Like You Used To

How You Always Tell

I flipped on the pages, eager to find anything about her. I knew it was intruding, yet somehow I was compelled to read it.  Just to know her for a short while through this album in my hand. Was it filled with pictures of her friends, family or her boyfriend? Was it silly or light-hearted? Perhaps full of the fun she had with people?

It turns out I was wrong.

It was a diary of some sort.

Every picture, there wasn't anything funny or goofy about it. Each of them has a caption, explaining what she had thought or what the photo was about.

It started with a beautiful scenery, a vast crystalline lake glittering like sapphire, and the orange sunset encompassing the whole background, its glow gave warmth to everything it reached. It was a pretty good photography, though I'm not really an expert. My dreamland, it read on the caption. 

I flipped and read another one. There was a picture of a friend of hers. But it wasn't anything affectionate. Her friend was frowning, talking to another girl like she was telling her something bad. Camille obviously took it while the girl's not looking.

June 18, 2011

I can't believe she's bitching about me again?

What did I ever do to her? Was it because of Lucas or because that I wasn't anything like her? I know she's just faking her friendship with me, just to not make an enemy from me. But she's still stabbing me behind my back.

There was a picture of a guy and a girl making out and the camera was obviously angled under the bushes. My eyes widened in recognition.

August 28, 2011

I knew it. I always knew it. Lucas was cheating on me. But I refused to believe it, because I loved him. But not anymore.

A lot of pages I flipped, there were people turning their backs on her. Her life wasn't so perfect after all, only that she's walking on thin ice trying to convince everybody she's okay. That she had everything she could wish for.

A false reality.

September 5 2011

I broke up with him. I cried. My friends offered me comfort, but I saw beneath their fake sympathy. I knew it. They were not concerned in the slightest. They were only using me. 

 It was ironic that before I always saw her surrounded with people and felt a pang in my chest. I realised that it was longing. To belong in her world, even just once. What would have it felt like when I touch her? When I brush her golden hair away from those lovely eyes of hers? Would she have smiled, laughed or blushed? 

But the face in the mirror was what dragged me back to reality every single time. There was nothing remarkable about me, and I wasn't a guy like Lucas. I was practically invisible, and she was way out my league. But how can Lucas ever cheat on someone as radiant as Camille?

October 14 2011

I was accused of stealing some girl's boyfriend. No one believed me when I said I didn't do anything. Deep down they think I'm a whore. But they go on like I was still good friends with them. It hurts to know they are all backstabbers.

December 16 2011

I told my parents I wanted to be a photographer, but they refused. They wanted me to go to Harvard, and study to become a successful lawyer, saying it'll make a lot of money. But I'm sick and tired of them controlling every little bit of my life. So I rebelled, and this is what happened.

There was one time that she came in class, with bruises on her arms. We all wondered, but she laughed it off and said that she tripped and fell. But those words were not believable. I never believed that lie.

I froze on a certain page, and stared at her picture. She glanced at the camera, smiling, but there was no warmth in her eyes. It was sad and mournful, contradicting the upturn of her lips. It looked like it was taken from a hospital.

January 21 2012

I found out I have a terminal disease. No one knows, not even my parents.

And I can only live until next month.