The Dreams

Chapter Forty Three

Rina knew she could not leave without saying goodbye. She might not be able to explain what was happening or where she was going, but she felt that she owed it to the people in her life to let them know that she was not returning to college and would be going away for at least a short while. She did not dare tell her mother in person. She lacked the nerve and was afraid her resolve would not survive a fight with her mother.

In the end, she took the coward's way out and told Corine and tried to cajole her friend into telling the bad news to her mother. She knew it was cruel to ask such a think of her friend who had been so supportive, but she barely had the courage to tell Corine let alone her mother.

Somehow she still managed to ask all the right questions to make Rina even more anxious. Her only saving grace was that she did most of the explaining through text messages, which gave her some time to think through her responses so she did not say anything to set her friend up to ask questions she was not ready or willing to answer.

Then Corine's messages stopped abruptly. That made Rina more than a little nervous. Her nerves were so frazzled that she could only sit still worrying and waiting to hear another message come through.

She wished she could say she was surprised when she received a text from Corine telling her to come outside to talk. She only spent a second wondering how Corine knew where to find her. Corine knew practically everybody and could find out just about any information she needed quite easily.

Facing her friend right now made her nervous. She did not know if she could hide enough of the truth to keep her from worrying and spreading the worry to her mother. Explaining everything would be impossible even if she had the time. Every hour she lingered here was an hour she was not able to spend getting to Hibiki and figuring out how she could save him.

She silently crossed the porch and the front yard and joined Corine in her car, all the while wondering what caused Corine to choose now to resist her urge to snoop around a new place. Without any idea what she should say, she was left to wait for Corine to speak her mind.

"What is going on, Rina? I've barely heard from you over the past month and then out of nowhere you want me to talk to your mom for you and tell her you're not going back to college. What the hell?"

Rina squirmed in her seat. Something needed to be said and she wanted to explain it in a way that would not make her friend feel as though she was being used and kept out of the loop even as it became more and more apparent to her that she was doing just that.

"I wish I could start at the beginning, but there's no time to explain and it would take too long to make sure you understand. A lot has happened to me lately and now Hibiki needs my help and I can't go back to college while all of this is going on." She spoke all of these words as quickly as possible to get it out of the way and hoped that it would be enough.

"You can't do that," Corine insisted.

"I have to do it," she shot back.

"You've lost your mind. I could understand everything getting messed up when you were sick. I could even understand when you got so caught up in your love life that you forgot about the rest of your life — young love and all that, but this is just too much. I wouldn't be a good friend if I didn't tell you that I think this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

Anger flared up briefly and overtook the rest of her thoughts. How dare Corine judge her when she did not have the whole story? She also felt thoroughly ashamed by her words. She could not say she disagreed with her friend's statement. That did not stop her from feeling compelled to defend her life.