Until I Met Her

Chapter 4 (Edited)

October's half-term came and went, and I was still struggling.

I've got so many assessments and so much to do that I didn't even know where to start. Sometimes I skipped class just so I could finish something before going back and being given new things to learn.

I didn't hear much from Kheli over the half-term. She said she was going to try to visit, but she never showed up. I shouldn't hold it against her, but I wished she could stop telling me things when she knew she was never going to do it.

It wasn't like I wouldn't understand.

I guess it'd be easier to say we were drifting apart, but to drift apart, you sort of needed to be detached. Kheli had this hold on me that she pulled whenever she felt like it.

We were in different places, literally and figuratively.

When she broke up with me, she said she wanted to "do different things," get out of this town and see the world, do adult stuff, and I— I didn't know what I wanted.

But I know that she made me feel like I was too little, like my ambitions were little— like she wanted more out of life and I was too little.

But enough about Kheli, enough about sad things...

In better news, Mrs Williams had officially been in remission for a year. To celebrate it, my family and the Williams organised a little get-together, and Mr Williams actually came.

Unfortunately, I didn't really have time to celebrate properly because, as it turned out, I did not work well under pressure and I had three essays due the following week. I've started them all; I was nowhere near finished.

And yes, even under pressure, there was no way I'd miss Mrs Williams' party, so I grabbed my laptop and backpack and made my way to my mum's house. So far I've been splitting my time: 40 minutes studying upstairs, 10 minutes downstairs socialising.

I was in my 40-minute break, rolling around my room in my chair and staring at the wall. Even though I didn't live there anymore, my room is still the same. Posters of skaters and skateboards covered the walls. My sports day trophies were still on the shelf, and that one award I got for perfect attendance in Year 9. Pictures of my friends everywhere: Freddie, Gio, Lexi, Mark, Joe, Billy and me. Pictures of my family. One picture of Kheli. The only one I let myself keep.

The harder I stared at my laptop, the blurrier my vision got. Word document open, cursor blinking at me, mocking me. A thousand thoughts popped up... pity they were mostly about Avatar: The Last Airbender.

I exited Word and opened Netflix, scrolling to the kids' section for Avatar.

"What're you doing?" Eleanor's voice startled me. I slammed the laptop shut as if I was watching something illegal.

"Jesus, Eleanor, what the hell?" I groaned, turning to face her.

Her blonde hair was in a high ponytail, bangs out, middle parting neat—barely any makeup. Sometimes I wondered how it was fair that Eleanor looked the way she did, but then she was the way that she was?

Why was she so fucking pretty?

She was wearing a black tight shirt tucked into skinny jeans. How did she manage to make something simple look so good? She looked like she belonged somewhere fancy where people drink wine and say "darling," not in my room, which looked like it belonged to a 14-year-old boy.

"Shouldn't you be doing essays?" She squinted at me accusingly; she was, in fact, holding a glass of wine.

"I need a break."