If the World Ended Tomorrow by Elettra C
CHAPTER 1
“If the world ended tomorrow, would you forgive me?”
“Forgive you?”
I stare at Emilie, perplexed, as she spins lazily on the desk chair, the hazy October sunlight glinting in her eyes.
“Y’know, hypothetically,” she says. “If I had done something really bad that you would never forgive me for, but the world was going to end tomorrow, would you forgive me?”
Again with the hypothetical questions. She’s been asking them all day. What is she hiding? I blink slowly, trying to form a coherent thought, but navigating my mind is like wading through thick honey. I sigh quietly. Since this year started, I haven’t been able to think straight. Days, weeks even, seem to blur into one dull moment. As though I’ve lost a spark. As though my world is ending…
“Opal, hello?” Emilie giggles, flopping onto the bed beside me as if this is her own house. It may as well be. Being neighbours, Emilie and I have been best friends since forever. But recently, it feels like she’s been spending more time at my house than her own.
“Hmm? Oh right, the question,” I mumble. “Well, I guess I would…”
I trail off. It’s harder than I thought. If I didn’t forgive her, I’d feel like a terrible person, but if I did, I’d be betraying myself and everything I stand for.
“I’ll repeat the question one more time,” she says. Her words are ever so slightly sharper, but, still lost in thought, I think nothing of it. “If the world was going to end tomorrow, and I had done something
really bad that you could otherwise never forgive me for, would you forgive me?”
There has to be some meaning behind this. Emilie may act silly sometimes, but she’s very precise. She wouldn’t ask me something like this unless there was something else she was trying to say.
“Emilie, what did you do?” I ask, only half-teasing.
“What did I do?” she laughs dryly, avoiding my gaze. “I didn’t do anything. Now answer the question. Please.”
I find myself taken aback by her change in tone.
“Oh, I guess I wouldn’t want to stay angry at you in our last moments, so I’d forgive you.”
“You’d forgive me,” she echoes, rolling her eyes. “Such a pity I wouldn’t do the same.”
I don’t even have time to register the words. In an instant, she is practically on top of me, her hand around my throat. I'm trapped.
“Em… what?” I squeak out, trying to wrench myself from her grasp. She’s surprisingly strong.
“You say you’d forgive me,” she says bitterly. “But would you forgive me if I’d read your diary? A diary you’d told me specifically not to touch?”
The words hit me like a bullet, knocking the remaining breath out of me. Oh. So that’s what this is about. I nod weakly, though I know there’s no point.
“Now then, Opal, explain this.”
Emilie pulls out her diary, that familiar red-tinted notebook decorated with flowers and stars and other little doodles in her cartoony style. She points to a page, her fingers trembling as she shows me the corner. A dog-ear. I can feel every ridge of her fingers
as my throat starts to numb. She flicks a few pages forwards. A small, smooth crease, all down the length of the page, barely noticeable.
But all too meaningful.
My vison swims. Emilie would never allow herself to crease her diary. And the only other person who knows about that diary is… me.
And maybe I did look in her diary. So what? She couldn’t pretend I hadn’t heard the relentless shouting coming from next door, hadn’t felt light footsteps retreating to Emilie’s room and the shuddering cries that followed, hadn’t seen her tear-stained face when she left for school in the mornings. So I looked in her diary, only to see if I could figure out what’s been going on. I was just trying to help. Why did Emilie have to make such a big deal about it?
“I thought I could trust you,” she says, her voice faltering just the slightest bit. “I thought you were the one person who would respect my boundaries. But no.”
Her grip tightens and I feel dizzy, like I could close my eyes right now and never open them again.
“You betrayed me, Opal. And now the world is ending,” Tears glimmer in her eyes, catching the cold sunlight, tears of spite and regret and burning hatred. “At least, yours is…”
Dots dance across my vison. I wish I could cry out, tell her I'm sorry, tell her that I just wanted to keep her safe. But no sound comes out. My head throbs and I gaze at Emilie’s face, deep into her soulful brown eyes. But really, I'm not seeing anything at all.
And then, through the dullness, beyond the blurred lens my life has become, a spark lights. And in one swift movement, I grab Emilie’s shoulder and slam her head against the corner of my desk. Hard.
I don’t even realise what I’ve done at first. I almost expect her to get up and start laughing, saying that it was just a cruel joke, and that she’s so grateful to have me looking out for her.
Then I see the blood. Spattered across my desk, across my hands, across my mind itself. The scarlet liquid clings to my fingers. A sign that my actions can never be undone. Can never be forgiven. I hear a sickening crunch as Emilie’s head slides to the floor limply. I stare silently at her. I don’t scream. I can’t. I can only look at her, taking in the details before my world blurs once more.
I catch a glimpse of her forehead and retch. There’s a giant dent in the middle of it, heavily bleeding, littered with shards of bone and fragments of skin. That’s all I can see, all I need to see, before everything shuts down.
I collapse backwards onto my bed, my ears ringing. My whole body is quivering. I wipe away a single tear with a bloodstained hand and squeeze my eyes shut.
All that talk of the world ending, and I did it myself.
I took her life. Ended her world.
And I started the end of my own.