nickname's come about, but anyone can guess by simply walking down the street and glancing up at the tall office towers and skyscrapers that take up the sky's view. Steel and glass. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out.

"She's probably on her way home," Ash assures me.

I nod.

I don't tell him how unlikely that is. Because we both know the metro buses leave the inner city at six o'clock for its last trip of the day. And that even if she—for whatever reason—got on that later bus, she should have gotten home half an hour ago.

But instead, I tell him, "She's on her way." I repeat it under my breath like a mantra, an attempt to warm the cold feeling that has been expanding from my insides to the tips of my fingers since the shortest arm on the clock passed six.

Truth is, Krissy hasn't been herself for the past month. She's been avoiding me as much as she could: sleeping over at Bradley's apartment or slumming it at the office until morning when I'd be at school. And although Brad will argue that it's not true, I know it's got something to do with the fact that I'm moving half the globe away. She feels like I am abandoning her. Truth be told, if she was to ask me if that is the case, I would not be able to deny it.

My right hand clutches my phone like I am drowning and it is my only lifeline. Yet, it gives me no reprieve. I try to stop the ticking in my head, ticking that ends when it will be time for me to leave for the airport tonight.

I have to see my sister before I leave. I cannot leave without saying goodbye. That is simply not an option. But what can I do? If she cannot accept the utmost important thing that I've achieved, if she doesn't understand that getting into this archaeology program is the best thing that could ever happen to me, then is she worth all this anxiety and pain that I've been going through?

I know deep down I will hate myself when I leave without saying goodbye, but I'm so angry that I want to feel the satisfaction of her regret. When she comes home and I am gone.

The cold phone in my hand grows warmer the longer I hold it. And still, no messages come, no calls appear.

A bright red circle that signals the two unopened texts from this morning jump out at me, but they're not what I've been waiting for.

08.54. Jean-Carlos: Why have you been ignoring me?

08.56. Jean-Carlos: I thought you said we could be friends.

Every time I read the senders name, I feel an odd chill at the base of my spine. A feeling I get when I am anxious about something that I cannot control. It's been a month of relentless messages and calls from his end, but a month of silence and declines from mine.

Of all the men in the University of Darthampton, I should have guessed my luck would bring me to him.

I almost let out a scream when the phone suddenly vibrates. The screen goes blank for a split second before displaying an incoming call from Jean-Carlos. I wait for a second. Then press the lock button. I already know what he'll say, and I cannot handle another screaming match this week, not if it entails the tears that will surely come with it. Because how else do you tell someone that the person they are in love with no longer exists?

"Not gonna answer that?" Ash's voice brings me out of my reverie.

"Uh—no. Not someone I want to deal with right now."

Ash is quite as we watch the approaching storm through the window. I can feel the onset interrogation about to be laid out for me like a disassembled gun. But he stays quiet.

After a while, still with the buzzing sound of bickering behind us, Ash finally speaks. "Your sister will come home before you leave," he says.

"I don't think so. She would have come home after work if she really wanted to see me. Still holding a grudge I guess." I shrug.

"It's not your fault for accepting an opportunity that doesn't come twice."

"But she doesn't see it that way, and honestly I don't blame her," I whisper. "She's been there for me through everything, and now that I can stand up on my own two feet, I leave her? Doesn't that just scream selfish to you?"

Ash turns his body to face me. Two murky and flecked brown orbs look at me with certainty. "No, it doesn't. It makes you human for taking what you've worked so hard to achieve."

"Yeah?"

He continues in earnest. "How long have you been working towards this program? A few years now? Ever since you've known about it two years ago?"

I only nod.

"So—in my opinion?—she should have considered what you've had to get through to reach this point. I hate to say this but it may be her who is the selfish one."