Time of Your Life - Green Day

I Don't Think I Could Stand to be Where You Don't See Me

Berkeley, September 1988

Billie Joe's POV

It was such a shock at the time. She was just... gone. No trace of anything. She really did just disappear completely. As we searched around the neighbourhood throughout the night, I started to wonder if she had even been real in the first place or if she was just some kind of strange dream I had.

I stopped wondering when we'd finally given up and went home and under the front door was a letter with purple flowers on one side and a note on the other.

"Billie Joe, I'm sorry everything turned out this way. I don't think I'll ever be able to tell you how grateful I am that you let me stay with you all this time. You've given me so much kindness and I hope yet doubt that I've given half as much back. If you're reading this, it means I've gone back to my own time and I'm sorry that I likely won't be able to give you a proper goodbye.  There are so many things I wish I could tell you to simply console you and to give you faith in the future, but to put it mystically, it's not worth it if you spoil the ending. You deserve to experience the excitement of that for yourself, and I could never jeopardise your wonderful future by telling you all. I'm sorry for all the trouble and pain I've given you since you've known me, but you'll move on. It's inevitable. You are a wonderful, kind, intelligent and most importantly imaginative person who has given me and likely will give many more people so much kindness and safety, and you must never let a single person take that from you. You are to be celebrated and you will be, trust in that. You have given me the time of my life. I wish you all the best.
- Constance"

I couldn't believe what I was reading. She really was gone. And I had no chance of seeing her again for either 35 years, or ever.

For so many days, I just didn't know what to do. Constance somehow became a... constant, and to just not have her here anymore, it stung. It felt like a piece of home being wiped away. I know its what she wanted but I didn't know if I had it in me to forget her. I know my heart wanted to but I could never do that. Even though she'd only spent three months with me, from the very start, she'd somehow known me like no one else with a wisdom and faith that was almost frightening for a 17 year old.

Now I know it was just because she had the advantage of living 35 years ahead of me, yet even knowing that, she still lives in a tiny little corner of my heart. Even though she begged me not to say it in her... or I guess Mitski's song, I'd be lying if I didn't at least slightly love her. I wanted her to be happy and safe, and strangely I still wanted her to be mine, even though I knew well it was impossible.

I thought back to that other Mitski song she sang to us. It was still beautiful, but it didn't really hit me until now.

On one of my particularly melancholic days at home, I went downstairs into the basement to the spot where she slept and found the little chord sheets she made for those songs.

Francis Forever.

I tried it out on the guitar.

"I don't know what to do without you
I don't know where to put my hands
I've been trying to lay my head down
But I'm singing this at 3am

I don't need the world to see
That I've been the best I can be but
I don't think I could stand to be
Where you don't see me..."

...

London, September 2023

Constance's POV

There were only a few more weeks before school went back. Thankfully, all the business with the police calmed down and things could go back to normal. I was grateful because I was already not in a 'normal' place mentally. How could I be after everything I went through and no one to properly talk it through with. I'd smoothed over everything with Emrys but they were never the kind of friend to talk about feelings or boys with.