What I Couldn't Tell Him

18 - You Can't Just Stop

ALDEN WOLFF

I shove her and she flails in the air, hair flying out, then lands in the water with a loud splash. The crystal water is sent up in a sheet and drops back down. She rises above the water, gasping. Her hair is stuck to her back and I try not to stare at her clingy shirt. I know Jordan or Brooklyn would have whistled or made a comment by now.

She scowls at me and I bend double laughing. I am gasping for air between. She wades towards me, suppressing laughter, with her eyes narrowed slyly.

I don't watch her approach, tears in my eyes from laughing. Then I feel her hand around my ankle, and she drags my feet from under me. I skid off the grass bank, scrabbling at the shrubs but only succeeding in pulling a branch off. I hit the water.

It is warmer than I expected, fresh and sweet. I lift my head, shaking out my hair like a dog. She is laughing now, face lit up. I join in, and she splashes some water at me. We splutter and splash each other until we are tired out. She wades into the shallow part, I see her jeans clinging to her ass and top hanging off her. She sits down on the bank, wringing out the hem of her shirt and hair. I try not to watch, but find my eyes wandering over.

I never really thought about it, but she has the body of a model. She isn't the kind of person who I look at like that, and find myself mentally blushing and slapping myself. It doesn't matter what she looks like, she is just a friend and I shouldn't look at her like that. Is she even that?

I sit down on the bank next to her.

"Thank you." She says softly, looking up at the sky in the gap in the trees. They reflect in her eyes and I shake my head and stand up. She looks up at me.

"What's up?"

I run my hand through my hair and let out an agitated grunt. She stands up next to me and lifts an arm, dropping it down again like she isn't sure.

"Do you need a cigarette? I can go get you some if you want?"

I grunt again, shaking my head. The mood has changed, the dark is now creeping in at the corners. Her face is worried and unsure.

I walk away from her, facing the trees. I can't let her see me like this. I am such a mess. Why is she here? She knows what I am like, she knows what I do. But she is still here, trying to reassure me. She needs to go, she needs to be friends with the good kids who will give her a good life and no stress and not trying to...

When I turn again, I don't see her immediately. Then is spot her lacing up her shoes by the tree line.

"Where are you going?" I ask gruffly. She turns around.

"To the shop." She answers plainly, finishing the bow on her laces. Her hair is still soaking but her jumper is mostly dry now.

"No!"

She looks up, slightly offended. I sigh.

"Please don't. I'm going to stop." I say, with as much determination and grit as I could. She doesn't believe me.

"Do it slowly then." She explains, "Its gradual. You can't just stop. You have to wane it."

"What do you know about it?" I demand, in a sudden fit of agitation.

"See?" She points out, referring to my mood. This only frustrates me more.

"You don't know about this!" I am growing more annoyed, "How can you tell me what to do?"

"Alden! Calm down." She tries, arms up defensively. There is panic on her face.

JAIMIE PERRON

The look in his eyes and the premature emotion remind me painfully of my dad and his fits of anger. It reminds me of the time of my life when everything I did was teetering on the edge of panic. My entire life was dictated by hospital appointments and doctors and the needles sticking in my arms.

"How can you know how hard this is? You're just telling me things like its easy - you don't know how it feels! You don't know what it's like to have a hard life! You cant say... Go find someone else - go make friends with the good kids!"

As he speaks, anger bubbles up inside me. He doesn't know what I'm going through yet he judges me. I know deep down that it is the lack of cigarettes, but I have had frustration coiling up inside me and it just bursts out.

"You don't know me either! You don't know how hard my life is either, so lets cut the crap and go. You get yourself fags or you go and fight anyone who stands in front of you, I don't care, just make sure its not me."

I walk away then. I wasn't entirely sure where I was going, but after I wriggled through the blackberry bush, I started recognising things. I jump over a few logs, attempting to put the conversation out of my head. I find my mind wandering back to him.

I thought, no hoped, that he would follow me, but he doesn't come.

I reach the clearing and groan, not thinking of the long walk ahead of me. I start off down the road, smooth and straight. It is slow and steady, taking a long time to crest the hill; it feels much steeper on foot.

I make it off the road, through the piles and piles of needles from the towering trees. I kick a stone for a while, eventually getting bored and plugging in my earphones. It took ten minutes for the battery to die and for me to be cut off crudely in the middle of a Nirvana song.

It was probably a little over an hour later when I spot the familiar turn off onto my street. I creep upstairs, more discreetly this time, and fall asleep in the dying black of the night, and dream of drowning in a crystal clear waterfall, with Aldens face above me, distorted by the water.