The Sky is Falling

Chapter Three - Finn Louis

"I'm just tryin' to keep it together, but it gets a little harder when it never gets better."

Thursday, May 21st

12:00 PM

'Why?' is what Elliott Moore loved to ask me. Everything was always why, why, why. Why are you wearing that shirt? Why don't you want to play football with Zach and me this weekend? The answer was always 'I dunno.' When I was a child, I couldn't articulate into words 'why' I was the way I was. I had always just been that way. And of course, I can't blame Elliott. He was just trying to understand.

I stopped being friends with him in the fifth grade. The year my mother died. My mother was my rock. She listened to me when no one else cared to. She had died in a car accident, one of four people, three of which in two other cars, because of a hit-and-run drunk driver speeding down the wrong side of the highway, who also inadvertently killed himself in the process. The day I found out, I was at my lowest. Since then, I haven't gotten much better. All I could do was lie on the bathroom floor, staring at the ceiling for hours. Until my phone rang in my pocket. It was Elliott. He was asking if I wanted to come over and play Skylanders with him. I hung up. There was no way he could've known, but that didn't stop me from crying even harder until my grown-out buzz cut was wet from the pool of tears spreading beneath my head on the tile floor.

No one at school knew, except for the staff. No one asked. I guess I looked the same. Sounded the same. But nothing was. My chest ached all the time. My head perpetually throbbed from tension headaches from nights spent crying until there were no tears left. Still, I kept showing up. I played along with the norm, laughed at the right times, answered when called on. I became a mirror of myself, hollowed out.

I couldn't let Elliott see that either. There was a line I wouldn't let anyone cross. I didn't want him to see what was happening to me—how everything felt like it was rapidly falling apart. I didn't want to put that burden on him. And I especially didn't want anyone else at school to know and bully me.

It was a few days before I stopped talking to him altogether, but I recall it pretty much being the last time we ever hung out. It was recess, late November, one of those cold, cloudless days where the sun was beaming but the air had a bite to it. We were on the swings, the chains frigid in our hands. He whipped out his new iPhone, the one all the other kids were jealous of. The screen lit up as he opened Angry Birds, and for a second, it almost felt like any other day.

"Bet you can't beat my high score," he challenged, grinning, not knowing how badly I wanted to tell him I couldn't care less anymore. How much I wanted to scream at him that I couldn't even focus on the stupid game, that my head was pounding from crying so much.

Instead, I vaguely laughed. "Yeah, right," I muttered.

Elliott laughed for the both of us, relaxed in a way I couldn't remember feeling in a long time. He tilted the phone toward me, I watched the screen like it mattered. I tried my best to play, but even he could see through my facade.

"You gotta aim higher. You're always aiming too low."

I don't think he meant anything by it. But those words stuck with me.

"Lemme just try," he offered. I nodded and directed my focus to kicking my Salvation Army bin sneakers through the dead leaves enveloping the ground. He continued to play for a few minutes before taking notice of my detached demeanor. He put his phone back into his coat pocket.

"Are you okay? You seem... sad or something lately."

I shrugged, not really knowing what to say. "I'm fine," I mumbled, but it was too quiet, even for me to believe.