Paper Hearts (Phan)

3 days

5 hours until March 19th, Dan burst into my empty dorm room with the only helmets he owned in his hands and the keys to the electric scooter dangling between his fingers. There were tears welling up in his eyes, his bottom lip quivering a mile a minute and I knew something was wrong. Definitely wrong, awfully wrong.

And I thought, maybe this is the gut feeling you've had that somethings wrong, because it sure as hell had gotten worse each time I saw him. No matter how hard I tried to ignore it, it always bounced back like a squishy ball.

"I need you to just drive, Philly. Please?"

"Where?" I asked and sat up off the couch, taking the helmet with the least damage and following him down the stairs as quickly as we could go. I'd teamed to not question most things anymore.

"Uh... Forest?" He said carefully when we reached the first landing area, like I would reject his answer, and swiped his sleeve across the bridge of his nose.

"Y'know I'd take you to the ends of the earth if you asked?"

"You seem like the type that would."

I wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean, but I took it as a compliment.

I lifted him on my back and carried him down the final flight of stairs, slowly dropping him to the ground as soon as the front door swished shut behind us.

We hopped the gate and waved to the security guard quickly before sprinting through the parking lot to his little scooter, thankfully leaving campus without anyone recognizing us and calling up Joe to give us a months' worth of detention or something terrible like that.

The streets heading towards the forest were nearly completely silent; spare a couple cars that were parked to the side of the road. But other than that the only sounds over the unsettling and uneven purr of the engine was the crickets and animals howling to the moon off in the distance.

It would've been serene and calming if I wasn't worried that Dan could be having a mental breakdown as I drove along the edge of the cliff we'd passed by so many times.

We sped by a little blue car with the lights still on and two people chilling out on the roof, a red one parked at an awkward angle, even an orange one that had all the doors swung wide open but nobody around, and I hoped to whatever God listening that we didn't get murdered. I've got a test tomorrow, I can't get murdered.

Although that would mean I wouldn't have to take it. So if I got murdered tonight, you most definitely wouldn't hear me complaining. I wouldn't be embracing it, but you wouldn't see me trying to run away.

We stopped at the ledge we always stopped at, the one where he screamed into the trees and pointed out the constellations to me more times than I can count. And he stood at the ledge, held on to the railing, and leaned over as far as he could without falling. His eyes scanned for the bottom, obscured under all the trees and up to the endless night sky.

I watched him trace his line of sight across the road with his finger and then glance over the canyon and tree tops like he was expecting something, anything, to pop out and relay the answers to the universe.

Dan let his hands fall to his side and he dropped with his feet resting on each other out far in front of him in the dirt, head tilted up towards the sky. And he took in a deep breath, rested his hands on the ground behind him, and yelled up.

"IS ANYBODY OUT THERE?"

The words echoed along the mountains, lingering in the air and drifted through the wind like smoke from a wildfire. But he was the wildfire because he'd sparked again.

Sparked all on his own in the middle of a forest.

Sparked and nearly set fire to everything around himself, but kept it contained to only him for everyone else's safety.

And he turned around to face me, standing up and walking over towards me and collapsed into my arms, hugging me like I was a pillow and yelling hopelessly into my chest. He pushed away and wiped his nose with his sleeve and took a few apprehensive steps back, like he was terrified that he was going to hurt me.

"Fuck," he sighed heavily "I'm sorry" and he turned to me tentatively and looked genuinely sorry for merely existing, even though he hadn't done anything wrong.

"Why?"

"I messed up." Dan coughed and sat back down on the ground, further away from the cliff side and railing this time. "I really messed up."

And he just stared out to the tops of the trees and listened to a single wolf crying out with no answers, the crickets stopping their chirps and the wind slowing down to nearly nothing.

And time seemed frozen. Frozen solid while we were standing on the cliff together waiting for something to happen that never would, and I thought, either midterms are especially awful this year or it's something else messing with his head.

So I set down my helmet on the scooter and took a seat next to him, wrapping my arm around his shoulder and resting my chin on the top of his head as I pulled him close and he relaxed into me.

I didn't care that my £1 Tesco flip flops had snagged on a rock and poked a giant hole through one sole (although I probably should've because I think my foot just got stuck in some mud), or that my old PE gym shorts were probably collecting dirt through the tiny holes I wouldn't be able to remove no matter how many washing machine trips it took.

I didn't get up and take him home like I probably should've done, because it was a stupid idea to be out alone in a forest at 10pm in the evening on a Sunday night, let alone be sitting on a cliff in the middle of a forest. I'm pretty sure the people that were in the orange car with their lights still on had just gotten murdered too, so we'd be dead if that was the case.

I wouldn't mind though. At least I'd die happy.

Stop, I told myself, everything is fine. And in all honesty, it was perfectly fine. So we watched the stars.