Page 11 of Against All Odds

“I’m expecting a daughter,” the woman said after a brief hesitation. “It’s a rough world for girls to grow up in. I can only hope that if my daughter ever ends up in a position like this, someone will help her.”

I watched with cloudy eyes as they drove off. If I hadn’t stopped that car, she would be in the car with a predator instead.

So I had done the right thing. Had I not?

Chapter 5.

Raya

I woke up with the worst hangover ever. The kind that makes you instantly swear to never drink again.

I was no stranger to blackouts, but this one was different. My knee hurt, my palms burned, and worse than the throbbing headache was the weight of my conscience.

For a few minutes, I stayed motionless. Staring at the ceiling in agony, I struggled to retrieve my memories, unsure if I even wanted to know what I had done this time. I vaguely remembered snorting coke off someone’s dick in the bathroom – mixing cocaine and alcohol, one sure ticket to memory loss. I recalled only flashes – and boy, did they make me want to throw myself off a bridge.

I groaned, squeezing my eyes shut as it hit me.

Rebekah.

Oh God, my phone.

For lack of a better idea, I dragged myself out of bed to search my room in case my phone had magically appeared somewhere – in my current state, my brain considered that a real possibility. But unfortunately, losing my phone had not been a dream, much less the bloody scratches on my hands, knees, and apparently my face.

To my relief, I didn’t find my roommates in the living room – maybe they were avoiding me as much as I was avoiding them. I chugged a few glasses of water and made myself breakfast, taking eggs from Tracy’s shelf and toast from Emmy’s. I always hoped they wouldn’t notice that I stole their food when I once again ran out of my own and couldn’t be bothered to go to the supermarket, but of course, they always did. And somehow, they always knew it was me.

Well, fuck them. I had to get out of here anyway.

It had been six months since I’d moved into this flat. This all-girls house had sounded like my nightmare, but I didn’t have much choice after yet another living situation had ended in conflict. I’d rather live on the streets than move back in with my abusive mom and stepdad, and my dad and I barely talked. He paid for my college tuition, probably his way of soothing his conscience for his absence in my childhood.

So far, I’d never made it past a year in one house. I would love to say it was just bad luck, but the problem was probably me.

Rebekah, Tracy and Emmy had known each other since they started their sociology studies together. The fourth roommate had dropped out in the midst of the second year, which was why they had accepted me, a design major.

And I had fucking tried.

I’d learned how to present myself as an okay person at first, but keeping up the act was harder – and after six months, my crafted persona already started to crack.

When I was sober, I walked on eggshells around them. They were nice, but they all seemed so fun, so popular, so confident – and they had been friends for two years. When they laughed together about their shared memories, when they scolded me about slacking on my share of the shared cleaning duties, or even when they did nothing but were just being themselves – it was as if just being around them reminded me of my inferiority. They were polite to me; they invited me to house activities, but I felt in everything that they regretted taking me into the house. Emmy and Tracy surely did – I wasn’t sure about Rebekah. She was so sweet when I was alone with her, when she dropped the mask she always seemed to wear around other people, making me feel like I could slightly lower mine, too. When it was just her and me, I felt like we shared a real connection despite our differences. But those moments were rare.

For thirty minutes, I struggled to force the food down my throat while trying to distract myself with Netflix – then went to scroll the news on my house tablet since the show couldn’t keep my attention.

My hand froze midway to my mouth when I spotted the incident in my city.

Driver has seizure behind the wheel; ends in tragic accident.

New flashes entered my memory. Me, standing in the middle of the road, crying and waving my arms at cars – oh god, had I really done that? – until one car had blinked its lights, indicating he had seen me. I’d waited for him to turn as he crashed into a tree.

I blinked slowly. How did I only now remember this part of the night? Probably because my head was still full of Rebekah.

The comments weren’t mild. Apparently, the deceased man had been a local musician, and between condolences and prayers for his family, multiple commenters mentioned his past as a serial sex offender – the kind that our lovely justice system allows to run free after serving a few years in jail.

My hand trembled when I lowered my toast, my appetite gone.

I’d been about to get in the car with this guy. If I had a guardian angel, she must be a damn good one.

It wouldn’t be the first time something inexplicable happened around me. All my life, I’d seen, heard and felt things others didn’t seem to. A sudden cold breeze that made the hairs on my arms rise. Wicked laughter in my room when I woke up sleep paralyzed in the middle of the night. A sudden twist in my gut when I was around certain people or places. And the dreams, those demonic fucking doppelgänger dreams that had haunted me since childhood – though thankfully, they didn’t come so frequently anymore. But this? This was new.

Maybe it was just a coincidence.