Her Wish

Her Wish [Chapter 25]

Crunch.

Jennie’s head turned at the source of such a strange sound, until it occurred just a few times more and she began to realize that it was the found of footsteps in the snow, growing louder with each step taken.

Already realizing who else would come at such late hours of the night; Jennie rose quickly from her sprawled position in the snow and unconsciously smiled to herself, hopes soaring higher than they had in such a long time.

“You’re here?”

She quickly attempted to suppress her sudden happiness, tugging her lips downwards before turning around and nodding in response to his words. She watched as Danny took a seat beside her, silently admiring the ways in which the moonlight so nicely reflected and accented his features.

“Mind if I sit here?” his head turned, catching Jennie’s gaze with an amused hint of a smile upon his face.

She looked away and shook her head absentmindedly, hugging her knees to her chest and rocking back in forth. Despite the large, winter jacket she was wearing, the cold, winter breeze still managed to bring an occasional set of chills her way.

“Where’ve you been?”

She brought herself to ask the question she’d been planning on asking ever since Danny had first begun to disappear. She hadn’t seen him in days, weeks. Every morning she would enter the classroom, seeking one of the few faces that still found the sight of her tolerable, only to remember that he’d long since ceased coming.

It had been so long since she saw his face that she’d lost track of the time that flew by. Had it been months? She couldn’t remember.

Even Alex didn’t have much more to say about the matter. She wasn’t sure if he knew something more and simply refused to speak or if he really didn’t know either.

Danny took a while before responding, leaving Jennie to wonder what exactly it was that he was hiding. Since the first time she heard of him from Elie, she had always known Danny to be a person of few words, someone who had never taken a liking to explaining himself, a person who disliked dwelling on small matters.

“I’ve been busy.”

She should have expected it. Coming from Danny, she should have known that he would answer in such a matter. She had even anticipated it.

But perhaps she had been hoping for something more. Perhaps she had gotten to thinking that maybe her and Danny had reached the point beyond withholding secrets from one another. As wrong as it may have sounded, Jennie felt she deserved an explanation, something more than a vague answer that left matters even more troubling than before she asked.

She wanted to question him further, to ask what he had been busy with, to ask why he hadn’t told her or anyone else, but stopped herself from doing so. The sudden fear of being pushed away just as Elie had been so many times before whenever prying to deeply restrained her from doing so.

Even she didn’t understand why she was suddenly comparing herself to her once best friend. Perhaps it was because over the time that Danny was gone, she realized herself to be no different.

Danny seemed to carry some sort of appeal that allowed girls to believe that they could rely on him, depend on him, and believe him, even if he had never directly offered for them to do so. Just as Elie had, Jennie fell hopelessly into this trap of his as well.

She hadn’t even realized how much she had been avoiding over the years, merely hiding in Elie’s shadows. She hadn’t realized how much merely being Elie’s best friend had protected her, had shielded her from entangling herself in the same mess as countless others had.

As Jennie became absorbed these thoughts of hers, her silence didn’t go unnoticed to Danny. He detected the disappointment in his answer, the yearning to know more but the reluctance to ask.

“Why? Did you miss me?”

But Jennie didn’t respond. She didn’t have the heart to joke back, her thoughts having gotten the better of her.

Doubt piled upon doubt, Jennie’s string of speculations only seemed to carry her further and further away from Danny, creeping dangerously close back to the point the two had first started, the point where she trusted and relied on no one but herself, thinking she needed nothing more.

Silence overtook them after that. Neither knew what to say to restore the once so easily obtained comfort between them. Neither could fully understand what the other was thinking and the reasons behind their decisions.

“I was only absent for two weeks,” Danny attempted once more, hoping that Jennie would take this opportunity to open up, to express even just a hint of the thoughts running through her mind.

Funny. She could have sworn it was longer. Had it really only been two weeks? Had the increased torments Jennie received only been two weeks long? Had what felt like a century only been a mere two weeks?

“Really?” was all she could think of to reply, still shocked at all that had happened in such a short time span.

Her attempt was feeble but Danny was willing to accept any form of a response as a hope for reviving all that had been lost between them in the time he was gone.

As the two talked on, the once constraint that lingered between them began to ease once more, making it seem as though nothing had ever occurred. Neither of them was willing to touch upon the matter of Danny’s absence once more, Jennie fearing rejection and Danny unwilling to tell. They moved past it and treated it as a minor occurrence overlooked, just as Danny had been infamous for preferring.

Jennie fell onto her back, a gleeful smile replacing the small twinge of betrayal that she had felt towards Danny minutes before. Ignoring his amused looks, she began to spread her arms and legs, pushing snow aside as they moved in sync.

“What are you doing?” he wanted to know. Although he had no clue as to why, Jennie looked to be in genuine happiness, her face glowing with an aura a person never would have imagined her to be capable of simply knowing her as a friend of Elie.

“I’m making a snow angel.”

Danny hesitated for a moment longer, staring back down in bewilderment at her before lying back as well and beginning to do the same.

Jennie laughed, out of both shock and amusement that she had gotten one of their school’s most popular boys to join her in doing such childish actions.

He turned his head to meet her eyes, playfulness dancing within his own. Jennie’s cheeks were flushed a healthy shade of red, either from the icy touch of winter snow against her skin or because of the intense gaze that Danny was regarding her with.

“You’re so much livelier now than before,” he couldn’t help but to remark, to make the comparison between the past and the present.

Jennie had realized this as well. Perhaps it was for that very reason why she had chosen to risk her own friendship with Elie in the first place. Something within her told her from the very start that this was worth it. This feeling of being alive, free, and human… it was all worth it.

She nodded in agreement, gazing wordlessly back at Danny, wondering how such a great thing in her life had every happened.

She didn’t fully comprehend it. Something, or rather, someone, as great as Danny had waltzed into her life before she even had a chance to stop it, before she even had a chance to protest and before she even had a chance to question it.

But she was glad. Jennie had no regrets in doing what she had.

The moments that she spent with Danny were her happiness. And happiness is never free of cost. She had learned that by now. Her classmates tormenting, Elie’s fabricated rumors, the distasteful glares – those were all Jennie’s prices for happiness.

But at least now, she had something to live for, those sparse moments of bliss to look forward to. At least now, she had someone rather than having to continuously return to this same spot, alone and with no one to talk to but her deceased mother and herself.

At least now, she had him.

Everything was fine.