Your life can turn around in the blink of an eye. In a flash.
Big moments tackle you when you're not looking. They jump you from the back, like a coward, but they have a power over you, nevertheless.
You never see them coming. Partially because you don't expect them to. You think you have time until your whole life turns around. You think you're too young and that it's too early for big things to happen, but no matter if you're ready or not, those moments are coming. They might be closer than you think.
You think you know who you are, what you believe in, what you want. You have no idea.
You fight against certain things because you believe they're bad for you, and then you embrace the others because you believe they're good.
You fight love because it's hard, and you embrace doubt because it's easy.
And then, everything turns around. One moment you're you, the next you're someone else. And maybe that someone else is the person you always were.
Elena was sitting by her desk, doodling in the back of her notebook, waiting for her English class to start. Caroline was in the row next to her, talking with Tyler on the phone, like they haven't seen each other few minutes ago. That's what love does to you, Elena thought to herself, it makes you dependent on someone else, like a child. You fall in love, and it's like you take few step backwards, going back in time.
Stefan was sitting in front of her, calm. This is how he always was during classes, perfectly calm. Maybe because he felt he doesn't fit in the classroom, so he tried to make himself invisible. He always belonged in the field. He never was a straight A student. Even as a boy he hated studying and doing homework, rebelling against it like it's an unnecessary evil and obligation only he has to do. He's not stupid, far away from that actually. He simply never saw any point in sitting in the classroom, listening about something that will in the next lesson be proved wrong. Because that's really what school is. You start from the beginning, they teach you something, and then next year you find out there was someone who proved other persons theory wrong, and then there's someone who proved them wrong, and you keep spinning in a circle. Stefan was never interested in letting them teach him lies. He was always much more interested in things he will be able to use. It's a popular belief guys play football because they're not as intelligent. Elena can't speak for everyone, but she can speak for Stefan. And he doesn't play football because he's too stupid to understand more complicated things, he plays football because he loves it.
Just like she loves reading books, and writing, and watching shows, because those things teach her something, in one way or another. Guess football has taught Stefan something as well. Unlike him, she was always fascinated with how world evolved. And people alongside it.
Elena never thought she could be with a guy like Stefan. Guy who never read her favorite book, or a guy who doesn't read at all. Guy who couldn't quote her Neruda when she needs to hear words of comfort. How wrong was she? All of the guys in her book club who know her favorite books by memory never did it for her. And then there was Stefan, someone who probably never heard about her favorite book, and he was able to make her whole body go stiff just with a glance. He can make her heart pound ten times faster than normal, and every time she sees him she gasps a little, silently, like he took a small amount of air from her lungs.
She raises her look a little, and her eyes fall on the back of Stefan's head. She remembers how tingly the ends of his hair on his neck were on her fingertips, and she gets an annoyingly strong desire to pull her fingers through his hair.
He smells like lemon. He always smells like lemon. His scent is stuck in her nostrils.
The bell that means the beginning of the class rings, and Mrs. Scott, their English teacher walks in. Everybody keep acting like nothing has happened, like her presence means nothing to them. Mrs. Scott never had authority over her students.
The boy from the second row stands up and says something. Elena can't hear him from all the noise other students are making. She doesn't know the boy. She had seen him around the school, and his name is on the tip of her tongue, but she doesn't know him personally. There's something sad about him. Both in his posture and Elena's memory of him. He's trying to say something, but no one is listening to him.
After some time someone yells at him to stop talking, throwing in few insults in there.
Anger flashes in his eyes and his hands clench into a fist at his sides before he reaches inside of his jacket and his fingers clench around something hard. Metallic.
A gun.
He's the one holding it, but he looks more scared than anyone in the classroom. Everyone go quiet as his hands shiver with a gun in it.
And then someone laughs. The same boy that yelled at him to shut up. He's wearing a football jacket. "Is that thing even real?" he mocks the boy whose name Elena can't remember right now.
The boy bites his lower lip and his finger flies on a trigger, making the gun go off. He never meant to shoot anyone, he was probably too annoyed and irritated, so he shot few bullets in front of him, at the shelves and cabinets on the other side of the classroom.
Elena shuts her eyes closed when she feels like her whole body is falling into shock. She can't believe this is happening. That someone in her class stood up and fired a gun. She knew her surprise is rather silly because these kind of things happen way too often than they should.
She keeps her eyes closed, and she feels a striking pain in her lower abdomen, like she's going to puke. Few girls scream. She can hear bullets crashing into metallic shelves few feet behind her.
And then it stops. Everything. The only noise she can hear is the sound of her own heart thumping and her breathing. She's so in shock, so frightened that she's fighting for air. She opens her eyes and looks around the room. Everybody are sitting calmly in their seats, some students still holding their eyes closed or their arms over their heads, but no one seems to be hurt.
And then, she hears Caroline gasp her name. "Elena," she lets out one loud and tired exhale.
Out of worry something has happened to her friend, Elena turns her head around in a hurry, the feeling she's going to puke still present in the area of her stomach.
But when she looks at her friend, nothing seems to be wrong with her, except there's a ghostly expression on her face. And then, her look falls down Elena's body and it becomes still at one point, her eyes widening.
Elena's look falls as well, and there it is. Barely visible because of the dark blue color of her shirt, a big, widening blood stain.
A small gasp escapes Elena's throat as she stands up, slowly, realizing the pain in her stomach is not induced by her need to puke at all. She pulls her fingers over the blood stain on her shirt and when she raises the fingers up she can clearly see a trace of blood on them.
Her look meets the look of the boy with a gun, and there's panic in his eyes.
The pain becomes more. More deeper, more aggressive, more everything. She feels like her knees are turning into jello as her look lands on the hole in her body. She can feel the pierced flesh of her abdomen with her fingertip. Her legs give up on her, slowly, and she starts to fall. She closes her eyes, thinking how it's better if she's not aware of her surroundings.
But she never hits the ground. She feels the set of arms around her.
When she opens her eyes, she sees Stefan holding her. She thought the next time he holds her will be under more romantic circumstances, but the fact she's in his arms takes a little bit of her pain away.
Or so she thinks.
There's fear in his eyes, fear she can't quite decipher.
"Can she stand?" someone yells from the other side of the classroom.
Elena wants to snap at them for asking such a stupid question, but the pain increases. It shoots over her whole body, making her twitch. She feels like she's seizing in his arms.
"Sit her back on her chair," she hears Caroline's panicking voice.
"No, she has to lie down," Stefan says like he can read her thoughts. Because that's exactly what she wants to do, lie down.
So he lowers her body on the ground, putting her head in his lap, moving her hair out of the way. There's a certain kind of gentleness in his look and movements, gentleness she's not used getting from him. Or from anyone, truth to be told.
He puts his hand over her wound and when he pulls it away, it's covered in blood. No one does anything. There's really nothing anyone can do. The boy with a gun is standing where he was standing all along, pulling his hair with his fingers, a desperate look on his face.
"You're going to be okay," Stefan tries to encourage her, and she wonders does his voice not shiver because he doesn't care about her enough, or because he's a good actor, "Everything will be okay," he starts taking his jacket off. He curls it into a big cotton ball and presses it onto her wound to stop the bleeding. She wonders how does he know what to do, and then she realizes it's probably from all those football injuries he had earned over the years.
A tear falls down her cheek. She's not sure when she exactly started crying.
Stefan removes few more strains off her hair from her face and looks at her gently before he turns his head around to look at the boy with the gun. "She needs help," he snaps at him, and Elena thinks how that is not the best way to talk to someone with a gun.
"Shut up," the boy cries out, still pulling onto his hair, "I'm thinking."
"You shot her," Stefan hisses through his teeth, "She's bleeding, she needs help," for a moment there he sounds helpless. Almost desperate.
The boy lets go of his hair and looks at Stefan before a desperate, painful laugh escapes his throat. "Why?" his eyes fill with tears, "Why does she get to live?" he asks with a husky voice.
Stefan's face becomes pale since he doesn't understand his question, nor does he have an answer prepared. Few students in the classroom gasp, and it takes some time for someone to finally speak, "Ryan," she says his name sweetly, personally, "I miss her too, but this won't bring Sarah back," she shakes her head, her eyes filling with tears, "Taking someone else's life won't bring her back."
That triggers Elena's memory. Three months ago Ryan was driving home from the cinema with his girlfriend Sarah when a drunk truck driver crashed into them. She died in place, but he survived with minor injuries.
Ryan puts his hands over his face and weeps.
"Who is Sarah?" Stefan asks confused, because to him it seemed he's the only one in the classroom who doesn't know what's going on.
"His girlfriend," Elena says, "She died," she whispers silently, for only Stefan to hear.
They hear the noise outside of the school. Murmur of voices. Everyone probably left the school already, and it will take little time for them to realize Mrs. Scott's class is the only one that's not out. They can also hear the sound of police and ambulance. Calling the two is an usual procedure when something like this happens.
Elena can feel the pain going through her whole body now. It's in her chest, and her arms seem heavy, as well as her legs. She has a strong headache and the noises coming from outside are not helping. She's also scared, and she just wants to sleep. She wishes she could fall asleep, but she's too afraid of closing her eyes. She's too afraid of not waking up.
One of Stefan's hand is holding the jacket which is pressing onto her wound, and his other hand is one the side of her head, cupping her cheek. It made her feel safe. It made her feel like everything is going to be alright.
"You were with her, you know," Ryan says with a chuckle stiffened in his throat, "Junior year or something, I don't even fucking know," he says, this time more angrily, "And I bet you wouldn't recognize her even if I showed you her picture," disgust and anger flash in Ryan's eyes as he looks towards Stefan.
Stefan tries to remember. He's been with so many girls, some of whose names he never found out. Some of whose names he doesn't even remember. And there were a lot of girls with the name of Sarah.
Something clenches inside of his chest, and at the same time something clenches inside of Elena's chest as well, and this time she's not sure the feeling is induced by physical pain.
"Maybe you don't know me Salvatore, but I know you," his fingers clutch harder against his gun, and something gets stuck inside of Elena's throat, "I know how you treat girls," he spits out, clearly disgusted by that kind of behavior, "And then guys like me have to fix what guys like you break," his voice goes back to normal, but his eyes fill with memories, and the only thing memories bring to Ryan is an unpleasant pain. Pain which makes him angry. Angrier. "So why do you get to live, and why does she get to die?" he raises his voice, "You never loved anything in your life, and you get to live. She loved everything in her surrounding, and she's gone," he says sadly, his voice lowering for a bit when he finally finds his anchor. Because as much as memories hurt him, he keeps on feeding of them. Finding his solitude in them.
His look falls on Elena, whose head is still in Stefan's lap, and his look lingers on his hand on her cheek, his thumb scraping over her red skin, and her tears falling around his finger. Then his look flies to Stefan who's still looking at Ryan, not taking his eyes from him. "You care for her," Ryan finally says, like he made some great discovery.
Stefan's eyes light up, they fill with fear. "She's bleeding," Stefan says, like that's the only reason he's holding her like this, like he's still afraid to admit, even in this situation. Admit that he cares, more than anyone knows. More than he would like to admit.
Ryan laughs in a mocking kind of laugh. "Can you honestly tell me, if I shot anyone else in this classroom, you would run to them and held them like you're holding her?" he asks.
Something gets stuck inside of his throat as he looks around the classroom. He barely knows anyone in there. Few guys from the football team and Elena's friend, Caroline, are the only people he knows personally. Some of them he can't even remember seeing around school.
"When I saw you I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew," Ryan says as he makes few slow steps forward, "Do you know who said that?"
He doesn't know. Of course he doesn't know.
"Shakespeare," Elena says faintly, her eyes closing out of pain as she says those words.
She knows. Of course she knows.
A light smile appears on Ryan's face as he crouches down in front of them. "Smile Stefan," before his eyes move to Elena, "Before you lose her."
"Ryan, you don't have to do this," Mrs. Scott says. This is the first time she said anything since Ryan shot from his gun. "You haven't killed anyone yet, you still have a chance to walk out of here with minimum consequences," she says with a shaky voice.
"If you want to hurt anyone, hurt me," Stefan says.
"No, no," Elena cries out loud, but no one seems to pay any attention to her.
"Then you wouldn't know how it feels to lose someone!" Ryan yells at him, "Why should I be the only one here stuck with that feeling?" he yells desperately.
"You're not the only one who lost someone," Elena grips on to Stefan's arm, trying to sit up, "I know how you feel," she barely says, pain still present with her. But by now, she got used to it, like people get used to everything else.
"How could you possibly know how I feel?" he says angrily, hissing through his teeth.
"I lost my mom," she's able to sit with Stefan's help. He's still holding one of his hands on her wound, and his other hand is on her back now. "She died six years ago. Cancer," every word that comes out of her mouth is followed by a shooting pain in her abdomen, "One moment she was here, and the next moment she wasn't. And I thought how unfair it is, how out of anyone's control her illness was. It just happened," few more tears fall down her cheeks, "I was sad and mad at the same time. Mad at everyone. And then, one day, I stopped being mad."
"What about the sadness?" he asks.
Elena eyes him, then shakes her head, "Once you lose someone it stays with you, and so does the sadness. One moment you're happy, and the next one you're crying, just because something reminded you of them. You never stop missing them. That's how you keep their memory alive. Ryan, it gets better, with time, it really does," she says honestly.
He looks at her, and for a moment it seems she got through to him, until he says, "I wish I could believe you."
He raises his gun and fires one more bullet.
Everyone scream.
AN: Pain can make people do crazy things.
So, who do you think got the second bullet?