Final
Krystal's Promise
Her attention turns abruptly from the location of the yellow rubber lacrosse ball to me instantly when I wince away from the light touch of her long and nimble fingers on my arm, her eyes full of shock, and she pulls away immediately. I’ve never leaned away from her like that before, not ever, not once, and I know what she’s thinking. The pain is still searing through me when I flash her a wan smile, “I’ve just got a couple of bruises, that’s all...,” I whisper, squeezing my eyes shut to withstand the pain, opening them after a second to stare back into her own pair of dark orbs.
I know she didn’t mean to hurt me: it’s wired into her brain that when she defends another person, she has to be touching them, it’s kind of like how she can tell where they are and that they’re still behind her and she’s still guarding them, a reflex. “Dad!” She yells to the snowy haired man standing on the sidelines, doing his job and coaching the rest of the team. “Sulli’s hurt, I’m gonna stretch her out!”
And then she proceeds to drag me, by my good arm, to where are our bags are piled together, without the permission of her dad, the Head Coach, and sits me down on the grass. “Show me,” she says through gritted teeth, seething with controlled anger waiting to burst out of her seams. She’s angry that someone had hurt me....but she doesn’t know she’s the one who’s done it, she doesn’t know it’s not him this time. I roll up my shirt sleeve and bring my arm up for her to look at, and I can see her heart breaking just from her expression.
Slowly, she raises a finger to my arm and traces around the enormous circle of deep purple that stains my creamy white skin. Her touch is gentle, but her eyes are hard: “Who did this to you, Sulli?” But I can’t say anything for a long time because I don’t want to break her spirit. Because there was a promise she’d made me once, a very long time ago, when we were both still young and in the business of making outrageous promises that we might not be able to keep but still made anyways, and when she’d found out my dad beat me.
But I opened my mouth nonetheless, and the words spilled out of me, crushing her beneath them. “You did.” They are nothing but two words. Two small, meager, almost meaningless words. But to Krystal, those words are everything. Those words broke her promise, those words broke her. “Wait....w-what?” She gasps, “I did this?” And then she’s covering with one hand, backing away like a scared animal, nearly falling over someone’s backpack. “S-Sulli, I...,” and then she took off, sprinting away from me at full speed, making a bee line to the road, right in the middle of her sentence.
If I didn’t chase her, I knew she’d end up doing something extremely stupid, just like how Jessica Unnie’d warned me she’d do if Krys ever figured out she’d hurt me in any way, shape, or form. And so I’m racing after her, blazing a trail right behind her, determined to catch her. But she’s fast, way too fast, and she’s starting to gain ground between us. So I take a leap of faith, literally, and tackle her to the ground, pinning her beneath me. We’re both out of breath from running, staring into each others’ eyes, chests heaving, when I say, “Listen...Krystal,” she wriggles under me, “I know you’d never try to hurt me. Never.”
She looks away, and I move her head with my finger, forcing her to stare into my eyes, “It wasn’t your fault, you were just doing your job. I’m okay.” Her lips are pursed and she looks as if she’s about to cry when she yells, “No! It’s not okay to hurt you!” Her eyes soften and she goes limp, staring up at the sky with blank eyes, “It’s never okay to hurt the person you love,” she whispers. And I’m left without words to say, but a mind ready to explode with thoughts. “Krys..,” I murmur, leaning my head down until my lips brush against hers with every word, “you’ve never hurt me.”
Her lips quiver on mine. “If anything, you’ve healed me, not hurt me.” And anyone passing by could see the way she rose like the tide to meet my lips and me gently placing her back down on the grass, the two of us connected in a way that usually isn’t defined as a normal best friend relationship.
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