zentropy | mileven.

²²⁾ middle of my mind

[JANE POV.]

❝ hello to you, did you ever know that you were in the middle of my mind, hello to you, I could never figure out why you were so hard to find ! ❞

━ CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

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IT'S THE weirdest feeling to be sitting in a place where you once sat a long time ago with somebody else, but this time, everything has changed.

seeing the exact same visuals surrounding you, the same trees planted where they've always been and the exact same bricks slabbed upon brick piled up beside you. the same bike residing in the same place, your body in the same exact bench where he once took up that hollow space next to you on it. it's like you're in a dream—it's surreal, almost.

everything can look the same, but nothing ever feels the same.

the air isn't as fresh as it once was, the sun doesn't feel as radiantly pure and cleansing as it did on that very day, and the world feels as if you've entered a different dimension in which you're back in that same exact colossal moment, except the circumstances have been altered by the fingertips of god, where he has been picked up from beside you and placed in the dimension that you will never be able to reach. ever.

that was the moment that changed everything. that day changed everything.
if I hadn't spontaneously decided to bike to the gas station for a pack of mints, only to run into the one person who had been nice to me all those lonely years, maybe I would be happier now. maybe I would have a boyfriend, different friends, or perhaps no friends at all. if I hadn't chose to bring that one dime with me for a pack of mints. if I hadn't grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the store. if we hadn't sat on this very bench. if he hadn't asked me if he'd earned my friendship. if I hadn't said those two words at the end of the day that had held us in its arms by definition for so long—
maybe it would've all been different.

it's been a couple months since the last time we spoke. the night that I thought was the happiest one of my life, that quickly turned out to be the worst. but then again, that's always how things end up with mike wheeler.

now, it's summer. the summer before senior year, the last year of high school, the last year where I'll see him everyday roaming the halls with max, or with his new group of delinquent friends like troy or james. the last year we have to be kids, to be free, to maybe have one last shot at finally being what we've both known we were always supposed to be—

no. get that out of your head.

this summer was not going to be like the other ones. it wasn't going to be how it always is: me missing mike and wondering what I did wrong to lose him again. me trying to fill up my time with endless tasks and friends who just couldn't put the pieces of me back into place like he always could. me wishing that any day now, he would just come back to me, arms open wide, never leaving again.

no, it wasn't going to be like that. because this time, I had finally had enough. he had finally taken all I had left to hold onto, and snipped it clean off of me without a care in the world. I finally had come to the bare stark realization that the only person I needed to feel like the ground below me had solidified, and my heart was no longer a rock beaten into my chest...was myself.

this was going to be the summer where I finally would move on for good.

yet, as I look around me, the world falls dull, and I can't quite help but feel like my efforts are for nothing.
how do you get over someone, after all that time, all that effort, all the thoughts and feelings and emotions you have—how can that just disappear? how do you really get over someone, anyway? others made it appear so simple, as if one day you'd wake up, and everything you once felt receded into nonexistence, the same way a star once blinds with light and then explodes into oblivion. I knew all too well how utterly spurious that was.