I could only watch as Jenna slowly entered the room, glancing in my direction every so often. She turned around and softly shut the door behind her before uttering a quiet “Hey, Sky.”
I couldn’t respond, although I knew my mouth attempted to. My throat felt as if it had swollen shut, never to open again. What did she want now? She stood at the door, her hand resting on the handle, eyes hidden behind a mess of dark brown hair, a bit lighter than that of my own. She stood there a bit longer, awaiting an answer that would never come.
After removing her hand from the doorknob, Jenna slowly stepped across the room, no faster than she had entered through the door. She paused when she reached the chair that Applejack had been sitting in the previous night, but only for a moment. She gently lowered herself onto the chair’s less-than-comfortable looking seat, eyes down towards the ground, though I tried to make eye contact with her.
I still can’t describe how I felt that day. How should I have felt? She was the reason I was there, the reason I was shot, but... There was something about her that seemed odd, almost as if this was an entirely different person sitting before me. The other Jenna was confident, cool collected. This one seemed... broken, and defeated.
We merely sat there, which I had no qualms over. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk to her, or if I was even ready for it. But that didn’t seem to have any impact on her. “H-how is it?” She looked up at me, after what felt like an eternity of silence.
Before I could stop myself, “There’s a hole in me,” I hadn’t meant for my words to be so harsh, but they certainly had an effect on Jenna, who looked away after clenching her eyes shut.
“Sky-”
“Why would you want this?” I suddenly found strength, along with a million questions, but I would never have all of them answered.
“I didn’t think this would happen...” She looked helpless, almost in fear.
“You didn’t think...? What did you think was going to happen if somebody brought a gun to school?” The anger began to fill my soul, forcing me to say things I never would have said otherwise.
“I-I didn’t know...”
“You didn’t know what? That your sociopathic boyfriend brought a gun to school?” I was nearly shouting by that point.
She said nothing in response, but looked at me for the first time since walking into the room. Her deep green eyes were filled with tears, threatening to fall at any given moment. At that moment I knew that she truly didn’t know what Henry had planned. Almost instantly, the anger that had built up inside me vanished, and all that was left was empathy. I felt sorry for her, and I couldn’t explain why. Jenna was the bully, the mean girl that everybody wants to get back at, and there she was, crying right in front of me.
I sighed once I felt I could do nothing else. “Jenna...”
“I just don’t know what to do, Sky!” I tensed at her sudden outburst, quickly realizing that the tears had begun flowing down her cheeks. “I can’t go back to school, not when everybody’s asking questions about what happened! I didn’t know, Sky, you have to believe me!” She dropped her face into the palms of her hands, which muffled her sobs.
Whether she was telling the truth or not, I could tell that she was afraid, and truly regretted what had happened. Why else would she have visited me? “I do.”
Jenna slowly picked up her head as she heard my words, then turned her eyes up towards me. “You... do?” Her mascara had stained the area surrounding her eyes, and was quickly beginning to drip down her cheeks.
I simply nodded in response, my eyes facing down towards my sheets.
Almost instantly, I found myself in the embrace of her arms. Jenna had jumped up from the chair, almost pushing it away, and wrapped me in her arms, almost shouting, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” And I could almost believe that her tears began to fall harder than before.
Although I wanted to get out of her hold, I forced my body to stay still. I didn’t hug back, and I wasn’t happy about our embrace, but it seemed to make her feel better, so I sat there, paralyzed.
After a quick moment or two, I felt her push me away, and she stood back away from the bed, wide-eyed in shock. She quickly returned to her normal state, and let out a soft, “O-oh, s-sorry,” before taking her seat once again.
I began to feel even worse for the girl. Of all the other people she could have gone to seeking help and advice, she came to me, the very person she had “betrayed,” and I found myself wondering why this was the case. It soon dawned on me that she might not have had any friends of her own to turn to, no close ones anyway. I was the same way at one time. But, there were a lot of differences between the two of us. Jenna was the popular girl, the one with all the friends, the first one to hear about events, while I was the shy, quiet kid in the back of the room that nobody ever talks to, or even about. But why, then, would she have ever even considered coming to talk to a person such as myself?
I turned back towards the girl that sat in the chair next to me. She was looking down at her hands, fingers interlocked and shaking ever so slightly. “Jenna,” I began softly, as if I would startle her if I spoke any louder. She looked up at me, and her face lit up at my voice. “what happened?”
Her mouth opened, and a slight sound made its way out of her lips, but she quickly stopped herself. After a brief moment, she tried again. “W-what do you mean?”
“I mean...” My voice trailed off. I knew what I meant, but how was I to word it without upsetting or offending her? “You just haven’t been the same since you came back from that other school a couple of years ago. You used to be nice, kind, and just... fun to be around, but now...” I hoped that this was the right way. “You’re mean, and cold to basically everyone you meet,” I turned to face her. “And I want to know why. What happened at that other school that made you turn out this way?” It was a long shot, but one that I hoped with all my being would connect. It had been a question that plagued my mind for the longest time, because the three of us had all been friends once, Jenna, Henry, and I. We used to be the best of friends, laughing and always hanging out together. When I found out that they had started dating, I was elated. I couldn’t have possibly been happier for the two of them. Then Jenna moved away, and Henry and I were left with just each other, but even that faded after time.
She remained still, and breathless, before letting out a sigh. “I just wanted to make some friends...”
---------------
Almost immediately after the move, I was forced to start attending school. The first thing I noticed was how big the place was compared to our own school. The hallways looked like they would continue on forever, and there were so many classrooms that I got lost trying to find my first class.
Luckily, I met a girl who helped show me around the school. Her name was Avery, and she was nice at first; she really was. She showed me how to get to all of my classes, and it just happened that our lockers were right next to each other, so it was only natural that we would have begun talking eventually.
Anyway, after a while she introduced me to some of her friends, even this one really handsome guy named Joey. He was tall, looked really strong, and we hit it off as soon as we met. We even continued to talk for the next few weeks. I told him everything about myself from where I was from to who I wanted to be, and I thought he cared.
A few weeks passed, and Avery invited me to a party at Joey’s house for a New Year’s Day celebration. She told me that his parents would be gone for the weekend, and I thought it would be a good chance to get to know Joey better, so I accepted. When the night came around and I finally got there, the party turned out to be much bigger than I thought, with beer and a crowd that I could barely move through.
I didn’t want to drink anything. I just knew I would have done something stupid that I would have regretted. After a little while though, Avery found me, and she was stumbling around, barely able to get out any words. She shoved a plastic cup into my hands. I smelled the liquid inside the cup, and instantly wanted to throw up. It smelled like something you would find in the locker room after a football game. Still, Avery and a couple of other people cheered me on, and I didn’t want to let down my only friends, so I drank it, all of it. It burned on the way down, but it was good. Avery and I wandered off into the crowd to find more, and I drank more than I ever thought I could, then I started talking to a bunch of people and doing things I never would have done sober. I eventually lost Avery to the crowd, and began to lead my own way.
Joey found me, and we started talking. He told me that, if I wanted to, we could go somewhere else, where there weren’t as many people. I was so happy, and wasted. There was a boy who wanted me, who would I have been to turn him down? He said we couldn’t go upstairs because there were too many people up there already, but he told me that there was a shed outside in the woods that we could go to, that his family used it to store tools. Looking back, it didn’t make any sense at all. But, like an idiot, I didn’t think anything of it.
We went out the back door while nobody was looking. It was dark, almost pitch-black, and the ground was covered in a thick blanket of snow, almost enough to swallow my foot whole, and it was still coming down. I didn’t have more than a coat, since I didn’t very well expect to be outside, but I didn’t feel much of the cold at first.
Joey took my hand and we began towards the tree-line, finding our way through a small path that led through the trees. I remember that his hand was warm in my own, and that we started kissing somewhere along the way, but I don’t know when. We walked much farther than any shed of his could have possibly been, but I don’t think I noticed, and if I did, I didn’t care.
Suddenly, he threw me on the ground into the snow. He quickly followed, and we started kissing again, but this time his hands started exploring the rest of my body. I began doing the same, before he started to unbutton my coat. After he finished, I tried to do the same with his jacket, but he grabbed my hands and moved them away from his body. I didn’t think much of it, and just wanted things to go smoothly, so I went with his lead.
After he had gotten my coat off, he threw it away, somewhere in the darkness. He started feeling everywhere on my body then, and I was enjoying it. He reached down, and pulled my shirt over my head between our kisses. His hands went to my breasts, and he started kissing down my neck. I let out a quiet moan before I felt movement around my waist. Looking down, I noticed that he was undoing the button on my jeans. I didn’t want him to stop.
He pulled off my jeans, and quickly followed with the rest of my clothes, throwing all of them away into the dark. I was fully naked then, and the snow was cold against my bare skin, but I didn’t care. I just wanted him to make love to me, but he never did. Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He pointed the camera at me before shouting at seemingly no one, “Alright, guys, you can come out now!”
I heard lots of movement around me, and slowly began to make out several outlines of the people that surrounded me. They all began laughing, and chanting things like, “Dude, nice!” and “She’s so fucking tiny!” Among the crowd, I made out Avery, who was laughing alongside Joey and everyone else that I thought to be my friends.
I didn’t know what to do, and my first instinct was to cry, so that’s what I did. That only made them mock me more. “Look, now she’s crying!” “See what you did now, Joey?” I looked up for just long enough to see that a couple of the guys in the group were going through my clothes, smelling and touching all over them like the dirty pigs they were, before bringing my head to my knees and silently crying to myself.
I still don’t know how long it all lasted. It felt like forever, but I know it wasn’t because everyone left after a while. They all left me alone, and the dirty perverts took my clothes with them. Once I was sure they were gone, I started to look around for something I could wear, just to avoid walking around completely naked. Of course, there wasn’t anything except sticks and snow, the latter of the two nearly hiding the footsteps back towards the house, forcing me to quickly follow the steps before I would be left lost in the woods.
I suddenly realized how cold it was outside, and how cold I was. All I had were my shoes and socks, but that did little to shield the rest of my body. I looked down at my bare body, shivering harder and harder the longer I was out there. I looked at my fingers, and they looked to be turning an icy blue, so I wrapped them under my arms, which didn’t help nearly as much as I’d hoped.
After a nightmare-ish walk back, I was finally met with the sight of that bastard’s house. Instead of going back inside, I did my best to cover my body, and began walking towards the nearest neighbor’s house, which was about half-a-mile away.
I arrived at the door, still freezing and, by that point, barely able to move. I knocked, and an old man answered the door a few seconds later. He instantly went into a panic and rushed me inside, bringing me a thick blanket and something hot to drink. After I was much warmer, I told him that I simply got locked out of my house. The alcohol inside me, along with the fact that I was still shivering, had impaired my ability to think clearly. He asked questions about how I managed to lock myself out of my own house, while naked, but I shrugged them away as best I could. I was so afraid that I would get caught drinking, and that I would make the situation with my “friends” any worse than it already was, I didn’t tell anyone about what happened, except for my mother. The kind, old man let me use his phone to call her, and she was there within a few minutes to get me.
Over the course of the next few days, I stayed away from Avery and Joey, and anyone who was friends of theirs. The next few months were torture, as practically everyone in the school had seen Joey’s video of me, and I was the most hated and mocked person in school, and the teachers did nothing about it.
Eventually, my mom decided that it would be best to move back here, where I wasn’t being harassed every day or made fun of. Just a month or so before the school year had ended, we moved back, and that’s when I started coming back to school.
---------------
“I didn’t want to be bullied, or made fun of ever again. I thought that if I was on top, then nothing like that could ever happen again...” She looked down for a brief moment before glancing back in my direction. “You’re the only other person who knows about this, Sky, and I want to keep it that way.”
I was stunned, but was able to muster the strength needed for a weak nod. “Jenna, I-” A knock at the door interrupted my thought, and I turned towards the sound as the door was pushed open.
Two men dressed in blue uniforms with golden badges walked into the room. They immediately brought their attention to Jenna, and the leader of the pair, a short, stout looking man, spoke in a firm tone, “Ma’am, we need to ask Mr. Asher some questions, if you would please...” and gestured towards the door, which was left wide open.
I looked back towards Jenna, who’s mouth was slightly ajar, just as she had turned back in my direction. She quickly regained herself, however, and rose to her feet. With a final glance towards me, she made her way towards the door, leaving without a single word of goodbye.
The second officer, a much taller man than the other, shut the door, rather forcefully, behind her. His companion began speaking as he walked towards Jenna’s chair. “She seemed pretty upset, Sky- oh, can I call you Sky?” I simply told him he could, knowing it was only to get on a personal level with me. “Good, anyway, she acted distressed. Is she a friend of yours?”
I spoke as the other officer took his seat beside the first, “Something like that...”
---------------
The police officers and I spent hours discussing what had happened. They wanted to know every detail about it, no matter how tiny or minute I thought it might have been. I told them everything I could, from how Henry and I were once friends to what led up to the shooting. I made certain to leave Jenna out of the explanation. Instead, I told them that I just so happened to be waiting for a ride when Henry found me, which wasn’t exactly a lie. They asked if I knew who called 911, and I told them that I had no idea, that it could have been Pinkie, since she was the only other person there.
After they had gotten all that they could out of me, they packed up and left. They said that they might be back in the future with more questions if anything else came up, finished jotting down some notes, and took their leave.
I was glad that they left when they did. Being interrogated was oddly draining, and I found that I could have taken a nap until nightfall. However, the doctor that had awoken me burst through the door just as I began to doze off. “Hello there, Sky! Sleep well?”
The sudden noise had shocked me enough to bring me to full attention, and I immediately responded, “Yeah, even though this bed isn’t exactly ‘comfortable.’”
I chuckled and began making his way towards the monitors and machines beside my bed. “That’s what everyone says,” He proceeded to make several adjustments to some of the switches and knobs before holding his hand out towards me. “Could I see your arm a moment?” I pulled away the blanket and placed my wrist in his hand. He placed the black, velcro band around my arm and started pumping the rubber ball that was connected by a tube. He read the results, wrote them down, then continued on to the next test.
After several other tests, many of which I didn’t understand, the doctor assured me that I was recovering properly. “It’s only been a day,” he said, “but you’re making excellent progress already. At this rate, you’ll be out of here in no time!” He then claimed there were other patients to tend to, and darted out of the room, leaving me connected to several tubes and wires. The continuous beeping of the heart monitor made me want to rip the wires off of my chest, but I knew that that would only make my situation much worse, as several nurses would likely rush into the room to see why my heart had suddenly stopped.
Luckily, about fifteen minutes later a nurse walked into the room asking if I needed any pain medicine. I told her that I was fine for the time being, but that the monitor was driving me insane. She sighed, “He forgot to turn that thing down again?” and flicked a switch on the machine, which quickly became silent.
I sighed in relief when the nurse left the room, telling me she would get me a bit of the weaker medicine just in case I started feeling pain when she wasn’t around. I felt my eyelids grow heavier, and the quiet of the room lulled me off into a sleep.
At least, it would have, had my door not been thrown open for the twentieth time that day, and a certain, rainbow-haired, girl rushed inside. “Sky, Pinkie Pie told me what happened! Are you alright?” She quickly jogged towards the side of my bed and stood over me, eyes wide and breath quick.
“Yeah, Rainbow,” I sat up much more easily than I had earlier in the day. “I’m fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Nothing to worry about?” I suddenly heard from the doorway, which Rainbow had left open for anyone to come in through. That “anyone” just so happened to be Rarity. “You’re in the hospital, telling us there’s ‘nothing to worry about?’”
“Yeah,” I said as two more people, Twilight and Fluttershy, wandered in behind Rarity. “I’m fine now.”
Rarity glared at me before turning to face Rainbow Dash. “And what do you think you’re doing, rushing ahead of the rest of us like that?”
Rainbow turned towards her for the first time since entering the room, and quickly made her case. “Well... you guys were just going too slow!”
By that time, Fluttershy and Twilight had made their way towards the side of my bed opposite Rainbow. “Sky, are you sure you’re okay?” Twilight questioned.
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure. It hurt last night, but I’m a lot better now. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much.”
Both girls let out a breath almost simultaneously before Fluttershy spoke up. “That’s good to hear. I wouldn’t know what to do if anything bad ever happened to you,” Her eyes quickly lit up, and a red tint flashed across her cheeks. “B-because we’re friends! Uh, I-I mean...” She looked away, but it seemed to help her calm down. “We are friends, right, Sky?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. I had forgotten how introverted she was, even if it had only been a day since I had last seen her. “Yeah, we are.”
After a brief moment of silence between the three of us (Rainbow Dash and Rarity were still bickering on the other side of the room), Twilight spoke up. “So,” Her voice was soft, and sincere. “What happened, Sky? Rainbow Dash told us the main points, but that was it.”
Rainbow turned at the sudden mention of her name. “Well, that’s all Pinkie told me, that Sky was...” he turned towards me, unwilling to say what we were all thinking, “here.”
I was sick of the silence that constantly befell me wherever I went. “Well, there’s a lot to tell,” I sighed, deciding where would be the best place to start at. “When we were at the football game, putting all of the Culinary Arts stuff up, we were forced to stay inside the school to keep from getting drenched in the storm,” I turned towards the two girls that weren’t there, having no idea what I was referring to, Twilight and Fluttershy, “there were these burglars inside. When they saw Applejack all alone, I guess they saw her as a threat, and started attacking her. Rainbow and I ran ahead and started fighting the guys, trying to keep them off of Applejack. Well, I managed to pull off one of the guys’ masks, and saw that it was Henry-”
“Wait,” Rarity stopped me, “isn’t Henry that boy on the bus? The one you said was your friend?”
I sighed, but nodded. “Yeah, that’s him. Anyway, after I pulled off his mask, he and the other guy ran off. This all happened when Henry and Pinkie were still together, and that was when I figured out that Henry was bad news, so I tried to break them up by threatening Henry, telling him that I would turn him in if he didn’t break up with Pinkie,” I paused, but only for a moment to recollect my thoughts. “Pinkie overheard, and told me that she never wanted to see me again, which was bad enough, but after I turned back around to Henry, he was smiling, like he knew it was coming, and was happy about it. That’s when I flipped. And that’s when you found me and brought me home, Rainbow,” I gestured towards the rainbow-haired girl.
“After a few days, I heard that Henry and Pinkie had broken up, and Henry had started dating Jenna, a girl that was bullying-” I quickly brought myself to a halt, noticed that Twilight had tensed up out of the corner of my eye, and refocused myself, “-uh, one of my other friends. Anyway, I thought that if I talked to Jenna, I could convince her to leave my friend alone. She said that if I met with her the next afternoon, she would leave my friend alone, and never mess with her again. As it turned out, Henry was there too, waiting for me. One thing led to another, and he threw me to the ground and started beating me. That’s when Pinkie showed up, and started defending me. Then Henry pulled out the gun. He was just about to shoot-” I stopped, realizing the magnitude of the situation that Pinkie had put herself into. Not only did she stand up to someone twice her size, but she even threw herself at a loaded gun. “Pinkie grabbed the gun before he could, and I jumped in to help her. The gun went off somewhere in the fighting, and I guess it hit me,” My hand moved towards my wound, and I simply allowed it to lay there. “And... now we’re here.”
The five of us remained in silence to collect our thoughts. However, I was still concerned with Pinkie’s bravery in that situation. Would I have thrown myself at a gun? One that was loaded and ready to fire? I wish I could say that I would have, but that was one of those times when you couldn’t really argue anything without having been put into the situation yourself. I would never know what ran through Pinkie Pie’s mind as Henry aimed at me, ready to pull the trigger and end my life, or if anything did at all. Maybe it was all just instinctive, to protect someone you care about. But that brings other questions to light...
Rarity suddenly spoke through the blanket of silence. “Well,” she began, drawing everyone’s attention in the process, “I’m glad that you’re alright now.”
“Yeah,” Rainbow agreed, “It definitely could’ve been a lot worse.”
I chuckled, mostly from the awkward attention that was brought upon me. “Yeah... The doctor said that I should be better in a couple of weeks,” My mind was brought to the after-math of this wound. How would my life turn out after this was all left behind me? I would be left with a scar, sure, but would we all act like it never happened? Would it be a part of conversation? Should it be something I tell people about? I had no idea, and it worried me.
“That’s...” Twilight spoke softly. She quickly raised her gaze to meet my eyes, but left her own shut tightly. A smile had plastered itself across her face. “That’s wonderful to hear, Sky.”
Rainbow continued her thought. “Yeah, none of us knew what to expect when we heard the news.”
“To be honest,” Fluttershy, oddly enough, made herself known, “we weren’t even sure if you would be awake.”
“Indeed,” Rarity, this time, “let alone be able to hold a conversation, with all the medicine we assumed you would have taken.”
I chuckled once again. “You guys worry too much. Trust me, I’ll be up and moving around in no time.”
We spent the rest of their time there chatting about school, sports, and whatever else would help pass the time. It was nice to have a pleasant conversation for the first time in what seemed like ages, but I couldn’t help but notice that Twilight kept her distance. I knew she wasn’t exactly a “social” person, but the only time she would even acknowledge anyone else was when they spoke directly to her. She was constantly tuning the rest of us out of her mind, focusing on other, more pressing matters, and I was afraid I knew exactly what those matters were.
The girls began to leave only an hour or so after they had arrived, which I could well understand. With our goodbyes said, they began to take their leave. However, I managed to grab Twilight’s hand before she had a chance to get away from the bedside. I wasn’t going to just let her leave while thinking this whole thing was somehow her fault.
The other girls walked out of the room, but not before realizing Twilight was still standing by my side. “Uh, you coming, Twilight?” Rainbow questioned, leaving the other two to stop in their tracks.
“Y-yeah,” she spoke hastily. My grip tightened around her hand, just to ensure she wouldn’t try to twist out of my grasp. “Just... wait for me outside...”
The girls looked between one another, then back towards Twilight. Again, Rainbow spoke, “Uh, alright,” And with that, they left, quietly clicking the door shut behind them.
I turned to Twilight, who was still looking towards the recently closed door. I could only assume she wanted it to open again, or to be able to leave herself. But I would allow no such thing. “You know this isn’t your fault, right?” Her eyes darted towards me, and it was then that I noticed that the tears were welling up in her eyes. This whole time she had been holding it all inside, and I suddenly felt a twinge of guilt for having been the cause of her emotions. “This was going to happen sooner or later. I’m just glad that it’s all over now,” I hoped it was, anyway.
She used her free sleeve to wipe away her tears, then nodded. For a brief moment, she reminded me of a little kid, and I felt like her parent, telling her that everything was going to be okay after her pet hamster died. Only, this was much more serious than a pet dying. Even so, I did what any parent would do in that situation. I moved my way towards her, and pulled her into my embrace. She didn’t react, but I still whispered to her, “I don’t blame you for any of this, and I don’t want you to blame yourself. Promise me that you won’t beat yourself up over something stupid like this, alright?”
I felt her head move ever-so slightly on my shoulder, and I let her go. “There is some good that came out of this, you know.”
She looked at me, with noticeably less force than she had been using. Her voice was soft and pleasant, especially so after spending most of the afternoon without hearing it. “What’s that?”
I smiled. “Jenna won’t be bothering you anymore.”