Chocolate Eyes and Warm Hands

Chocolate Eyes and Warm Hands... Part 8

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Going to school the next day wasn’t easy. Before I left the hospital, Anthony had specifically asked of me not to tell anyone that he was sick. I didn’t understand why, nor did I try to. (My sense of empathy on a scale of one to ten would be a negative two.) I decided to go along with it. Right now, it wasn’t necessary to understand his thoughts. It was only essential that I stay cheerful, for his sake.

That was the problem, though. My experience when handling disaster is zero. You can ask Mom about the four years of grudge-holding if you don’t believe me. But that was before Anthony.

That sense of logic- The whole “I’m a changed person now because I met him.”- helped me motivation-wise, but things are easier said than done. For example, I can say, “Okay, so you just found out your boyfriend is in the hospital with cancer and there’s a possibility he will die. Now walk around and go on with your life like nothing ever happened and you haven’t noticed anything.” But actually doing so is a bit on the difficult side. I went throughout the day without acting too suspicious, but I found it impossible to shoot my usual glares at people who pass by staring. Most of the time I would be too busy talking to Anthony to do so, but we weren’t exactly “popular” with people, Fiona as an example. More recently, I had had such a gloomy aura that no one would dare come near me. Things were different now, though. Stupid soft heart. You should know more than anyone that we’re not in the mood for people right now. Although…

Thinking through it again, I realized that no one would sit near me, even if they had a sense of pity for me. (I gave up on the possibility of people actually wanting to sit with me, with the exception of Anthony, a while before that.) I had such a low social status in the eighth grade that nobody would want to be seen with me. Also, having some of the most popular kids in school like Fiona totally pissed at me for some sort of twisted reason didn’t help out, either.

My Mom and I weren’t very talkative, either. I guess that was my Mom’s one and only flaw in this entire story. It was nice when she gave me space and didn’t push the topic of “a certain someone” after the breakup, but this time it was different. The worst part of it all was the fear and loneliness. It took courage to not burst into tears right as I entered school. Even some comforting words from her would’ve helped ease the tension in me. However, my mother’s hesitation in consoling was also my fault. I was the one the built the barrier and walked away, constantly increasing the distance between us, while she just stood there for me on the other side of the wall. Soon, I had walked back to the wall, but now she didn’t dare to break the wall that I had acted as if it were sacred for so long before. As I would crouch down and cry, she just stayed around and listened, hoping it was enough that she was there. Sometimes it was; now was not one of those times.

As another week passed by, Anthony remained in the hospital. I didn’t try to learn all the medical terms, nor try to listen to what it was that had caused him, and me, so much pain. I visited him every day, watching him get thinner and paler and balder by every moment, and yet still seeing him princely. I guess love twists your sense of judgment a little.

I knew that things couldn’t remain as they were at school. As he continued to go through more chemotherapy and my visits became longer and longer with less and less conversation, there remained another player in this game who still dwelled in the shadow of naivety.

It wasn’t easy trying to get Fiona to talk to me. I think that she figured out that I had eavesdropped on her and her friends, if that wasn’t her plan all along. I couldn’t think of any place I could talk to her privately, and there was no way I could tell anyone but her our little secret. I didn’t ask Anthony if I could tell her, either. Why? Well…