Started With A Disaster

3: How to Get the Bad Boy's Shirt

STARTED WITH A DISASTER

Chapter 3: How to Get the Bad Boy's Shirt

When I was a kid, I used to be an extremely daring person. And by daring, I don't mean the regular I-love-scaring-other-people-with-my-absurd-activities daring but the ridiculously creepy as fuck kind of daring. Erika and I used to go cliff-diving regularly, but I was the only one who used to jump, my sister just stayed as the inspector in case something happened. The ironic thing was that the very day when Erika became sick, and Damon and Sam replaced her, I had my very first alliance with near-death experiences. I nearly drowned.

Let me tell you one thing, death by drowning into the water is a horrible, horrible death. It's even more horrible for the one who is watching if he cannot do anything to save the person who is actually sinking. When I jumped into the ice-cold water, I still remember the horrifying scream I let out and another pair of terrified screams that came from my two best friends who were at the top.

Long story short, the authorities found three kids drowning in the wetland that day.

And I have no idea why I'm telling you that incident.

So, back to where we were.

I choked.

It was the same feeling when I had when I was drowning as a twelve year old, only this time, my lungs seemed to be clogging on air, not water.

I coughed for so long that even Jayden put his hands on my back and asked, "Hey, you okay?"

I nodded my head. "Forgot... to... breathe." I managed to say between coughs.

He stared at me quietly for a while before he took a step back sat down on the dirty ground leaning against the alleyway. After a second, when my panting stopped, he motioned with his hands in front of him telling me to sit across him. I looked at the floor skeptically for a moment and followed his lead. In my head, I was dying then. A stained pajama was least of all my problems.

We sat there staring at nothing, speaking nothing.

I went back through my life.

I remembered the day I puked on my babysitter. I remembered the day when I first had a cat-fight with Erika. I remembered the first time that Mom and Dad left us alone and we turned the house upside down for fun. Once when my sister had nearly fell off the roof, and I had near heart-attack experience. There was this time when Damon and Sam got so drunk at a party that both of them stayed over at my house because I was sure that their parents would find out from how they smelt. When Erika was thirteen, she drove Mom's 1983 Roadster in the street and she got caught by the police. I had gotten Damon's elder brother to come and bail her because our parents were in London at that time. We also made him swear that he would never speak a word about it to anyone. Old memories. How I became friends with Sam and Damon. How they always acted so hostile against each other but couldn't go a day without seeing each other face. How I knew they'll always love each other and be by each other's sides when I'll be gone.

Life is funny, I guess.

You never know what goes on in other people lives and yet you still act like you've known every part of them like the back of your hand. I never got to tell Sam that I didn't like the hipster movies she loved. I never had the chance to make Damon see how playing with other people's feelings can ruin them for other people. I never got to tell my parents that I loved them. I'd never even said those words to Erika, or my friends, or anyone that I'd ever loved with all my heart.