Break me

Chapter 2

Kacy and Trisha lay sound asleep in a king-sized bed; even in their sleep you could see their anguish. The last thing we needed was this, and I felt responsible for these events. The door suddenly opened, I jumped and Kacy stirred in her sleep. Jai's mum came in with a tray containing bottles of water, tablets and sandwiches. I couldn't have been more grateful to a stranger in my life for everything that she did. She could have just sent us back to our own hotel but she didn't instead she opened her arms to us. We met very few strangers in our time who were willing to help us.

After the ambulance arrived and confirmed Kate's death, the police arrived, a lot of people were distraught, two being Kacy and Trisha. It was difficult to give statements, in everyone's distraught states. The police escorted us to the guys' hotel; it was much more expensive-looking than our one but we paid no attention to that. My main goal was trying to calm Kacy and Trisha, who were still feeling as though we were back to our past nightmares. When we got to their room, the door was answered by a lady in her pajamas, she had soft facial features and she had straight long light brown hair. She started reprimanding the guys as if they had some input in how terrible we looked. Jai quickly introduced her as their "mama" and told her what had happened, to stop her shouts from attracting any on-lookers in the passage. Her soft, nurturing, nature turned into a stern one and started instructing the guys. She wanted to try and get Kacy and Trisha to calm down. I quickly volunteered. They would only get worse if a person we barely knew attempted that. Kale suggested they go to our hotel to fetch our luggage. I hesitated for a second before handing him the key.

Mama called a cab for the guys and she left to the police station to enquire what was going to happen. I got the girls cleaned up and into bed. We lay quietly on the bed until their sobs turned into sleep, just like I used to do. Once I was sure they were not going to wake up, I retreated to the bathroom and ran a hot water bath. I turned to the mirror and saw smudges of blood streaked on my face, arms and clothes...everywhere. For a minute I got shocked, to think I let Jai see me like this. The person staring back at me in the mirror looked like the past me, how did I get back to that horror show. I left the door of the bathroom slightly open, just in case Kacy or Trisha woke up. I then sank, deeply in to the bath of soothing water, I could hear a lot of noise coming from outside the room, and it began to make my head spin so I slowly lowered myself until I was under the water. There was no noise, just me and my thoughts. I replayed the scenes of what happened in my head, trying to make sense of what was going on and what was going to happen.

All of a sudden, I was being hauled out of the water by Mama. She had this shocked expression on her face. I started to laugh, the last thing I thought I would do was laugh, but the way she looked at me triggered it. I'm sure she thought I had passed out or something in the tub. Mama began to laugh too. At that moment I forgot everything, all the problems, but it didn't last long. I missed having someone who cared for our well beings without having ulterior motives. A knock on the door, brought everything back. Mama left me to finish up and when I came out of the bathroom I saw Mama standing next to Jai who was sitting at the vanity, they were talking in hushed tones. I stood just outside the bathroom door, in a towel, looking at them with concern. Whatever they were talking about was something that was definitely not good.

Jai looked up and saw me; he looked so flushed and quickly stood up, turned to the opposite direction of me and simultaneously began a brisk walk. He walked straight into the wall. I had to bite my lip just so I wouldn't laugh; Mama just gave him a puzzled look that seemed to say "what is wrong with you". He was stunned; he put his hand over his eyes, which gave away why he mistakenly walked into the wall. Mama chuckled. I lowered my head to hide my smile, clutched my towel a little tighter and walked to my bag which was near them. I grabbed my favorite dark blue jeans and a red long-sleeved top and retreated to the bathroom to look a bit more decent. I closed the door and placed my ear against the door to make out what was being said, all I heard was that we had to go to the court rooms tomorrow for a pre-session with the judge. It wasn't the actual trial, more like a meeting of all parties to discuss detail. It sounded odd to me that they would even do that. Jai had started arguing with mama against it and I was in complete agreement with him. This was not how normal cases worked and I would know how they go. We went through one ourselves, but I didn't want to argue. We were not in a familiar place, maybe they did things differently here.

I later decided that it would be better not to tell our parents what was going on. They were stressed out as it is and the last thing they wanted to hear was that we were under safeguard because we helped arrest some guy for beating the s**t out of his fragile wife. They probably could not handle any more of this anyway. We became burdens on our parents the minute we came home from hell. I suppose home became a slightly different type of hell. Mama told me that her husband, the guys' dad, had a lot of high connections and he would pull a few springs to make this whole thing go a lot faster, I thanked her and she insisted I get some sleep. I told we would be fine, but, she insisted that the boys check up on us every now and then. I quickly learnt that it was very diffiult to say no to Mama, so I agreed. She was a very determined woman. I think it is a very admirable quality to have.

I couldn't sleep, so I sat on a bench on the balcony and just looked out into space, a little while later Jai appeared and sat next to me. He started with simple questions like how I was but I knew he wanted to ask specific questions, he was just trying to work his way up to ask them. It took more than 10 questions later till he finally asked. " Why were so calm when that lady died, most girls aren't like that, why didn't you reacted like Kacy or Trisha had". I saw it coming but I wasn't prepared to answer it, I couldn't tell him what had happened to me...to us, I couldn't handle having both, tonight's problems and our past problems on my head. I shrugged and avoided the question and told him I was tired and simply left him on the balcony alone. I felt guilt, punch me in the stomach. I know it was a cold approach but I didn't know him well enough to disclose all my secrets.

I must have slept for about two hours when the phone rang; it woke all of us up. Kacy, Trisha and I woke up, shocked, in the bed, meanwhile Kale, Marcus and Jai, who were all out and squished, on the retractable sofa-bed, had sleepily moaned in unison. We didn't even know they came into the room, clearly we are dropping our guard. Trisha answered the phone and stared at me the entire time. "It was Mama and she said we needed to get ready because we had to be in court in a couple hours." The atmosphere in the room, after the call, was so gloomy.

One by one each of us got ready, Mama had ordered some breakfast and sent it the room, so we all sat down and ate. No one spoke a word of the previous night's events. Kacy and Trisha's eyes were puffy from all the crying, and there were dark circles under the boys' eyes. They had only had about a couple hours rest. Jai, every so often, stole glances at me. I know, he wanted answers. If I stared long enough into those dreamy brown eyes, I may just crack. I took the opportunity to escape his piercing stare. I offered to clear up. I left the tray of dirty dishes on the floor outside the room and noticed that there were policemen guarding the entrances to the floor; they were asking people for the identification as they entered the floor. I assumed they would be escorting us to the court room but didn't realize there would be this much protection for witnesses. Something was wrong but no one would tell us anything.

About a half hour later, Mama came into the room, she was in a formal women's silk navy suit, and was ready to escort us to the first meeting. Mama looked like she had studied law once upon a time ago, because of the way she handled and spoke to the lawyers, once we got there. I wondered what Jai's dad's high-profile job was, that got this meeting to happen, but I didn't ask. I just wanted all this chaos to disappear as fast as possible. There was air of mystery about Jai's family but I couldn't figure out what it was. Jai, himself, had some secrets too. This whole situation seemed to bring out hushed conversations from the entire family, away from the girls and myself.

As we sat and listened attentively, to the charges laid against the man, Miles Pedro, we became more restless and anxious, it wasn't our first time in court-like session. In fact, we had been to court together about five times, back home. We were more anxious because it brought back some really terrible memories. The room wasn't big, we sat at the back waiting for our turns to be called to the main table, where the judge sat. Miles was cuffed and accompanied by an armed police officer on one side of the table, the Judge sat at the head of the table and the lawyers on the opposite side. It was about half an hour in, when the lawyers were ready to call witnesses. We were all called up to right next to the judge, "for a word or two", before we gave our statements.

As we crowded around his chair, backs faced to that murderer, the judge began his speech on truthfulness, all of sudden there was a blood curdling cry of a woman, probably mama. Before we could turn around, four gunshots were fired. I turned to look at Kacy on my right and then Marcus was on my left. After a couple seconds, I saw that we standing upright and dead still, then Kale falls, then Kacy follows, lastly Trisha. I stood absolutely still, to regain my senses. I did a quick swivel and saw the police that were watching Mr Pedro, now tackling him, to remove the gun he had taken from the officer next to him. It took me a few more seconds to realize; my fallen friends had been shot and that they are now bleeding to death...