15: Elise

WHEN I opened my eyes again, it was morning.
Heavy drapes still covered the windows but a few slivers of morning light had slipped through the corners.
I remembered what happened the night before from getting beaten up to my nightmare, and Gian’s comforting words before I went back to sleep.
I tried to feel if I still have the heavy emotions I carried last night. Every time I had that nightmare, I would wake up depressed.
There would be a very heavy feeling in my chest, and I couldn’t get up or eat. I would cry until I could stop because my inay would see my bloated face and worry.
Then it would be trying to dodge away from her overwhelming attention until I could get to school.
But the heaviness was missing this morning.
I just wished it ran away with my injuries, because I hurt like hell. My head was throbbing like crazy, and my eyes felt bloated and on fire.
It was time I took my next batch of meds.
“Uungh…” I moaned in both complaint and frustration. It wasn’t this hard last night. Why did I ache this much?
The next time that bitch comes near me, I’m gonna shoot her. I swear. I’ll learn to shoot and I’ll get a license and then I’ll… I’ll learn martial arts, too, I amended because I realized I didn’t want to go to jail in case I killed her with a gun.
I didn’t think I could shoot anyone, anyway, but I know I would like to give her back every single pain I was feeling right now, I thought, my face contorting with the pain.
I sat up from the pillows carefully.
My body felt so heavy and my eyelids felt like bricks were sitting on them.
But I could see Gian’s handwritten note on my bedside table when I turned.
I didn’t need to get it, in fact. I could read it from where I was because he’d written it so big.

**Elise,
I had to leave before six. Jason’s sleeping on your sofa and he’ll come down once your friend arrives. I’ll be back. Be careful and stay in, OK?
- G**

I felt one of my eyebrows shoot up.
His '*I’ll be back'* felt ominous.
Alia was home.
I could hear her loud, off-key singing from the direction of our kitchen.
That meant Jase came down to his unit before she arrived and didn’t tell her anything because she wouldn’t have been singing had she known.
Which meant that I would get the full brunt of my friend’s hysterics when she finds out.
*Coward*, I called Jason inside my head.
I sighed.
I really needed my meds and they were in the kitchen. And I also needed to eat first before I take them into my stomach.
If I waited for Alia to fall asleep inside her bedroom, I wouldn’t be able to follow the exact time when I should be taking my meds, especially the antibiotics and, worse of all, she would get angrier when she woke up and finds out I’d been keeping something this serious from her.
Alia would feel guilty not knowing and doing something for me. She was that kind of friend.
So, I left the bed and my bedroom.
I believe all kinds of winces showed on my face as I walked toward the kitchen.
It felt like each strand of my hair and each nail hurt with the rest of my body.
I was cursing every fiber of Shiela’s whole being at every step until nothing was left, even for karma.
I found Alia trying to solve the dilemma of fitting her grocery items in the fridge that was already flowing with the food containers Mang Karding brought for us last night.
She was even smiling when she turned to me, probably thinking about bingeing on the cake in one of the bigger containers.
When she saw me, she dropped what she was holding in shock. It was a refill pack of mayonnaise. Her smile disappeared and she paled.
“My God! What happened to you?!” she screeched when she finally found her voice after several tries.
Then she pulled the earbuds from her ears.
“Why do you have a black eye and why do you have bruises and scratches…?”
She was about to walk toward me, then she abruptly stopped as horror replaced the shock on her face.
“Oh no...! Did.. somebody get in…?” Her eyes were rolling in fright. “Did you get—”
“Calm down. It’s not like that, okay?” I butted in before my poor friend fainted on the floor. She looked like she was about to.
She took a second to breathe in relief, and then her eyes bulged again from her face in the next one.
And she was screeching again.
“What happened then?!”
*Ouch*… I could see a lot of exclamation points in the air.
“Gian's ex-date beat me up last night, at the party,” I admitted as I grimaced at the pain and the shame while I gingerly sat on the seat I pulled from our round kitchen table.
She was instantly there to hover, needing to do something, but scared to touch me anywhere. “Why the hell was I not told?!”
“I didn’t want you rushing home in the middle of the night, what with these missing women still happening.” I looked at the mess on the floor. The mayonnaise packet burst. “The mayo…” I said, regretting the spilled mayonnaise.
“What?! May? It’s just Feb—?” her eyes followed the direction of my gaze. “Are you fretting about mayonnaise? Leave it alone! Why did she beat you up?” And then, the bulging eyes again. “Did you and Gian finally…”
I was so shocked that I couldn’t even find a word. Meanwhile, she took a deep breath… really deep, and blew it out dramatically.
Her eyes grew impossibly larger, and exclamation points danced in the air again as she marched from one point to another in front of me.
“I knew it! That closeness between you and your boss is going to go somewhere eventually. Didn’t I tell you? Huh? Huh?”
She grimaced and stopped her marching—thank god ‘cause it pains my head—and made a full turn to face me.
“And you didn’t tell me! What? Do I really have to catch you guys—”
“Catch us? What do you mean catch us?”
“I mean, she. The ex.” She said this in a suspiciously gleeful manner. “Did she need to catch you two to—"
“*Gaga!* Stop!”
My head was aching like a bitch now, but the tears I felt forming in my eyes weren’t just because of that, but because she was just so unbelievably funny. If I wasn’t hurting so much… goodness!
“Stop for a moment and I’ll tell you what actually happened, okay? But I need to take my meds and I need breakfast first… pleaaaase? I am about to die!”
She was already pulling a pan from one of the shelves with one hand before I even stopped speaking while taking the wooden bowl that contained the onions, ginger and garlic with the other hand.
“Sit comfortably there and tell me everything. What do you want for breakfast, my bestie? I’ll cook it for you. Anything!”
“Corned beef with potatoes. And fried rice. With the peas and mango and the seaweed—”
Her hand, which now magically held a knife, was waving in the air, telling me she already knew what I meant.
I didn’t have to say she could add in a sunny-side-up egg. Her other hand was already reaching for the fridge and taking two eggs out easily.
“The story….? My god, I’m waiting here!”
I smiled and relaxed in my seat and thought of where I was going to start…