Pomegranate Juice

Pomegranate juice Raphailia Paraschou

It’s already 2 o'clock and the party's still going strong. Music, games, dancing, and drinking. Everybody is having a good time, even her. Even though, when she had received the invitation, her friend tried to prevent her from going by any means possible.

“You know he is gonna be there! I have a bad feeling about this. I refuse to go and so should you!”

She just smiled, “It’ll be fun. ” “Have you forgotten what happened the last time he was there?” her friend snapped back.

“How could I have forgotten? My best friend Lola was involved. But these are just rumours. Besides, Lola is a notorious liar, ” she had insisted.

So here she is, smiling, singing, and dancing to the beat of the music, seeming to have left everything, even her friend, who must have gone to sleep by now, in the past.

The dance floor is coming alive. The lights have been turned down low and the volume of the music has reached its climax. The beat is pumping harder and faster and everyone around her has started dancing aggressively. When the biggest dance hit of the summer comes on, she suddenly feels like she is being drowned in the lake of bodies that has been formulated around her. She scans the place to find a quick way out but it's no use. So she chooses to swim. She starts dancing and manages to reach the back corner of the room where the table with the drinks stands.

She decides to have a drink. She avoids alcohol, the only sign of her past self, the one that she maintained when Lola was around, and notices a bottle of pomegranate juice. Her favourite. She grabs a plastic cup and pours the red liquid into it. “It looks like blood, '' she thinks to herself and starts laughing, remembering Lola’s aversion to anything red.

Suddenly, she sees him approaching her with oomph, as always. Lola used to say that she loved his confidence, but now she despises it, as Lola had told her ages ago. He is only a few metres away when he trips and stumbles aggressively into her, almost knocking her over, spilling the red juice on her shirt.

“My favourite white shirt!” she cries, “You ruined my favourite shirt. ”

“I am sorry I didn’t… let me help you. ” he says, grabbing a napkin from the table. “No. Stay away from me. Don’t touch me. ” “Chill girl, it’s no biggie!” he answers laughing. The red liquid has spread across her shirt creating a big red blotch on her chest, like a wound that bleeds. “It’s no biggie huh?”she whispers in disbelief. “Is that what you told Lola?” she says raising her voice. “Is this a joke to you?” she screams without being able to control herself. “Can’t you see that my shirt is destroyed because of you?”

“I am sorry I didn’t mean to. It just happened, ” he replies as he walks away.

“Wait, ” she meant to say, but when he turns to face her, responding to her exclamation, she sees Lola’s face staring back at her, and she can’t get any further words past her lips. She grabs a handful of napkins and starts maniacally rubbing the blotch. She rubs and rubs, but it has taken a deep, red colour. She keeps rubbing and rubbing, crying until the blotch becomes brickred. Only then does she stop.

Despite the rubbing, despite her mother struggling to remove it, despite the force of the new washing machine, the blotch stays there. As for her, she will never touch pomegranate juice to her lips again. She shoved the shirt deep inside her wardrobe. She didn’t want to throw it away, but everytime she accidentally touched it, she felt a pinch in the exact place that the blotch once was. Somewhere near her heart.