Untouchable

Alone

"Sometimes the smallest details about a person are the biggest reasons why you love them." — Courtney Peppernell, Healing the Heart

At night, when my mind was most active, I dreamt of you. My thoughts ran wild thinking of sun shining on your skin. I would hug my pillow tight, wishing it was you. But I was just sleeping next to the ghost of you.

I was so engrossed in my thoughts of Oliver that I couldn't even process that January had already come. Could time have flown that fast? Am I truly about to leave my school, the place where I built relationships and learned to form bonds? Is this it? I'm not ready to leave my friends, who I considered family. If you could tell, I tend to think a lot. They were my home, my comfort crowd. I couldn't leave him either. And to think, right when things were getting good for me, I have to leave.

When it comes to my memory, I choose to only remember happy memories. I don't need a requiem for my past, and who I was before. I don't want to think about the melancholy that comes with the funeral. What I need is a distraction. Something to keep me occupied and overthinking, so powerful that I can't escape it. I need a memory filled with happiness. I want to avoid anything that makes me feel displeasure, and carefully pick out every moment where I'm smiling to plaster it on the walls of my mind so I can remember it forever. Some memories are difficult to remember because I have too many overcrowding experiences. To solve that problem, I decided it would be best to keep track of them and put them in little notes, kind of like a little journal. In the latter months, from September to December, I hadn't had that idea yet. I couldn't describe the feeling of the first time Oli ever hugged me because he'd done it an uncountable number of times. I even tried to tally all of the hugs, but I've only got an estimate. Is it crazy if I told you I have written essays and paragraphs about him in my notes?

January was a lovely month. I started becoming incredibly comfortable calling him "cute" or "adorable". I'd only think those words, but occasionally they'd slip out.

There was one particular drama rehearsal I have written in my notes. Keep in mind that I always had drama on Thursdays, except for Tech Week, which meant I had rehearsal the whole week. I think I want to say that it was the first time we've been alone together. In drama, Nia and Brooklyn were usually there with me, but Brooklyn was sick and Nia was in another room.

Nia was sitting with me on the floor when he came over. "Hi Charlie!" he always said with a cheery tone. 

"Hi, Oli!" I smiled back at him. He sat down and talked about random things. I loved watching him talk. It might be a little cliché to say this, but his voice was like honey. His voice flowed so prettily and clearly. Our choreographer called all the dancers for a specific number, so Nia had to go. She left me and Oliver. Our director then called him over to speak to him about his song. That rehearsal, I wasn't needed at all, so I just sat on the auditorium floor reading a book. When they were done talking, he came back over and greeted me again. 

"What're you reading?" Oli asked. 

"Oh, just this book," I answered as I closed the page I was on and showed him the cover. The book I was reading wasn't your normal book. It was one of those books, and I was on one of those pages. I panicked when he started reaching for it and tried to read the page I was on. There's no way he would get what they were saying, I thought.  He looked back up at me with a blank expression. I was screwed. As he read out the first sentence, he seemed not to get it, thank god. When he read the first sentence, I think he pretended to be shocked. Good thing he didn't read the rest of the page. 

He gave me back my book and asked, "Is this your notebook?" He pointed to a neon green notebook on the ground. 

"Oh, yeah," I said. Actually, thinking and writing about what I said, I think I sounded a little dry. I only sound dry when I'm nervous, but people can read it the wrong way. I didn't want him to get the wrong impression of me, even though we're way past first impressions, and I also didn't want him to think that I didn't want to talk to him. Oliver took the notebook from the floor and grabbed the pen next to me. Then, quickly, he turned over the cover and started to draw on the first page of my notebook.