september, nineteenninetynine I push my way through the crowd of students in the hallway, all walking in a big clump. Coughing at the scent of cigarettes leaking through the door of the girl's bathrooms, I find my way to my locker. As I open the creaky metal door, a note flutters out from the top shelf like a butterfly to the linoleum floor. I shake my head as I pick it up, expecting it to be another one of those letters Gwilym keeps sending me, asking if he can copy my homework. Like I can do calculus. But, to my surprise, it's not from Gwilym, it's from Joe... I furrow my eyebrows. Joe Mazzello? The cool and the popular one? The boy who said he loved me and then denied it? Why is he suddenly deciding to talk to me now after two years of completely ignoring me and basically shutting me out of my life? I cautiously open it and am quite disappointed to what I find: it's nothing special, just some words written with blue pen on a piece of notebook paper.
Meet me. Bathroom. From, Joe.
I glance around and see Joe at his locker, staring at me. I walk over to him, still holding the note with both hands in front of me. "What's this for?" I ask him, holding up the note and pointing to it. Joe closes the door to his locker and looks at me. "We need to talk, ok? It's important." "Why?" I ask again, growing more confused by the second. "Why are you suddenly deciding to talk to me now?" He shrugs. "I don't know why I chose now but we need to. It's time we sorted everything out." My heart leaps and then starts pounding out of my chest but I can't show how happy I am because I'm meant to be mad at him for leaving me alone here. "Ok? Well... The sooner the better, I guess." "Let's go now then." He says, grabbing my hand. I snatch it away. "Are you serious? School's about to start and I can't skip. Now I think about it, neither can you." "No, it's fine. I can just say that you were sick so I decided to take you to the nurse's office and then you can say that you felt better so you decided to go to class. See? Super easy." He smirks. "There's no way that I'm lying to my teachers. They hate me enough already." I cross my arms over my chest. "Wowsers. You really have changed, haven't you?" "All I'm saying is it's now or never, my friend." Joe starts to walk away but I grab his arm. "Ok, ok, I'll do it now." I say. "As long as I don't have to pull shit like this ever again." He looks at me and grins. "Race you there." I roll my eyes. "Joe, you can't run in the hall-" But he's already ahead of me. "Oh my Jesus Christ! You are so dead, Mazzello!" Suddenly, it's like the old days. When we used to run around the set of Jurassic Park together, telling dinosaur jokes and doing random shit together. I thought it would never end and after Simon Birch and The Cure, I was convinced. It did though, but now I think that there's hope for our friendship. I try to catch up to him but he beats me and lifts himself up onto the countertop where the sinks are. I push open the door, breathing heavily and smiling. He pats the spot next to him on the counter but I shake my head and lean against the wall. "So... What did you want to talk about?" I ask. Joe scratches the back of his neck. "Well, just what's going on I guess. I just- I wanna know why we drifted apart. I wanna say that I'm sorry for being an asshole and stuff about it and stay all that stuff about you and-" "It's fine, it's fine. All I want to know is why you did it." I say, furrowing my eyebrows. He looks down at his hands. "I don't really know. It's high school, you know? There's a lot of pressure and stuff and I wanted to branch out, make some new friends but I never meant to hurt you. I thought that you'd just brush it off because you're like that and we just go back to being best friends but I left you in the dust and I only realised yesterday that you were by yourself. Then it hit me. I'd lost you." I stare at him. I thought he'd forgotten all about me, accepted that those people were his friends now and he didn't need me. But I was so wrong. "I don't know what to say, I mean, thought that you'd forgotten me, because you had all those new people and you seemed so happy with them. And..." "Indigo, look at me. Look at me, ok?" He says, I look at him, wondering what going to happen next. Will he punch me or something? "I could never, ever forget you. You're my best friend and that will never change no matter what happens." Tears prick my eyes and suddenly I feel like I'm about cry out of pure happiness. He jumps down from the countertop, standing over me. Brown eyes soft. Then the weirdest thing happens, he wraps his arms around me and hugs me. We stay like that for a few moments, going over all the memories from forever ago. Suddenly, the door creaking open jolts us apart. Peeking through the door is Mr Berry, the English teacher. He narrows his eyes, looking down his nose at us. "Why aren't you two in class, huh? Was it so boring that you decided that it would be a good idea to, oh I don't know, go to the bathrooms to smoke cigarettes instead of handing in your essays?" I turn a dark shade of crimson and glance at Joe who looks exactly the same. "Sorry, mister." I mumble. "Sorry mister what?" Mr Berry says expectantly. "Sorry Mr Berry." I say a little louder, accentuating the Berry. He steps out of the door and pokes his head back through. "I'm expecting to see you both in English in thirty seconds and you both have detention after school and I am also expecting to see you there at three o'clock on the dot." Joe looks confused. "But our school doesn't finished until three ten." "I said at three o'clock." Mr Berry says before wandering away from the door. Joe and I wait until we know he's gone and then burst into peels of laughter. Mr Berry has always hated both of us and I just knew that he was looking for an excuse to attack us for nothing but we don't disobey him and decide it's time to get to class. And as we take our seats in English, I see him sitting down on the other side of the room and smirk at me which is when I realise... I love him.
Hopefully this wasn't too bad for you guys. It's kind of new for me to write stuff like this but I think it was alright. Let me know what y'all think. ☁︎eva☁︎
