Crossed - The Karma Crusades (A Wattpad Featured Story)

CROSSED - Chapter 7 (Part 2 of 2)

The window of the dorm room faced a park. If she were where she thought she was, she was a long way from home. She sat back down on the unmade bed with the striped black and gray comforter. Before she could stop herself the tears had come again. This time uncontrollably. She slid off the bed to the floor and rested her head against the side of the bed as she sat there in that big yellow towel.

Susan opened the door to the room and stopped when she saw her roommate, slumped on the floor, tears running down her cheeks. She put her hands on her hips and said nothing as she kicked the door closed with her heel.

Through the sobs that were finally starting to end Bette managed to get out, "Do you have a map?" She couldn't look Susan in the eyes after her earlier behavior but hoped Susan wouldn't hold it against her.

"Yeah. What do you need it for? Goin' somewhere? Ya still ain't say what your problem is." Susan answered with very little forgiveness in her voice. She wasn't going to make this easy.

"I know. I'm sorry. I guess I'm just a little tired."

"Well next time you want to snap on someone trying to help you calm down from one of your crazy dreams in the middle of the night, I'll just stay right over here, in my bed. You can snap on Kathy. I don't need it, really. Had me up all night the past three nights with your moaning and huffing and crying," she said looking out the corner of her eye as she picked up her tablet and opened the maps application.

She was taking forever. As if she were purposefully moving at the most leisurely speed possible just to cause Bette more agony. Bette wished she would hurry up. The feeling of being in a time warp made her head spin. She felt like she was standing in the top of an hourglass and the sands were running low, about to suck her through to the bottom. Finally Susan pulled it up and handed it to her.

"Here. Where are you going anyway?" she asked again.

Susan's eyes watched Bette closely as Bette darted her own eyes to avoid Susan's inquisitive stare. Bette couldn't help but think "If only she'd just get off my case and leave me alone."

Even I would have a hard time explaining to Susan what was happening to Bette. Bette didn't even know what was going on for sure and there were no words she could find yet to use.

"Thank you," Bette said entering her home address painfully slowly as she tried to work with the unfamiliar fingers on the unfamiliar hands.

The location marker showed the campus and then the map moved to her home address. She was where she thought she was – downtown Atlanta. The zooming went in as the miles stretched.

When the map finished loading and calculating the directions it was a 250 mile drive back home, to the other side of Valdosta. She'd never make it back, not by herself. Bette had to find Lana's identification and money and her phone. If she could find those things she could catch the bus back.

"Can you call me? I can't find my phone." Bette now felt sheepish and silly with her requests to Susan.

Susan sighed and then picked up her phone to call Lana's. Bette sat quietly, waiting for it to ring. After a few seconds she picked up the faint sound of buzzing and vibrating. Bette crawled along the floor to the closet, following the sound, and then opened the door. The light from the phone lit up the clothes above as it lay on the floor near the back. It must have fallen out of Lana's pants before they switched.

"Thanks so much," she said to Susan with a slight glance up and what might have been mistaken for a little smile.

Bette turned the phone on and was met with a lock screen. "Crap. What's the fricking password?!" she muttered louder than she thought.

I knew it wasn't fair, she was stuck. But I couldn't help but chuckle a little. I have to find my moments of humor in all this madness otherwise I'll go mad.

"You forgot your password?" Susan said laughing right along with me, though she couldn't see me as she shook her head at the same time. "You need help girl. I'm gonna be late for my next class. So are you by the way. If you can't remember it you can always try to do a system reboot. You'll lose everything though, but that's the breaks." Susan grabbed a big Chemistry textbook off of her desk and threw it in her backpack before walking out the door.

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