Needle and Thread

4

Social hierarchy has never been more prevalent to Harry than in the halls of St Mary's Secondary School, a relatively small institution but one town over from where Harry grew up. He and all of the other children who attended their small-town primary school go here the second they graduate, shipped off on a rickety school bus each morning, stuffed to the brim with kids from every village within a ten mile radius.

The bus itself provides enough hints as to what lies ahead, merely in the seating arrangement. As outlined by the clichés of every teen movie to come out of Hollywood, the cool kids monopolise the back row; the boys on the football team, their girlfriends, the guys whose parents let them have house parties every weekend. The rows directly in front are for those who aren't quite a part of the 'It Crowd', but have earned enough respect to linger in the circumferential circles of their privileged peers.

The middle section seats the most unremarkable of the school's populace; the not quite nameless, but without nicknames. The friendly, but not quite friends. The party-goers, but those of the phantasmal variety; there one moment, and just... gone the next.

Finally, the front rows are reserved for the outliers, the kids who don't fit in with any pre-existing group, nor even the patchwork clique created for them through their banishment. They sit as separated from one another as they can in such a crowded environment, never speaking or exchanging glances of mutual dissatisfaction, offering each other nothing but silence.

To everyone's surprise, least his own, Harry has been adopted by the teenagers commandeering the backmost row of seats, tucked in between his friends of three years like a book squeezed into an already overflowing shelf. The only other person from Harry's hometown to infiltrate the inner circle is Mina, which is perhaps the least surprising thing about the turn their lives have taken since leaving the watery cartons of milk and rusted monkey bars of their childhood behind. She sits to his left, smelling like strawberry body spritz and lip gloss; overwhelmingly sweet, yet familiarly comforting.

What has become of Jj is a fate most rich kids face at St Mary's. A sudden change of gear. An unexpected turn of the tables.

You see, the pecking order at St Mary's is quite unlike anywhere else, in the traditional sense at least. Those who were always worse off are treated like kings, while kids from upper class families are left on the side lines. Harry regrets that he and Jj have conformed to such standards, but it's too late now to reverse the damage. At the age of eighteen, their friendship is far beyond repair.

Sometimes, when life is at its bleakest, Harry finds himself reminiscing. Hazy, sun-bleached memories swim through his mind, curled at the edges like old photographs that capture moments he can't truly remember unless prompted by a visual aid. The trail of seashells on the bathroom window ledge, or the collection of yellowing drawings pinned to the fridge with souvenir magnets, or the H+J 4EVR messily carved into the trunk of an innocuously placed tree by an unmemorable creek. All of these things bring forth echoes of a life Harry can hardly recollect, but cherishes because he knows it was once his. Crooked, toothless smiles, grass-stained knees and scraped palms filter through flashes of sunlight that only last as long as Harry's dreams. Now that he's eighteen, he has had more than ten years to make new memories, replacing old ones with first kisses, tentative sips of alcohol, and nights of stealthily clambering through his bedroom window well past the limitations of his curfew.

Harry's new friends aren't so new anymore, and the present version of himself will soon become a memory too, tossed amongst the others he struggles to recall all these years later. He doesn't view himself as a new and improved version, an upgrade if you will. Harry has simply grown up, like he has always wished he would.

Only Harry is starting to think he should have been far less careless with his wishes.

At times, he thinks his new friends find him boring. It's not as harsh an estimation as one would expect because it would be right to suppose as much, but only because Harry knows he never really tells them what he's thinking, feeling, missing. Luke, Alex and Brandon are the closest he's had to a best friend since Jj, but there's something absent in their friendship, something that doesn't truly allow Harry the liberty of honesty. He struggles to tell them things about himself, things that aren't already obvious to the rest of the world. The urge to combat insensitive comments lingers in his throat, yet Harry can never seem to get the words out. They sit there like a lump in his throat, like a dry chunk of bread he ate too hastily and can't seem to swallow.

In a town so small, so secluded, so sheltered, collective opinions are commonplace.

Harry recalls the first and last time the town was up in arms about something that was certainly none of their business. Lily and Amy were a few years older than him, but he knew them for their popularity and looks. They were beautiful girls, and any man would have been lucky to have them - except they didn't want a man. They wanted each other. The summer Harry turned ten was the same summer Lily and Amy ran away in the middle of the night, leaving behind everything but a change of clothes - including their families.

After that night, some choice words were thrown around by members of their community, the sort that made Harry flinch, his stomach turn, and his grandmother press her hands over his ears. Such prejudices aren't so loud anymore, but they still exist, passed onto the younger generations like a sordid family heirloom. 

A strange pinch nips his stomach every time he recalls that summer. Harry isn't sure why. He was never close with either girl, and as far as he knows they're happily married, living it up in a city somewhere far from home. Still, his gut twists when the laughter gets too loud, a response to a joke told by some sleazy teenage boy with slimy morals and questionable hygiene practices. Harry isn't sure if it's merely the winding roads that have him feeling queasy.

To say that Harry misses Jj would be wrong, just as to say Harry likes to read would be right. It's a statement that is prone to change depending on circumstance. Say, for example, Harry were to read a book he disliked so wholly he decided to not read another. That's the sort of stance he takes when thinking about Jj. Missing him, specifically.

As of late, Jj has done little to make Harry miss him. It's not a bad thing, nor is it a good thing. It's just a thing, without any ulterior motive underlying its existence. Harry feels fairly neutral about it, but he doesn't doubt that one day, something may happen to make this 'thing' good or bad. Until then, Harry chooses to pretend Jj doesn't exist. He's not evil in this intention, nor is he saintly. Harry just is, and from where he sits at the back of the bus, Jj isn't.

It's easier this way, to ignore the twist in his stomach when he thinks of summer.

It's easier, but if Harry thinks about it hard enough and lets the memories bleed through the cracks, it hurts a little too.