The Pentrals Read Online Free Page A

Violet’s. The foursome did everything together and would do anything for each other.
    This all changed last May. The Alliance was at a graduation party for an older friend, and the night was winding down. Mary wanted to leave the party early and was pestering her best friend for a ride.
    “Can you two please stop being adorable for two seconds and drive me home?” Mary asked. “Ben already left.”
    Violet pulled herself away from Thomas and looked at Mary with slight confusion, as if just realizing she was at a party and not alone with her boyfriend. “You want to go now?” she asked.
    “Yeah, I’m ready.”
    “Give us five more minutes, okay?” Thomas replied. Violet scrunched her face in a goofy grin, causing Mary to roll her eyes in exasperation and walk away, tossing her brunette hair over her shoulder. Thomas pulled Violet back close, eyes dancing from freckle to freckle.
    “I better go,” she said, inches from his face.
    “Five more minutes,” he whispered. Only it wasn’t five minutes. The clock ticked on as Violet, and myself by extension, became lost in the warmth of the moment. Tucked in a corner, completely entangled in each other, I tried to steal even a sliver of their affections and wondered what their attraction felt like. Every time Thomas moved to touch Violet’s face or kiss her lips, I willed myself to feel something. Anything. I performed their interactions across the dimly lit room without fault, but my movements, void of any sort of physical reciprocation, did not have the same fire behind them.
    Mary ended up getting a ride from a senior girl. Hours later Violet was asleep while I guiltily thought about Thomas, about what it would be like to have someone look at me that way. It would nice to be noticed for once , I thought. An urgent holopane signal interrupted our rest. Experience had taught me most late night calls were never good, and this was no exception.
    Suddenly I found myself racing along the glossy tiles of a hospital floor, hurriedly projecting Violet’s frantic frame under florescent lights. As it turned out, Mary’s ride home had been hit by a freightpod with miscalculated coordinates. The senior girl survived with only a few scratches, but Mary took most of the impact, leaving her in a coma. Although I know I must have performed what happened next at regular speed, the whole scene seemed to happen in slow motion. Violet crumpled next to Mary’s hospital bed. Thomas stared in stunned silence. Ben paced the room, his face red and splotched.
    Violet’s tears rolled down her face, landing directly on top of me. Her fingertips, always caked with residual art supplies, clenched the tile, leaving what would have been scratches across my face. Her pain was a puddle all around me, begging me to share in her sadness. But while all around the Persons I’d come to know fell apart, I had no choice but to keep my composure and carry on, trapped behind a barrier of disconnection.
    Nothing was the same after that night. School let out for the summer a few days later, and Violet spent most of her time visiting Mary. The first several visits involved lots of crying, with Violet taking Mary’s hand or sometimes crawling in her bed to hold her. She took time programming the room’s holopane with a series of beautiful images she’d drawn and hung a few parchment sketches around the stark room. I knew Violet did not like the idea of her friend, so full of life, imprisoned in such a cold, sterile place, so she did her best to fill the room with color.
    There were times Thomas would accompany her, but something about the air between them had shifted. When Thomas would offer comfort, I immediately expected her to accept, yet surprisingly found myself moving the opposite direction. I had grown so accustomed to her falling into his arms that shying away from him seemed wrong. It has always been my job to pick up my Person’s patterns, and when major changes in behavior occur, I have to take