Like it never happened. She acted like it never happened. Like she never rested her head next to mine, like we never held hands, like I didn’t hold her up the night her life was too heavy for her shoulders. She didn’t speak to me, didn’t acknowledge I even existed. I sat next to her, she moved. I walked beside her, she ducked into the nearest room. It was too much. I couldn’t take it. I stewed all day, getting angrier and angrier, until finally I was utterly unable to hold it in. After we got off of the bus, I held her fast.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I growled. “Why? We didn’t hold hands the other day? You
didn’t cry on my shoulder? What are we, Claudia? You can’t do this to a guy! It isn’t fair, it isn’t right!” I was getting angrier and Claudia was looking more and more distraught. In one crescendo, I grabbed her by the shoulders and looked straight through her soul.
“What are you so afraid of?”
I was so caught with emotion my words were barely over a whisper. I stood staring, feeling the desperation in the pit of my soul as she pulled away. She walked to her house and went in, never once speeding up or looking back. I stood on the sidewalk in front of her house for what seemed like an eternity, completely numb and emotionally exhausted. I trudged home and sat in my room, feeling nothing. Some time later that night, my mom knocked on my door. “Honey, I found this in the mailbox. It’s addressed to you.” She laid down an envelope and left me alone again. The handwriting on the front was a simple “Elliot” and in a female hand. I opened the envelope and pulled out a scrap of paper with only a tiny blurb in the middle:
“I’m afraid of everything, Elliot. Please let me go.”
I sat on my bed, enraged and confused. Afraid of everything? Afraid of being happy? “Let her go?” I felt myself spiraling down emotionally and mentally. What sort of an answer is that? How dare she toy with my feelings based on her whims! Tears fell down my face, red hot and salty. I slipped from my bed to the floor. I don’t know how long I sat there, staring into the distance. I looked up through my window and saw the moon, a gentle haze forming around it. I wondered if she was watching it, too. That was my last thought before exhaustion forced me to sleep.