Saturday's Storyteller: "Alexandria Morgan Richter was, perhaps, the most selfish girl to ever walk the earth."

by Belinda Roddie

Alexandria Morgan Richter was, perhaps, the most selfish girl to ever walk the earth. At least, that's what I thought. Or what I thought based on several classmates' testimony. Alexandria was two years my senior, but that didn't stop the vitriol even from the freshmen at the university who had barely even gotten to know her within three months.

Therefore, it was more than surprising for me when, as I sat upright in my hospital bed, scrolling through Tumblr on the tablet that my mother had provided me during my recovery, that she cautiously traipsed into my room, a bouquet of flowers tucked under one arm and a box of chocolates clenched in the opposite fist.

"Um...hello."

I suppose she had expected me to be asleep or distracted by a nurse or someone else in the room, because she quickly averted her eyes, dropped off her gifts on the nearest table, mumbled a raspy, "Feel better," and hurried out of my room in half the time it had taken her to walk in. For the record, I was not exactly physically ill or in chronic pain. I had, in fact, attempted suicide three nights prior, after my girlfriend had viciously broken up with me and quite possibly served as the catalyst for dozens of anonymous hate letters found in my dormitory mailbox over the past week.

Sometimes, the drama simply doesn't stop after high school, or even college. As it was, I was fragile enough emotionally to begin with. So after I was released from the hospital with thick bandages on my wrists and a note to see a therapist every other Thursday, I was determined to find Alexandria and thank her for the unexpected visit and present offering that she had provided for the equivalent of a stranger to her.

Important to note also was that we had never shared classes together, she had majored in something drastically different than my field, and we weren't even connected by a random acquaintance. And as it were, it'd be hard to find where she lived, because a mere three hours after I left the hospital, two more days after her visit, I learned that she had dropped out of her university and moved back east.

***

"Alexandria Richter?" Graham asked incredulously as I packed the last pair of shorts into my suitcase, my dorm bare-boned like a tomb without a sheeted sarcophagus. "You still hung up on her?"

Outside, the June heat threatened to crash through the window and singe the threads of my rug. As I sweated and prepared for the trip back home for the summer, my friend Graham had been willing to keep me company, even if mostly to make sure I didn't flip out again. Vigilance was fine once in a while, but it got old fast when I just wanted genuine, this-is-because-we-like-you attention.

"She gave me flowers and candy as I sat in an overheated hospital room with a cracked tablet as my only friend," I responded as I zipped up my suitcase and pushed it to the wall where the others sat. "I figured I might as well thank her."

"Why? She's a total bitch. Always thinking about - "

"You know her?"

Graham seemed disoriented by my sharp interruption. "Well, no, but I heard - "

"You heard shit. Shut the fuck up."

Graham and I hadn't exactly been close, though he seemed to level up in terms of spending time with me after I took a razor to my arms. Over the past few months, my girlfriend had apologized for siccing her gang of curly-haired communications major friends on me, taken it back when I refused to accept her apology, and apologized again as if scared I'd crack like an egg. I was over that. I had always been clinically depressed, but this time, no amount of bullying or abusive relationship was going to loosen the control I was starting to build on my unstable psyche.

And of course, Alexandria was one tool I could use to orient myself. Damn Graham would never exactly get it. He was just one of them. The ones who assumed.

I had no idea, truth be told, why Alexandria was called selfish to begin with. My theory is that someone, whether out of spite or jealousy or a severe detriment in humor, spread around some facade of her that I wasn't aware of. Nothing in my mind assured me that the venom spat out about her was real. It was all spewed by people who had heard things, not witnessed them. And I'm fairly certain it all came from unreliable sources.

Graham helped me bring suitcases to my car and that was that. I drove back home and dealt with the bone-crushing, overcompensating hugs that my parents gave me. I dealt with the constant questions of my well-being and ate anything they piled on my plate - as if they worried I were bound to starve myself. And of course, I contemplated getting a summer job or internship in order to stay as far away from my hometown as possible.

In a town north of my own, I found a gig at a used bookstore and spent time shelving books. I wore wool wristbands to hide the scars. And of course, as if the universe meant to make it convenient for me, I saw her.

"Hey."

"Hey," Alexandria Morgan Richter said.

"I didn't know you worked here."

"Decent pay," she said. "Owner's cool. Knows my dad."

I raised an eyebrow. "Any accusations of nepotism yet?"

I heard her laugh. "That's the least of my worries."

I had never gotten a good look at Alexandria before, not even at the hospital. I had been too busy concentrating on staying alive. She looked good with shorter hair, some loose curls that had escaped a straightener bunched up around her collar. Her brown skin deeply contrasted with my freckled, Scottish complexion. And of course, no scars on her skin, unless they were concealed as well as my own.

"Donna was your girlfriend, right?" she asked me as we went to the backroom to deal with donated stock.

"Yeah," I said. "You know her?"

"Her sister." Alexandria breathed out a laugh. "Real bitch. Loved to gossip about me. You heard it all, I suppose?"

"Not really," I answered honestly. "Just overgeneralized sass."

"Yeah, lots of accusations on who I am, not what I did." She chuckled. "Prime example of no creativity. I guess they have more in common than I thought. Siblings with the wrong habits."

"What'd Donna's sister do to you?"

Alexandria raised an eyebrow. "Same thing Donna did to you. You think you're the only one who needed to be committed afterward?"

I stared. The books weren't as exciting to me now.

"Teresa." She knew my name. "I found out everything from those bitches. I choked it out of them. That's how I knew. And when it was done, I left. I hated the school, anyway. Planned to drop out or transfer at some point."

"Alexandria...I..."

Her eyes twinkled. They were focused on my wristbands. "Did you like the chocolates?"

This week's prompt was provided by Arden Kilzer.