Willow's Tree

8

A week passed–a long torturous, lonely week; all because I didn't have Dog by my side. He never came back. The day he left, I just stood there at the back door and stared at my single willow tree that stood out from the forest of pine. That was where I first met him.

When I finally snapped out of it, the sun had already set and it was as freezing as ever. I recalled what happened and could see, scene by scene, how Dog left. I had treated him as if he was a monster, even though I had already acknowledged what he was since the beginning.

The true monster was me–for allowing him to leave without a word. Of course it would be reasonable that he thought I wouldn't want him by my side any longer.

My friends came over like usual during the time he disappeared and they asked about Dog each and every time. I told them that he went back into the forest and they weren't surprised the first time they came over. But when they noticed that he hadn't come back during the week, they began to worry. They noticed how attached Dog and I were to each other and never imaged that he would actually stay away from my house for long.

We've been friends long enough for them to notice that something was wrong with me. To others, I probably seemed the same, but I couldn't fool them. They thought I was simply lonelier since Dog was gone, but it was much, much more complicated than that.

At school, I behaved the same as well, but others' behaviors were different towards me. Drew actually came and talked to me the day after Dog had left me and continued each day from then on to try and start up conversation with me. His clique of friends would all give me looks, whether it were glares of disgust or gazes of disappointment. I couldn't understand why they were looking at me like that, but most of the time I didn't care and tried not to notice.

No one else really noticed Drew and his group's attention on me since Trey Crawford and a girl named Helen were the main gossip of Harbor Valley. But the rumors were dying down since practically everyone saw the two so frequently that they had gotten used to it.

What were the rumors? Trey had completely changed. I thought he was the type who mostly kept to himself, but every time I saw him now these days, he was with a girl–singular–in the hallways. Most of the time, they would be making out, but other times, they were just glued to each other's sides.

The girl belonged to the same group as Trey and Drew, but she was the shy type. She easily blushed whenever she was with Trey and she was also a generally quiet girl. Her name was Helen and no one would've expected the two of them to be an item at school. She always flushed pink all over when she and Trey made out.

I noticed that she wasn't ashamed of the daily lip locking. In fact, she loved that fact that Trey's attention was on her. I could tell that she was generally happy to be by his side. It was strange since I hadn't realized that the two were so close in the first place. Or maybe they had just recently hooked up.

Even Drew was shocked when he saw the two together. He broke apart their make out session one time to question them with wide eyes. I had overheard their conversation as I was passing by them in the hallway, but I made sure to never look directly at them. After all, Dog occupied my mind more than the strange behavior of Drew and Trey.

"It doesn't make any sense." Isaac said as we were working on our papers again in English. "Was Trey staring at you just a coincidence or something?"

"Maybe he lost interest." Rebecca joined in. "But that would've been too quick from his switch of Willow to Helen. And they're total opposites too!"

I didn't pay attention to their conversation any further as I continued to think about Dog. No matter how many times I had called out to him through my mind, he never answered. I wasn't even sure if I was connecting to him correctly in the first place, but that didn't stop me from continuing to try.