"I... I don't know what you're talking about..." she mumbles.
She's such a poor liar. It's written all over her face and in the way she nervously pulls down on her T-shirt too. I sigh and close the cupboard, putting the bag of treats on the kitchen counter a bit too loudly. Ben's snoring skips a bit, but he doesn't wake up. Meanwhile, Kelsi is still standing there and looking guilty as hell.
"H-how... How do you know…?"
"I saw your notifications," I admit.
Spark jumps on the kitchen counter, too curious to wait, and I give him a couple of treats while waiting for Kelsi to say something. She walks up to me, looking absolutely devastated, which I didn't really expect.
"Mara, I really didn't mean... You weren't supposed to see–"
"To see what, Kelsi? That you're spying on me for Amy? That the one person who I thought was my friend is not? Are you even my flatmate to begin with? And I thought Ben was the snitch!"
"It's not what you think!" she protests. "I really am your friend, Mara, I... I didn't lie to you."
"Then what? You're best buddies with my sister too? Forgive me, but Amy doesn't look like the kind of person you could chat about your favorite video game with."
She sighs and crosses her arms as if to protect herself.
"It's not like that... Okay, m-maybe I lied a couple of times, but... most of it was real, Mara."
"As in?"
"I'm really your friend."
I take a deep breath in.
I don't know how to react to this. I'm angry and upset. Yet I want her words to be true, for some reason. It's hard. Now that I've seen the text, I can't trust Kelsi like I used to. I can't look at her, so I look down at Spark, who's attacking the bag of treats. I push him off to grab it and put it back into the cupboard despite the loud meows of protest. I just don't want to look at Kelsi right now...
Damn it, I didn't think I'd be this upset, but she's been my only friend for weeks. She came to see me almost every day, we spent so much time together, watching her silly videos and chatting about stuff of the world I had to learn again... I take a deep breath to keep myself from crying. Shit, I had no idea I was actually a sensitive crybaby.
"Mara... Let me explain..." she sobs.
I turn around. She took me turning my back on her as a sign of rejection. Now, she's crying silently, and it's ugly. She's got a runny nose, big tears, twitching lips, and red eyes, the whole package. Damn it... She's really upset, then. I don't know why I expected more of a fight. It turns out, Kelsi is also quite the crybaby. I sigh and cross my arms.
"Fine, then, I'm listening."
She nods and takes off her glasses for a second to clumsily wipe her nose, looking for her words. It actually takes a full minute before her breathing calms down enough for her to start speaking.
"I don't know where to start..." she mutters.
"Start with the part you didn't lie about," I suggest a bit rudely.
"I didn't lie about anything, Mara! I mean... n-not really. It's true we weren't close before the incident. You... barely talked to me, and to be honest, I also worked too much to worry about that."
"You worked too much?"
She slowly nodded.
"Yeah... I don't want to get into the details, but... unlike you, I came to Silver City completely broke. Their university was offering this super alluring program where they paid for your expenses if you got the right kind of grades, so I moved here penniless and I found a job right away. I spent my first year of university working like crazy... I had a part-time job in a fast-food restaurant, and I gave private tutoring lessons to some rich brats whenever I could squeeze them into my schedule. I lived in a flat where I had four roommates, and three of them had no idea what personal hygiene or private space is."
I grimaced. I don't know why until now, I had thought Kelsi came from some rich family, like me. Not as rich, but... aside from her geek stuff, I definitely saw her wear some super expensive brands sometimes. I would have never thought she had struggled like this before.
She sniffs, rubbing a bit of her snot on her sleeve, and continues, looking down.
"I could barely make ends meet in the first months. I was tired of studying, working, and all of it. I ate at the university cafeteria because it was cheaper, skipped breakfast, and ate some cup noodles for dinner when I couldn't get food from my job. I had a really shitty year. During the summer, I took even more hours at the fast-food restaurant in the hopes to have enough to pay rent, but with so many students coming here, the prices boomed... That's when we met."
"When you started renting here?"
