Critique on Alyssa Duran’s “Involved”

“Involved” is written in the imperative mode, which is interesting given the content of the story: it reads like a handbook of how to handle the situation of bailing a friend out of an abusive relationship. On the one hand, the effect is a little “drying” at times- at points in the story, particularly the moments of heightened action or possibility (when the narrator is considering what to do when she gets to the scene of the confrontation between the couple, for instance), the story tends to read like an actual violence prevention manual. This sterility could maybe be helped if the characters were made more unique, had more details to them then just roles as the abused, the abuser, and the friend. Would the boyfriend’s job as an auto mechanic make the narrator envision terrible scenarios of him beating her friend with a tire iron? How exactly would the friend (names would help, too) kill herself, when she was threatening to do so? Unique details like this would make the dramatic moments more interesting, and the interest would draw the reader in and involve them, making them more nervous about what was going to happen. Likewise, in getting these details, we would get to know who the characters are and therefore be invested in their destiny, care about what was going to happen to them. On that note, the best part of the story was when the narrator was describing the boyfriend as a little dog, for all these reasons- it was a moment of unique detail, where we really got to spend some time with these specific characters. It was funny and really nice.
On the other hand, that the story is written in the imperative is at times very effective, for the obvious reason- the reader feels they are the narrator going through this exhausting trial. For instance, the part about the narrator and her friend on the bed together in the dorm, “being girls”- everyone has had moments of carefree friendship like this, so when the narrative is directed at the reader, they automatically relate the story to an instance in their life when they had this connection. In this way, we as readers do feel more involved in the story, and it is more affecting because of it.
All in all, the story was really intriguing- I was hooked from the first sentence, wondering what was going to happen. I do wonder, though, if more could have happened? For such a bad chain of events, everything actually went fairly well; there are a lot of really anti-climatic moments that have a lot of potential to be really fascinating, especially toward the end. What if the boyfriend had put up a battle when his girlfriend tried to leave, and the two girls had to fight to narrowly escape him? What if he and the brother did fight after all? What if the friend did attempt suicide, or spiral really far out of control with her drinking? This story could go in so many different directions, and be interesting in every one.