How to Live | ✓

twelve

>>twelve

She didn't see him again after that day.

As impossible as it seemed, it was like he'd disappeared from the face of this Earth, not leaving a single trace or mark behind except from the invisible etching across her heart.

Even in the morning, as she left for school, he was never there as he so often had been, walking down the long winding road as she got into the car.

What he'd last said to her made a lot more sense now.

I'm about to do something even more selfish. But I promise, it'll be the last time.

She didn't realise he'd also meant it would be the last time they'd be together too.

Everyday for the last week, she waited for him outside the school gates.

But nothing.

She'd wait by the bridge for as long as she possibly could.

Still nothing.

Now, she was convinced she wouldn't ever be able to enjoy the feeling of solitude it used to give her. The only solitude she wanted was with him.

Slowly, her life started to become a fraction of what it once was— even more so than before they'd met. She hated this feeling, like she'd lost a limb. She hated the electric buzz running through her veins that wouldn't let her forget. She hated how even the mere thought of him burned her insides, leaving her raw.

She tried to write, wanting so desperately to feel the way she did before, but even the reprieve she gained in that was lost upon her. Drowned in the river by the bridge with everything else that she no longer had.

At one point, it all became too much that she'd almost convinced herself to go straight to his house, knock on his door and demand that he stopped this nonsense.

But she didn't.

She knew she shouldn't.

This whole thing, whatever this was, shouldn't have existed in the first place, and maybe this was just a sign that now it was time to let it go. To savour the memory of what it had been, but realise that it couldn't have ever lasted.

Nothing good lasted forever.

Because no matter how much time she spent with him, the truth of it all was that nothing would be any different when she got back home. She had lived and breathed the salty air, diffused with tears and blood, that was her life. She knew what kind of life she had to live, and she'd done her hardest to adapt to it in every way she could. But him, he did something to her that messed up everything she'd ever built.

And she couldn't be that way.

She just couldn't.

Resolving to stop this behaviour, and set her life back on track, she plunged herself into her studies.

Weeks passed in a flurry, each day mixing into the next, as the more she worked, the less she dwelled. It was an attempt to restore herself to all her former glory— the empty, unfeeling girl who was broken and fearful and weak. But none of it quite mattered because she did what she had to do, and she lived merely to get by.

Mother was glad of such a change in her; Evelyn, the dutiful daughter, working hard to make her way into Oxford University.

Even during school, when they were required to group up for a project, she opted to go solo, unwilling to let anyone get in her way.

Unfortunately, as she sat in Biology class one day, her teacher revealed that today they would start a new group project, and then proceeded to show them a list of all the allocated groups.