Survivor

Chapter 2

It's hard walking in on my last first day of school. I pause at the benches off to the left of the main doors. "He’s not here, remember?" I can feel people staring at me with strange and worried eyes. "What are you looking at?" I keep walking down the hallway and as my hand sways by my side, I feel someone brush past and instinctively try to grab it. "That’s not him, remember?"

I go to sit at the table where we used to sit, but as I approach and set my bag down, everything goes completely silent. They must have been talking about him. Listen to me, I can’t even say his name. I don’t want to. I’ll just call him the Boy. It just hurts too much. I guess I know why they went silent, though. No one wants to hear people talk about their dead boyfriend in front of them. Especially when those people weren’t even there for you after.

I can't do anything but space out while I'm sitting there so I’m just going to go to class early. As students start to shuffle in with first-day-of-school blues, I think about how all of them knew the Boy or at least knew of him. They knew me. Some of them stop by my desk and say how they’re sorry for what happened but they have no idea what they’re sorry for. They don’t know
what I saw. Maybe even some of them blame me for what happened to the Boy. After all, I did go over there to break up with him. I felt like we were drifting and we needed a break, but I still wanted to be friends, and I thought he would agree with me. I thought everything would be alright between us. It wasn’t, obviously.

As much as I thought the Boy and I were drifting, I still loved him. Maybe that was why I wanted to leave. Maybe I was just so scared of something I didn’t know how to control. I never really knew what it was, I just knew that something would always make me feel fluttery around him and it scared the shit out of me. I didn’t know how to feel. I wasn’t in the best stance health-wise, either. I got into drugs and drinking, and he was the one who helped me out of it, so why did I want to leave again?

I can't stand staying in this God forsaken school longer than first period, so I force myself to leave and walk around town. I pass by the little shops and parks the Boy and I used to go to together. He loved just walking around town to spend time with me. I watch the mulberry trees pass beside me and grab a dark berry as I walk along the sidewalk. This entire summer was a dream walking for miles and having innocent, beautiful fun and nothing else had to happen. At least he gave me some happiness before he left this gaping hole in my heart.

I enter the antique shop that happened to sell dresses and jewelry. He bought me two bracelets from here that read “Hope” and “Forever.” He said that when the bracelet string finally breaks, that’s when he will stop having hope and he’ll stop believing in forever. He also gave me a little box to keep them safe from breaking and I tried not to wear them just to make them last. The bracelets finally met my wrist a week before he was gone. They broke the day before.

The bridge to the train tracks is up ahead. He used to yell at me because I would stand on the side rail while the train passed just to feel the rush of the wind and loud roar of the train horn. As I approach the rail, I hear the water rushing below me and I look down. The rocks look ominous as I lean over the rail. "This isn’t right. This isn’t real." I can't understand my own thoughts; it's like they're trying to confuse me. But I know they aren't safe, so it's definitely time to head home for the day.