Untouchable

love.

"What hurts is that we never said goodbye. We just kind of ended." 

- anonymous.

So, after a long-awaited weekend, tech week arrived. This was either the biggest or the worst week of my 8th-grade year—it could've been both.

I had the most chaotic weekend, and for whatever reason, my weekend involved him. I went to brunch downtown with my friends on Friday because we didn't have school that day. I believe it was Brooklynn,  Nia, Kayla, and Jesse with whom I had brunch. After we finished, we went to a paint-your-own ceramic shop, and I decided it'd be best to paint a tea set, as I had always wanted one. Brooklynn ended up texting Oliver that we were downtown and asked him to come to the ceramic store. She said I was there. He didn't respond. I was nervous, how could I not be? This was going to be weird. I continued painting when I heard a familiar voice yell my name from a distance. "Charlie!!!!" the voice said. I thought I was hallucinating, but I looked out the window and there Oli was, with his friends riding his bike down the road. 

"Hi, Oli!" I shouted back. No response. He most likely was too far away to hear. That was my Friday downtown, but Saturday turned out to be even more strange. I was in the passenger seat with my dad in the car listening to music when all of a sudden my phone began to ring. I looked to see who it was, and lo and behold, his name was across my screen with the options to decline or accept the call. I accepted, of course. "Hello?" I asked. 

"Hi, Charlie!! What are you doing right now?" Oliver said on the other end of the line. 

"Um, I'm kind of in the car. Why?" 

"Aw, I wanted to play video games with you..." he sounded pretty dejected that I wasn't available to play Fortnite. "Can you join later?" he asked.

"Uh...probably."

"Okay, yay! I'll call you later, bye!" he hung up without letting me say bye. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary, though; he usually gets his message across and doesn't let me interfere. Either he forgot to call, he fell asleep, or I was supposed to call because we, in fact, did not play Fortnite that night, but instead, on Sunday. He called me and Brooklyn, saying it was because Tim and Nia were out for dinner and couldn't play Fortnite. I was always kind of jealous that Nia and Brooklynn played with him, but honestly, I didn't mind that much. I was horrible at Fortnite anyway. I only downloaded it because my friends wanted me to play, and whenever I did, the round never went well. But the round I played with Oliver was a bit different. It felt kind of exciting, but I was kind of embarrassed because when they all died, I got in a car to drive away, but crashed into a tree. He did teach me how to hug in-game, though. I will have to admit, it was fun.

After weighing my mind like a calculator, I decided this week wouldn't be where I told him everything. Nevertheless, I did try to make it known. 

The beginning of school wasn't all that interesting. We met at recess, side-hugged, talked, and went to our separate friend groups. It was in drama that everything decided to happen all at once. We began as normal, the director making announcements like she usually does. She sent us off to go look at our costumes, and Oli and I walked together. I can't remember that day very clearly because I was stressed, but he was with me, Nia, and Brooklynn for a while. Once we had a good look at where our costumes were set, we were directed to sit back down for the director to explain how tech week should work. Oli sat next to me, while on my right was Brooklynn. She was on her phone most of the time, looking at all the fictional men she had a crush on, but that was routine. I could never stop smiling when I was with these four; they were unstoppably hilarious. I sat quietly listening to their conversation. Oli was arguing back and forth with Brooklynn, while Nia and I looked at each other in exasperation because of the two bickering all the time. Oli ended up snatching her phone and running away with it while telling her to stop talking about Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy. He sat back down and gave the phone back to her, only because she bribed him with food. We somehow fell into a conversation about the Notes app on all of our phones. Nia said that if hers got leaked, that would be the last time you saw her. I said mine was diabolical and that it deserved to be behind bars. For whatever reason, and that still intrigues me to this day, Oliver was only interested in what I had in my Notes app. I'm not just saying this for the book, or saying it because I liked him and only wanted his attention on me; he genuinely didn't have an interest in what Nia had inside hers. I didn't understand that. "It's definitely all about his crush." Brooklynn chimed in.