Treadmill

XV.I

Have you ever had a bad feeling about something? Like something just doesn't feel right, but you can't quite place your finger on it? Nothing seems abnormally wrong. Nothing seems like it should be investigated or 'figured out.' But you have this feeling in the pit of your stomach that something is so wrong.

            I felt that way driving along the road the night of the accident. I've felt that way a few times since. But I don't think that's saying much. My life has been a constant cycle of bad things happening and not knowing exactly why they had to be happening to me.

            Trusting people had always come easy to me. I had never had a reason to mistrust someone close to me before. I was blessed enough that my family had always been honest with me about important things. I was blessed enough to have friends that had always had my back—mainly because they had been so few and far between that it was statistically improbable for one of them to backstab me.

            College had changed that for me. Specifically, my sophomore year of college had changed that for me.

            My two best friends started hooking up without telling me about it. My one roommate was so incredibly obnoxious that she only used me to get into parties thrown by my new friend. And said new friend used my car to kill a random person on the road in a town eight hours from our own.

            The last one of those three was slightly worse than the other ones. Looking at them listed out like that, I want to laugh. Because in my head, when everything was going absolutely ridiculously insane in my life, they all seemed kind of comparable to each other. You can think that I'm a bad person for that. You can think that I'm a bad person for anything, honestly. I wouldn't blame you.

            Here's the thing, though: once people start lying to you, you stop trusting everyone. Including the people you inherently trusted for a long time. And those who you inherently trusted for...not as long of a time.

            And here's where it starts snowballing, ya'll. I feel like I've been dragging this out, and it's only because I want you to have the full background. I want you to understand what happened, but I also want you to understand what led up to it. It's just as important, if not more important.

            But when things start heading towards hell, they don't take too long to arrive there.

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            Rebecca was so used to waking up on Kennedy's couch that she was slightly surprised to find herself waking up on the floor of Kennedy's bedroom, an empty cup in her right hand and her phone laying a few feet away from her.

            She grabbed her phone, ignoring the pounding in her head as she did so. The room was dim, the curtains not allowing much light to get in, so nothing was too terribly painful. Just slightly terribly painful.

            11:01 AM.

            Rebecca rolled onto her back, inwardly congratulating herself for having enough foresight to permanently stop her Sunday shift at the grocery store. With the amount of money she was making from their Instagram ad campaigns, she wasn't too concerned about dropping her work hours from 38 hours a week to 32.

            She checked the room slowly. There was another girl on the floor a little bit away from her, still out cold. Rebecca could tell that there were people on the bed above her head, but she didn't pay much attention to them. As far as she could tell, there were maybe five people in the room, including herself.

            Rebecca slowly stood up and left the room, walking down the stairs until she was able to safely place her feet on the main floor of the apartment. The light streaming in through the windows made her squint slightly as she looked around. There were more people scattered around the living room, but no sign of Kennedy.