I'll Love You For A Lifetime [Heartstopper, Tara x Darcy]

Year 7: The meeting

Tara's pov

I felt numb most of the time. I remembered that I had not been like this since the beginning, but I had no recollection of what it felt like to not feel numb.

I did remember that I had been cheerful. I loved talking and playing and creating things out of paper and old cardboard boxes, but it just felt like a distant hazy memory. The only fresh memory was a scar bleeding in my heart, a pain I was never going to be able to truly let go of- the death of my mother.

I had tons of friends before that, but after the funeral I sunk into a deep gloom and none of my friends stayed. I do not think I should blame them, there is no reason they needed to hangout with a sorry, self-pitying girl. It was not like they could help me cope with it.

Dad spent most of his time at work. He was as rubbish with handling loss as I was, so maybe it was his way of coping with it. Naturally, I did the same, I kept myself busy all the time and more often than not I was burnt out by the end of the day.

The first few months of year 7 had been hell. It had become so bad, I was seriously considering dropping out of school and just getting a full time job or something.

In the middle of the term, things started changing. Our form group seats got shuffled and I was seated beside Darcy Olsson, the most loud, boisterous and stupid girl in our year. I did not like her like, at all, and maybe that it why we were seated together.

I was so un-eager to sit beside her that the first day, I pretended I had forgotten that the seats had been changed and sat in my old seat. Our teacher may not have caught it if the girl who was supposed to sit there had not caused a scene. So, I glumly went and took my seat beside Darcy.

"Hey," she said, smiling, "sucks they changed seats."

"Yeah," I said, staring straight at the board ahead, not bothering to make any conversation with her.

Darcy probably got the cue because we did not talk for days after that until one day we had to solve an assignment together.

"That is not the answer," Darcy said, pointing at the answer I had marked on the sheet.

I raised my eyebrows, challenging her, "Oh, is it? What is the answer then?"

I did realize I was being horribly unfriendly, and half of me expected her to turn away or make a really ugly face at me, but suprisingly, she smiled, almost amused and then she went ahead and explained the concept to me. I came to two conclusions that day:
1) Darcy Olsson is not as dumb as she looks
2) Darcy Olsson is in fact, the sweetest girl I have ever met.

The next day, Darcy Olsson joined me during lunch instead of sitting with her friend group. When I asked, she simply said that I looked lonely. No one deserved to be lonely.

We talked about something, I don't remember what, but what I do remember is that I laughed that day, after a very very long time. I laughed until tears were streaming down my face and I was doubled up. I couldn't eat lunch that day but I had never felt this full in my life.

Days later we were not only sitting together during lunch, but also spending time in the playground after school, sitting on the grass and talking. A couple weeks later we started dropping by each other's house, doing homework together and gossiping. And this is how Darcy got to know that I had recently lost my mother and that is how I got to know that Darcy's relationship with her parents was...well, not really good.

In a way, we bonded over pain. Both of us knew the same pain in two different forms: a lack of parental presence when most needed.