It's All Your Fault

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"This is your fault," he says, staring at me with cold eyes, his jaw tight. I've never in my whole life felt so small. I feel my heart sink straight down in my chest. The way it does when something truly terrible has happened. I only lift my leg enough to finish the step forwards Daniel I was about to take, but instead of striding forward on the grass that was lined with the white lines of football and soccer, I place my right foot next to my left rather than taking another stride forward.

My eyes drop straight down to the green of the grass and at the base of his graduation robe. He holds his cap in his hand, his anger bubbling over like I've never seen it before. Daniel takes another step towards me and I drop my graze down to my own short, black dress I'm wearing and my legs, which I tried so hard to let the scars and scabs on my knees and shoulders to heal so I could wear my dress without painting my arms and legs on with make-up.

"It's your fault I didn't graduate valedictorian," He says, his voice doesn't quaver in the slightest. It's steady, and deadly. It's deeper than I had ever heard it. It's terrifying. I glance behind me to Marie, who was just behind me, but has since frozen in her tracks. A few feet to the right of her, my dad talks with my best friend, who I consider to be my brother and we've since adopted him into our family, and my dad had become his dad to replace the cruel, distant, and cold man who contributed the other half of my best friend's chromosomes.

"I cannot believe this, Tanya!" Daniel says, his voice rising with the anger he felt. My chest tightens and my chest is going to burst open its so tight, "I can't believe I let you do this to me! I told you I didn't have enough time to be in a relationship this year! We both agreed we both didn't have time! You said it at the beginning!"

A tear slowly begins to roll down my cheek from my left eye, which I shield from the world using my hair and how its parted to my advantage. But he doesn't stop there, "You pulled me away from my schoolwork! With all your anxiety! Your dumb, fucking anxiety! I've worked for four, brutal, tedious years for this and because you made me stay up talking to you about your anxiety over things that wont ever happen in our relationship! You killed my AP Chemistry final! I got a B in that class because of you, and now because of you, she's up there!" Daniel sneers as he points a girl being swarmed by tons of students and adults. She has blonde-brown hair and blue eyes, and she's smiling. She's absolutely glowing.

If I didn't know that she had been so rude to Daniel when everyone found out he was likely going to graduate valedictorian, I'd probably actually think highly of her. She once offered to drive me to the apple store when I dropped my phone in the toilet at school and my dad was in Thailand. But when she found out that Daniel was number one in the class she was livid. And my best friend, Anthony, asked her why she was so upset, and "Didn't Daniel deserve to be happy?"

The new valedictorian sneered back at Anthony and said, "No. He doesn't. I deserve to be happy!" And that was frankly appalling to me. How could someone who seemed to be so nice be so petty over someone else success? It just didn't make sense to me.

"She's valedictorian because of you. God, Tanya, you're awful! You took this away from me! You know what, I should've known better from the start, I don't think I can handle having such a clingy, needy girlfriend. Especially, since I'm going to college? What are you gonna do without me? Without our night-time phone calls? How are you going to get by, huh? You've become far too reliant on me. Much more so than you implied you would. Your claim to fame was that you were independent. What happened to that, huh? What happened to that?" Daniel raises his voice towards the end, causing a few heads to turn our way in passing, but with the excitement of the graduation ceremony coming to an end, everyone was in their own little worlds, whereas I was trapped in this special kind of hell.

"Tanya, I don't think this is going to work. You're too much work and I have better thing to be doing. You're not gonna survive the whole year with me at college and you finishing up your senior year of high school. So you know what? We may as well call it now," Daniel shakes his head as he moves to turn away from me, and I don't even try to hide the fact that I'm crying. And crying hard.

As he begins walking away, he turns around to say one last thing:

"And it's all your fault."

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