Friedrich Nietzsche — 'There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.'
We first saw him at sixteen is what my sister Alice said at the dinner.
No,that’s not the truth. I will tell you what is.
When we were four, our parents would leave us at a day care seeing that they were too busy to take care of us and never trusted a nanny. That’s actually when we saw him, sitting at a corner alone. With a runny nose, a mess of curly hair and everything weird going on about him. He was that weird kid nobody wanted to associate themselves with. I was not nobody, I was curious. So I walked over and said:
“Hi, I’m Eilish.” In my tiny kid voice.
“Irish,” he said giggling.
“No silly, Eilish,” I responded to which he replied with “Eyelash,” and a silly grin on his face.
That grin made me forget that he had got my name wrong, hence I sat with him and we became friends. I did not mind his runny nose or his crazy hair. I did not mind that I was probably going to be an outcast too. He was fun and that was fine.
I was the only one who talked to him or played with him, to everyone he was invisible unless the rest of the kids wanted to bully him. So when he suddenly disappeared two years later, I was the only devastated soul. Nobody bothered to know where he went. Nobody even knew his name or house, but me. Most days I would sneak out to see if he came back home, but his parents house was as empty as ever. I did that until I was sixteen, I could not stop. I always wanted him to come back.
Then one day as I was pretending to take a walk in the neighbourhood just so I could peep at his parents place which as usual was empty, I saw movers. I was sad, because now I knew he would never come back. New people were moving in. With my broken heart again, I kicked rocks all the way to a coffee shop. I did not want coffee, I was no coffee fan. All I wanted was a bag of cookies and a glass of cold milk because that’s how I felt like. Cold coffee.
What I did not expect, was to see him when I turned from the counter after placing my order.
I had just turned to leave the counter when the bell at the top of the door rang, and so did the wedding bells in my head and heart.
As though no control over my mouth was ever granted to me, i excitedly shouted his name making people turn. I saw the look of recognition on his face and the spark in his eyes when he shouted “Eilish!” back. Earning more stares from older people.
The first person aside from my parents and sister to get my name correct. Nobody ever did, they preferred to call me Alice.
We talked a lot, caught up and tried to make up for the lost years in a coffee shop on a warm evening as my already cold milk tried growing colder. I also got to learn that his parents had moved back to their old house, a relief. At least those were not new people.
So I let him go as I drank my cold milk thinking about how handsome he'd grown. How tall, how deep his voice got and how the wind caught his curly hair. How his sense of fashion was like a page from in-flight magazines.
I sat at alone in the corner booth when he left. My heart melting like the cookies I was eating, thinking about how my prince charming came back to me.
What I did not expect, was for him to be in my class Monday morning. That was not the big surprise, him being told to sit with me was surprising too.
However, none of those were as shocking as how he acted after class like he had never seen me a day in his life or anyone in the whole town for that matter. How he acted like it was his first time here. How he was now the popular boy and ditched me.
The worst part of it all, was when he started dating my sister Alice.
Remember Eilish, when the teacher told him to sit with you after he introduced himself as the new student? We were sixteen, right? Alice asks taking a spoon full of her food. Food I had poisoned.
That's when I stepped back, but my feelings did not.
