Past Tense

Chapter 1

coleoptera
beetle

NO ONE HAS ever told me that I was a nice person. That would probably be his first argument. His second being that I completely ruined his life.

Though I thought that was a bit of a stretch. The Matty I knew was all squinting to see the whiteboard through thick rimmed glasses and cheeks red in embarrassment after saying something aloud to the class.

He was all small and young and wide-eyed searching for bugs under the rocks in our third-grade garden. And we'd make fun of him for catching beetles and crying when they'd die in his hands. Or placing marbles under his desk so that they'd fall and make a small click on the tiled floors, him walking across the classroom to pick them up, cheeks red from everybody staring, and snickering, and trying hard not to laugh.

I remembered when I first asked him to do my math homework. Promising that long divisions and fractions would save him from the teasing. But we still made fun of him anyway.

That was the Matty I knew.

But that was so long ago, the geography quizzes and chalk-dust stains lingering on bare feet. Mean girls running away from immature boys and screaming until their lungs hurt. Or until they couldn't breathe anymore. And I remembered trading bubblegum for stickers and licking grape juice off my hands and seeing, now seeing—

Are you being good?

It comes in pieces, all the shapes blending and leaves falling and patterns dancing across the sky. I search his face, tracing the shape of his eyes, the slope of his nose, all my faded memories coming apart and back together again. It's you.

It was just hearing his voice, so much lower and clearer compared to all those years ago. And it was just seeing his body in front of mine, broader and taller than his childhood frame.

And his eyes were so green when they weren't covered by his glasses. His fingers so long without the insects crawling through them, or fumbling to chase marbles across tiled floors.

There were so many things I could've said instead of just staring at him. It was just so hard not to notice how different he looked, and hard not to count all the years that passed by in my head. I was never good at math, and I was never really good at apologizing either.

You're alive, I wanted to say. You're alive and real and Matthew Connell, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what I did to you. All those years ago.

But I didn't get the chance to say anything. He had just looked at me, as if he already knew, somehow, that we were distanced by much more than the time that had passed between us.

He had only said three words before walking away.

I hate you.