Drawing 'you'!

{ 1 }

"Really? Are you drawing you and Luca again?" Alex comments. I hide my drawing by flipping the cover onto the page. "No..." I give her a floppy smile. "Yeah right, I bet that notebook is full of drawings of you two!" Alex accuses me, and I scoff in return. "I draw us a lot, sure, but it's not the only thing I draw!" I counter-back, she just focuses back on her phone, not believing me. I scoff once more and flip through the pages of my book.

A few years ago, my childhood best friend confessed to me and then moved away! But before that, he said, "I'm sure we'll see each other again", and I kind of just held onto those words. Then I eventually got into art, I used to draw a lot back then, but my artistic ability had seriously improved. And now... I draw him a lot. I like to make up these scenarios, that one day we'd just bump into each other at, like, a coffee shop and he'd buy me some coffee, and we'd rekindle our love!

Cliché, yeah, but I still dream of that kind of stuff and draw it out on a daily basis. I wish he didn't have to move away, maybe we could have become lovers. I sigh at the thought. I shake my head to try and snap out of it and get back to my drawing; erasing at times or perhaps sketching on more details. I can't help but wonder what he looks like now. Maybe he's not even a boy anymore or what if he's dead?! Just the thought of him being dead makes me shut my sketchbook close. I fiddle with the corner of my cover, nervous.

"Why'd you stop drawing?" Alex asks, I look over to her tilting my head. "Why? Were you watching me draw?" I interrogate, straightening my posture a little bit and putting my hands on my hips. "Not really, I kind of just saw you close the book." She answers, scrolling on Instagram. "Oh." I lean over and look at all the posts she scrolls past, sometimes stopping to like one's post.

Alex scrolls past someone who looked very familiar. "Wait, stop!" I yell, Alex looks at me with an eyebrow up. "Scroll back up, I saw something." Alex does so and I stop her on the post. There are two boys; one with black hair, but the other one has white hair. "IS THAT HIM?!" I yell, shocked. She gasps and nods slowly, slightly smiling. "I think so..." I snatch the phone out of her hands, ignoring her sassy, "Hey!", as I intently look at the photo. 

The caption says "Me and Luca..." and then some other stuff but I don't really care, IT SAID LUCA. That is literally his name. "Is this people near us?" I ask Alex, trying to hide my smile. "Yeah, actually!" She points to the top right corner that says "People near you posted this". I inhale sharply and try not to scream. "Oh my god, Oh my god! Is he in the same neighborhood as us? Or maybe even in the same school as us? Or what if he's on this very bus?! OR-" Alex cuts me off before I talk anymore. "Yes, I get it." Alex takes the phone away from me and inspects the post as well.

"This is actually quite recent, it was posted just two days ago." I look at the post with her and stare at the date. "By the way, who's the black-haired guy with Luca? I've only seen Luca, not him." Before I could answer, she gasped and turned to me like she had just seen a murder. "What if it's his boyfriend?!"
"What. No. That's his brother." I say, being a bit disappointed in her. "Oh. Well then, how come I never saw him?" She asks. "He usually stayed indoors, I barely ever saw him when I was over at Luca's too." She nods, looking back at the photo.

"But back on that boyfriend thing, obviously not the emo guy, that's his brother, but, what if Luca got a partner and moved on?" She says. I gasped, offended by her comment. Of course, I thought of that, but I never thought I'd ever actually see him again after all these years. "Do you know why he's back in town?" Alex shakes her head, just as confused as I am. "I wonder, if he came back to see me, or did he forget me?" I sadden at the thought of the second option. Alex pats my back as reassurance; I give her a small smile.

"Ah! We're at school, Light!" Alex pockets her phone and gathers her things, I do the same. The bus pulls up onto the curb and all the students rush out and into the building. I stop and stand in front of the school's doors, determined to do one thing and one thing only; Find Luca.

I turn to see Alex beside me, looking at me, with a curious look on her face. "Alex, can you send me the picture of Luca? I'll need it as a reference." Alex pulls out her phone and goes back to the post. "So, uhm, are you going to go and look for him?" I nod, "I'll look all day if I have to!"
"But, what if, he's not even in the school today?" I look away and think, I didn't plan that far. "Well, then, I'll look for him outside of school! At cafes and the park and wherever I need to, Alex, I just need to see my best friend!" I yell, determined. I turn away and run into the school building, staring intensely at the photo.

I just can't believe I might get to see him again, it's been years, and it was like our relationship was kind of just left on a cliffhanger. He looks a little different in the photo, definitely older, but I can tell it's him. He's got the same facial features, hair color, and name! I head over to my locker, leaning against it, still staring at my phone. I open the Instagram app and put in the username that originally had the post. I scroll on it, and it's mostly Levi, he seems pretty popular but his school looks way different than ours. He must go to the rich high school a little while away. I go to the original post and see an @ in the description, it must be Luca's account.

I prepare myself and click on it. He doesn't have as many followers or posts as Levi it seems, and his account is on private. I click the follow button and pray that he'll accept my request. For now, though, I need to straighten up and get ready for my classes. If he accepts my follow request, I might be able to do some detective work or something and find him quicker. But that's for later, I check the time, and I'll have to head to my classes in about five-ish minutes. I stick my phone into my back pocket. I open my locker—which, ironically, has no lock—gathering all I need for my homeroom class. I shut my locker close and make my way down the very crowded hallways, locating my class, and rush into it; sitting down at my assigned seat.