Spilled Ink [Discontinued]

2 - "Inseparable"

October 19th 2007, 9 years old

Xander and I sat on my roof, Looking up at the starry night sky. I shivered and clutched my arms. It was a chilly October night and I forgot to bring a jacket. He must've noticed, he put his arms around my waist and pulled me closer. I blushed madly. I didn't understand it, but everytime he touched me, butterflies would erupt in my stomach and my heart would race. When he hugged me, ecerything felt fuzzy and numb inside. He changed me in ways nobody else did. Just being next to him made me not cold anymore. "It's a beautiful night." He said and let go of my waist. Everything went back to being cold, but I didn't show it. "It really is..." I said. "Just looking at them makes me forget the world, forget my problems, forget everything. It makes me feel like I'm drifting in space with nothing to hold me down even for a few minutes..." He said, brushing a stray hair behind his ear. His face was illuminated by the moon, Making his blue eyes turn into a cosmos with stars reflecting off them. "If only I could be in the stars, then I would be able to forget all the time." He added. He hugged his knees and looked sadly at the ground below. "Do you know what they remind me of?" He asked, looking back at me. I shook my head no. "They remind me of your freckles. That's why I love being around you, Jack. When I see you, I think of the stars, when I see you I can forget the world for a little while and just live in the moment." He said, looking directly into my eyes with his galaxy eyes. He liked back at the ground and shut his eyes.

"Xandy, is everything okay?" I asked, putting a hand on his shoulder. He sighed. "My father abandoned us. My mother cries all night and I can't do anything to help. I try, but whenever she looks at me, she just sees him." He said. "I write to try to get away from it all, but it only works for a little while." He buried his face in his hands. Xander is not a hard person to read. He is easy to tell how he is feeling, or if he doesn't like something. But when he doesn't want you to see, he hides it, and he is very good at hiding his emotions when he chooses too. Right now, his face is expressionless. He bottles up his emotions and hides them away where nobody can find them. "I'm sorry..." was all i could say. My way of making people happy is reading their emotions and fitting my actions and jokes to make them happy given what ever emotion they are feeling. But with him, it's like a guessing game. When he's upset, he clears his mind of emotions. Ive learned over the past two years that he doesn't like people seeing when he's upset. His face goes blank, like a canvas. "There's nothing anybody could have done." He hugged his knees tighter. I scooted closer to him and hugged him. He let go of his knees and hugged me back tighter. I felt a drop of warm liquid hit my shoulder, and it only took me a second to realize that he was crying. He was hiccuping and trying to hold back the tears. "Xandy, it's ok to cry. I'm here and nobody is going to change that. Just let it out." He let out a sob and started crying on my shoulder. It was the first time I had ever seen him cry, and most likely the only time. He buried his face in my shoulder and gripped the back of my shirt. I just wanted to hold him as tight as I could and let him forget for a little while.

It only took a few minutes before his tears stopped, but he kept hugging me. "I'm sorry..." He said, his voice raspy. "It's ok, it's good to let it out from time to time. And you know I will always be here when you need someone to cry on." I said. I saw him smile and butterflies erupted in my stomach. The night was no longer cold as long as he was beside me. I looked down at the Ink on my wrists. "Then let me be your stars." Was written as a tattoo in blue ink. I never understood what it meant, but i really liked it. Alex looked over at me and must've seen me looking at my tattoo. "Jack." I turned to see him holding out his wrist. I put mine next to his and looked back at him.

"You are my stars."

The next day, I went over to Xander's house to see if he could play, but his mom's car wasn't in the driveway and there was no basketball hoop like there was before. I knocked on the door, but got no answer. All of the decorations on the front lawn were gone. It looked like nobody had been in the house at all. I went back and asked my motger, but she just frowned sadly. "Honey... Xander is gone..." she said sadly. My heart broke. "W-what do you mean?" I asked. She walked up and hugged my skinny body. "Ma?" She pushed a curly hair behind my ear. "Xander moved back to Trinidad last night... His mother couldn't afford to live here anymore." She said. Tears formed in my eyes. "B-but h-he cant... w-we spent so much t-time together!" My mom hugged me again, and this time I broke down in real tears.

"But I didn't get to say goodbye..."