What Goes Around

I Hate Aaron Terrensaw

The familiar sandy hair and hazel eyes searched around the room, looking for a place to sit. I kept my head down, praying for him not to notice me.

I had survived this long without him. I wish to continue.

Maybe I had upset the hypothetical gods of some religion I don't follow, because out of all of the empty seats in the classroom, Aaron chose the one next to me.

God damn it. 

Mr. Helms walked up to him and explained what we were doing.

When Aaron moved, the only hope that I was clinging onto was the hope that he would write me. The hope that I wouldn't lose touch with someone who was as emotionally close to me as possible. But he never responded to my letters. For 4 years, I wrote his new address on the envelopes in the neatest writing I could muster up, in the hopes that maybe he had an incompetent mailman.

Nothing.

4 years, not a single word.

I moved on, life is about moving on, but I never forgot about Aaron. I slowly grew to hate him.

He left me! He left me completely alone in a school full of people who barely knew my name! 

Not a single word.

He pinky promised, the highest form of promise that 12 year olds know. A promise that, if broken, was worse than stomping all over a favorite toy. 

I hated Aaron Terrensaw.

I'm sure he met some other friend, and they played hide and seek and stayed up in the backyard during the summer and caught fireflies and talked about stupid things and had watermelon seed spitting contests and built forts and threw snowballs and did both everything and nothing at the same time. Together. 

I hate Aaron Terrenshaw.

Mr. Helms finished explaining the lesson to Aaron, and turned to me. Oh god, no. 

"If you have any questions, feel free to ask Natalie."

That was it. 

I was done for.

Aaron turned to me, and his eyes widened.

God. Damn. It.