Young Writers Society

It was not her fault. It was an accident. Nothing more, nothing less or that’s what I led myself to believe. How could my dearest and closest friend purposefully hurt me? Try to kill me? I wouldn’t even believe it when the doctor informed me that my morning tea had been poisoned. And who made that cup of tea? Rose, my most loved friend did.

Our friendship stretches back to our births. Our mothers were best friends. We were born one day apart at the same hospital. Her mother named her Rose and my mother named me Lily. Lily and Rose, the most beautiful flowers in the entire world as our mothers used to say. When my mother died Rose’s mother was so grief stricken over the loss of her most cherished friend that she died but one month later of sadness. Rose and I went to the same school, were in the same class all throughout our primary school years. When we advanced to secondary school that’s when I began to notice a change in Rose. We were fifteen.

Rose was always a bright student (as was I) but that fact weather she knew it or not wasn’t enough for her. If I received a good mark she strived for better. Friendly competition was normal but she took it to the extreme. See, it wasn’t just in school which she tried to outdo me. It was in everything. If I got new clothes she made sure to ask me how much they cost; Rose would buy new clothes also but more expensive than mine though she knew that she and her mother were dirt poor, her father having died in a car accident when Rose and I were only babies.

If a boy was interested in me she made sure to turn his interest in me to an interest in her. Rose often did this by doing unsavory and unladylike things that her mother would certainly not approve of. I never confronted her and I never told on her. Not once. My loyalty to her was impregnable although she told on me every chance she got. If she did something I knew to be wrong such as cheating on a test of smoking cigarettes I would look the other way, never joining in and never being asked to do so.

When she snuck off late at night to meet a boy or do who knows what I’d not ask her a thing about it acting as though it had never happened. I believed that there was an unspoken code of secrecy between Rose and I. When she lied to her mother I would back up her story lying also in the process. She never once said thank you. Rose was cold me and at times she shut herself off from me completely. I know that I should have said something but I kept my mouth shut and let her alone. I wallowed in my stupidity not once thinking myself at fault for Rose’s conduct.

I thought myself a true friend and now I realize that I was anything but. When we graduated from secondary school we were both accepted at the same college. Rose and I rented a little flat relatively close to the campus. Rose met a man with little education and no job. His name was James. Rose told me that they were in love. I was wary of this James character from the beginning but I didn’t question Rose once about this man whom I knew only unpleasant things about. While dating him her grades slipped, she developed a problem with alcohol, and she stayed away for days at a time doing who knows what who knows where.

I covered for her by telling her professors she was sick when I didn’t have an inkling of where she was. I went to every bar in the area looking for her and when I finally found her she was usually passed out. I took her home, changed her into her nightclothes and put her in bed. I worked two jobs to support us and went to school on top of everything else. I came home one morning after working the graveyard shift to find the flat empty. I went into the kitchen and found a hot cup of tea, a note, and a perfect red rose with the thorns taken off.

The note read: Lily dearest, I’ve gone to the grocery. I’ll be back soon. Drink the tea; I made it just as you like it. Love, Rose.” I picked up the rose, smelled it, smiled at this warmth Rose was showing me, sat down, and took a sip of my tea. It was oh so sweet. I didn’t even taste the poison. I managed to call the ambulance before I passed out. I nearly died. The evidence the authorities had against Rose was so overwhelming that they arrested her immediately. They found her in her favorite bar drinking up the grocery money; She never confessed but she never denied it either.

Rose was taken to a mental hospital because of her alcoholism which was deemed as self-destructive behavior stemming from a mental disorder. After I recovered I went to visit Rose. I was shocked; we were only in our early twenties and Rose looked as though she were an old woman. I then realized that she had been looking that way for quite some time but I shut it out. I asked her, “Why Rose, why?”

All she said was, “You know why Lily.” I never went to see her again. In that exact moment looking into Rose’s eyes in that asylum I knew why she had tried to kill me. I was not a friend to Rose; I was more like an enemy. I watched her deteriorate and did absolutely nothing to help her. I now wallowed in irreparable shame. It was not her fault. It was mine.