A New Essence

Chapter 46

Evelyn was running towards the school terrace as her heart pounded in her chest. Her legs were burning, and her lungs were screaming at her to stop. But it wasn't the time to rest. She had received a text from Bridgette saying farewell out of the blue. She was at the parking lot, almost about to head home, but her goodbye message startled her. Bridgette had been acting pretty strange lately but she wasn't opening up about anything. Usually it was Amelia who took care of this crybaby, but she was nowhere near to available these days. Evelyn had been having crazy thoughts to understand what Bridgette was going through, but she wasn't really a keen person to understand emotions all that well.

Bridgette was from a small household which was a happy family until the last year. She was the only child and was very pampered. But she had found out that her mother had run away from home because she had an affair, and due to that her father succumbed to alcoholism. Since then, everyday had been torturous for Bridgette. Her father would come home late and break things, and sometimes beat her up, while she stayed awake cleaning up and bandaging her wounds. To overcome that void, she had been in and out of relationships, but never did Evelyn see her this strange. And that's saying something because she had seen her post breakup drama.

She had searched the entire campus, and finally reached the terrace. The scene in front of her shook her to the core.

"Bridgette, please! Get down!" Evelyn screamed. "I swear to god, get off that fucking wall, Bridgette!"

Bridgette turned to her smiling, still standing on the parapet wall. They were five floors up, and there was no way a petite girl like her would survive the fall.

"Bridgette, please!" Evelyn broke into tears as sweat ran down her face and she fell to her knees. "Please talk to me. Please, I'll listen to anything. I'll listen to everything. Heck, I'll cry with you! But please, Bridgette, get down. Please come here." Evelyn was sobbing by now, smearing her tears away from her face, while desperately trying to convince her friend to live. "Please."

Bridgette put her feet down back on the ground, and Evelyn took off and tackled her in a second, landing in a violent thud. "You bitch! How could you do this to me? How did you think you could get away from me like this? Do we really not matter to you? Is that it?" She punched her arm repeatedly, all the while crying.

"Ouch, stop it! It hurts! I'm sorry, okay?" Bridgette cried out, silently wiping her tears.

"It would have hurt a million times more than this if you had jumped, you pig!" Evelyn yelled, punching her again. She pulled her into a hug as Bridgette smiled sadly. "Don't ever do that again, you hear me? Or else I'll personally push you from a much higher place than this."

Evelyn drove them to the cafe where Amelia worked, but the staff had informed them that she had left to her grandparents village as her grandfather passed away. Deciding that it wasn't a great time to tell her about this while she was mourning, she kept mum.

"I know that I am not as great as Amelia in these things, but I can definitely hear you out," Evelyn said sincerely.

Bridgette was not ready though. She was never ready for this moment. How could she be, since she got to know about it only a few hours ago?

"I'll hear you out without judgement, Bridgette. You can trust me," she said after she saw her hesitate.

"Evelyn," she whispered holding her hand and placing it on her own stomach. As soon as Evelyn touched the bulge, her hand recoiled quickly as if she touched electricity.

"Are you..." She trailed off as she fixed her gaze on Bridgette's stomach.

"Yes," tears ran down her cheeks as she tried to hold her sadness.