Free Rock My World by Sharisse Coulter

fallen apart left to her own devices. She probably
would have walked straight over to the women’s clinic and had the abortion
she’d been contemplating if it weren’t for Airika .
She’d come bounding into Jenna’s room the day after they found out, thrusting a
teddy bear out in front of her. It wore a onesie that said, “My mommy’s hotter than your mommy.” Inappropriate, yes, but thoughtful too. She’d gone on and on
about how cute Jenna and Alex’s baby would be; and Jenna didn’t take that trip
to the clinic. Part of her felt forever indebted to Airika .
So how could she reconcile those memories with this new information?
    Her
girlfriend was supposed to be the one who got her through this type of
situation. To tell her everything was going to be okay. That he’d been an
asshole and needed to do some serious sucking up. That in the end it would all
work out. That girl wasn’t supposed to be the reason for all of this! And, even
worse than being the perpetrator was that she ripped her friendship out from
under them both. Airika’s actions negated every one
of those conversations. Every bit of affirmation, of shared experience, of soothing comfort and inside jokes were now tainted with
lies. Did she ever care, or was she only my friend because my dad’s famous? Did
she stand by me just to be near Alex? She felt lost in the sea of betrayal. The
sense of loss was so overwhelming she couldn’t breathe. Literally, it took
effort to breathe.
    They kept
that secret for nearly two decades and she’d never known. Jenna had never even
suspected it. What else hadn’t she known? What secrets had she confided in this
wolf-in-sheep’s season-appropriate clothing? Airika knew everything about Jenna. Had she been laughing at her all these years? Had
Alex? Did they laugh about her together?
    The
questions flooded her overloaded brain and her pulse quickened with rage. She
hurled a pillow from the couch across the room. It wasn’t enough. She grabbed
her phone, inertly taunting her from the coffee table, and hucked it against the wall. It shattered into tiny pieces, Swarovski crystals plinking
all around the floor, reflecting bits of light like prisms. Her chest heaved in
satisfaction at her own destruction. She knew, of course, that she would be the
one to clean it up, but the pressure inside her head was too much. The failsafe
valve was fit to burst, messes and all.
    When she
looked around, instead of mocking herself for losing control, or feeling bad
about destroying her brand new one-of-a-kind phone, she found herself dazzled
by the flickers of beautiful rainbow light reflected all around the room. The
juxtaposition of the old quaint cabin peppered in blinged out shrapnel seemed absurdly amusing. She didn’t recognize that person who had time to apply multi-colored gemstones to a
cell phone case, yet missed the fact that her best friend was harboring
feelings for her husband for the last twenty years. A voice in her head told
her to remember this moment—this anger—and to never let it happen
again.
    She
ransacked the spare room looking for her old camera, having just destroyed her
camera phone. It was an old Canon SLR that still had a roll of film in its
back. Perfect. She set up the antique tripod she found in the corner of the
room, set the timer, and glowered over her epiphany. There was a click, click,
click followed by the sound of film being sucked back into itself.
    She wanted
to blow that image up in order to remember how badly she felt at this moment
and to never ever let anyone make her feel like this again. Sadistic as it was,
she found pleasure in the pain.
    As she
walked to the grocery store (the only place that still developed film in town)
she felt an odd sense of self-satisfaction. Not ready to be fully articulated,
it felt something like gumption. Being disconnected from the world seemed
wildly underrated. No cell phone, no computer, no car, just herself. If she
wanted to do something she