Nia - POV (E7) Prelude to the Murder

The volume of the music annoyed her. The song they were playing annoyed her. The crowded room annoyed her. The smell of sweaty bodies annoyed her. Even the air she was breathing annoyed her.

Nia wanted to crush the plastic plate she held in her hands. But she also didn’t want to lose the candy she had been scarfing down for the past fifteen minutes.

She wanted to just scream. Yell her head off like a lunatic. Hit something. Let go even for a second of the calm and composed Nia she always is. Well… almost always.

What was wrong with her? She had run out of there like a petulant little girl. She didn’t want to give Imre the diary and she wasn’t planning to. But, she would be lying if she said she wasn’t a bit embarrassed.

The thing with her is that while she tried to maintain her anger in check, it was always there. Boiling beneath the surface. Ready to tip over at the slight provocation. That’s why she swam and occasionally boxed. She didn’t know where it came from —her anger— but it had plagued her all her life.

The older she got the harder it was to control. The people closest to her happen to be the ones who set it off the easiest. Isn’t it always like that?

So here she stood, pressed to a wall, someone she didn’t care to remember was chatting her ear off but all she could focus on was how much ire she had.

It must’ve started with her mom. Abandonment issues cause serious psychological problems. It caused her to abandon someone else in return. She would laugh if she wasn’t so angry. I turned out just like Yasmine.

Although, Nia had a reason. Yasmine did not. And as she thought about how a mother could leave her child to be raised by a man like her father, Nia’s hands began to shake.

“Uh, Nia?” the stupid person asks.

Nia glares at them, a biting remark already on her tongue. She sees that they’re looking down at her hand and she looks to see that she has completely crushed her plate and all the candies within it in her hand.

“Gross,” she snarls and throws the plate on the ground. She holds up her hand and shoulders past people congesting around the door. She ignores the desperate calls of whoever had been talking to her.

The bathroom door slams shut behind her and she aggressively rubs her hands together under the water.

When she sees that gunk has amassed underneath her fingernails only the fact that she would loathe to create more messes stops her from slamming her fist into the mirror.

She uses her long nails to clean underneath her other hand.

The task takes patience and calmness— two things she would rather not be at the moment.

But what can be done? She slowly and gently scrubs underneath her nails. And even though she doesn’t want it to go, her anger starts dispelling.

When the rage of her emotions lets out she wipes her hands on a hand towel and sits down on the lid of the toilet, messaging her temples.

No one tells you that the most annoying thing about having to be the cold, calm and collected one is that you must look at your actions through a critical eye.

She doesn’t regret much in her life. She thinks everything through. But she has to agree that tonight she went about things the wrong way.

Birdie must’ve felt alone when they were ridiculed in front of everyone she did nothing. They must’ve felt alone when she didn’t run after them to give them a shoulder to metaphorically cry on. They must’ve felt like nothing as she, Imre and Lorcan were duking it out in the library.

She can’t put herself on hold to attend to someone else. She’s never been much of a caregiver. With Birdie, she could never be the type of person who gives too much. She tried to give them much of herself but it exhausted her to be the napkin that they used to shed all their issues. Right now she feels honest and she has to say she wished she could’ve shed a few tears on them.

Maybe if she hadn’t been so damn stubborn and scared to open up to them, they could’ve been what they were becoming in the pool before she pushed their relationship progress two steps back.

She should’ve said something. Should’ve at least explained why. It was cowardly of her. Every time she looks at them she sees how she must look to them. As a backstabber who was bidding her time to leave them.

She sighs and presses her nails into her skin. She’s never been the one to come begging. She’s never needed to. How will she start? What does she say?

She sits up and throws her hair back.

“Stop it,” she says to herself.

This isn’t her. Sitting on the toilet, bitching and moaning about how pitiful she is. She’s Nia Mir. She says things up front without caring about fear.

If she does it with Birdie, maybe she could do it with her father. She’ll have to.

Deep down she knows she’ll have to choose if he doesn’t budge.

But for right now, what matters is Birdie. She only cares about what they think and the fact that they’re probably thinking she’s a selfish ass frazzles her nerves.

She stands up and goes to the mirror. She turns on the facet and splashes water on her face. Lightly drying her face with a towel she pulls her shoulders back and steps out of the bathroom.

She looks around, wondering where they could be. She doesn’t exactly know what she will say but if she wants any chance of fixing things she has to at least mention the elephant in the room and she needs to do it tonight. She feels Birdie will never chirp around her again if she doesn’t.

And that scares her more than anything ever has.

She knows them well enough to know that they’re likely somewhere secluded. When she meets up with Imre, he’s looking for them too along with Lorcan.

She offers to search outside, they probably needed air, she tells them.

And she’s hopeful. Oh, so hopeful that this time things will work out. That they’ll sit and talk and she’ll feel as if the burden of what she saw them do 2 years ago will feel lessen heavy on her nightmares.

But things never go as we plan. Even for Nia Mir.