Eternal.

Chapter Nineteen

Saturday morning April had texted me asking if I was okay. I was surprised because she had only done that twice before over a span of one and a half years. Once last year because I was out sick from school for three days straight and we had the most-hated math class together. And the second time, just a month ago, because I got angry at her because she spent more time with Sayre, and stopped texting her the night before. This time she was asking me if I was okay just to make sure I didn’t kill myself. I didn’t. I texted her back saying I was alright.

I dressed in army shorts and a pink tank top, put my hair in a ponytail, and went out for my morning run. No matter how tired Track practice makes me, I always have to take a couple daily runs. The song I played in my ear buds as I ran down the street was Spectrum, by Zedd. I felt like the song explained my situation with Aiden, and with Alex. I almost felt I sang along out loud. Breathing you in when I want you out/ Finding our truth in a hope of doubt. My heart pounded faster and the world around me blurred a bit indicating that I had picked up speed. The next set of lyrics were my favorite. We’ll run where lights won’t chase us/ Hide where love can save us/ I will never let you go.

It wasn’t until the song was going into the next one by Zedd on my playlist; I was almost to the back entrance of my school where kids get dropped off; when I realized: I had passed Alexavier’s old house without paying attention to it. Ever since he had moved, every time I ran passed his house I would slow down to examine the front; the cracked, blue door, the stump of a tree that we climbed on in seventh grade, before it got cut down. And see ghosts of the fun we used to have. I would look up to the third floor window which was the attic; it was also Alex’s bed room. In Tenth grade we studied Romeo and Juliette, so one day instead of knocking on the door, I tried to throw rocks all the way to Alex’s window. I couldn’t reach it enough with tiny rocks, so I grabbed a somewhat-heavy one and— let’s say my mother had to pay half for a new window. Alex wasn’t mad though. He laughed his head off. Even though for the next week there was a big draft in his room.

Now, this time, I never looked. I kept on running passed his old house without stopping to remember his life here. Maybe I knew it would hurt too much if I did. We still weren’t talking to each other. I stopped running and walked through the gravel parking lot shaded by trees in my school’s back yard. This lot was for staff only, but on Track Meets everyone parked here. I walked across the Track field with paused music, just listening to my breathing. I headed toward the woods and stopped to notice the over-grown dirt path. It wasn’t over grown anymore. It looked as though someone had just pulled weeds, raked, and snapped branches to make it look like a path again. One foot on the path and it felt soft. My foot sank in just a centimeter. It wasn’t that noisy dead- leaf path left over from fall. Most of the leaves around looked dry now, a site I hadn’t seen since November. A rainy winter and an acid rain spring had given it a damp look, and under the shade of the trees I feared they would never dry up. But today they looked dry. It hadn’t rained a week, maybe that was all it needed.

 The sun shined fearlessly through the leaves as I walked deeper into the woods. These woods only ran half a mile long and the path was made by the school’s Garden Club. I took out my ear buds and just listened to the birds chirp their mating songs. It wasn’t until I slowed down my pace when I felt my legs shaking of exhaustion. I stopped in the middle of a small clearing. Ferns bordered the ground as tree trunks sprung up to form a wall around me. I stopped because I remembered this place. A small hideaway of confusing love. This was the clearing that Alex dragged me to before school started once day. He grabbed my hand and we ran over to the woods. I asked him where he was taking me and he’d just say he wanted to show me something. This we stopped at the far side of the clearing. Where my back almost came up against a tree, and Alex kissed me. Our first kiss. It was sweet, his lips tasted like honey and his hair smelled like Apple Shampoo. It was confusing, he was my best friend and I would have never let myself believe he loved me to a romantic extent.

Alex and I still weren’t speaking. He hadn’t called to apologize. The argument made no sense to me. A small part of me believed what he had said. I’m done picking up your ass he said. Maybe this whole time I had been falling, he has been picking me back up, and a couple days ago he had slammed my ass on the pavement. And just maybe, he had been falling too, but my arms were busy holding on to something else. But what was that something else?

A breeze blew the back of my neck like someone was gently rubbing their hand over it. I stood silently listening to how the breeze interrupts the high leaves making them flap around like a crackling fire. For a second I felt weird; like I was in a place, the woods, that was part of my history. History is history. But looking up at the sun shine through the trees reminded me that at some point, everyone starts a new story. Or simply, a new chapter in their lives. I turned around and ran home as quickly as I could. When I got home I felt words spilling out of me and onto my keyboard where I was attempting to write a new story. Lately I have only been writing poems, but today writing a story will get me one step closer to being a novelist. I wrote about a girl who’s lived thousands of years, who’s had a lot of reincarnations, and remembers all of them.