Swooped | ✓

Chapter 34: When Doves Cry

I dreamed about things I hadn't dreamed about in a while, like my string of exes that I said I didn't care about. They had been nothing, nothing at all. A bit of fun, at least, that's what I told myself.

But they hadn't been nothing, at least, not at first.

They had all been something, until they weren't.

The dreams started with Abby, because maybe that's where this whole thing started. The emptiness. Abby was a pretty girl with a cute gap between her front teeth and big blue eyes. We were only nine, but back then we thought we were grown ups. We were boyfriend and girlfriend, and we kissed once or twice, and that meant that we were going to be together forever, right? We had carved our names in a tree in her backyard, but two weeks later it had been cut down. Abby broke up with me when she moved house, and that's when I realised that, even if you loved them, people would leave.

That was alright, though. When I turned ten, I realised that nine was still young. Ten, double digits, I was a grown boy now, and had a grown up girlfriend. Lauren was 11, and her younger brother was in my year. I met her when I went to his house for a birthday party. We were both bored, and had snuck off with a plate of chips and fairy bread and became boyfriend and girlfriend. We lasted longer than I did with Abby, but then Lauren changed. She turned 12, and said I was too childish to hang out with now. I was turning 11 in a week, though, and I cried and cried and begged her not break up with me. 

She did, anyway. She didn't like how I cried.

But then I turned 13, and I realised that when I was with Abby and Lauren, I was still a kid. We were kids, it didn't mean anything.

Then, I met Milo. This was the best part of the dream, the only part that didn't fall to shit at my feet. In my dreams, Milo was always smiling. He fed me his lunch, let me lie my head on his lap while he read and I napped, and in my dreams he held my hand and everything would feel okay.

But the dream would always morph into something else. I would be lying on his lap, looking up at his tranquil face, and would close my eyes for one second. Just one second, and when I opened them up again, he was gone and I was looking up at Stella instead.

Stella was pretty, and she was perfect, at first. Her face was a mask with a pretty painted smile, and her laugh was like bells that covered up the lies. I thought that Stella and I were good, that she was only smiling at me, and that she was only kissing me. I gave my virginity to her, because for the first time in a long time, I really thought we would last. In my dreams, I would get up from her lap, and she would smile at me before getting up. I would move to follow her, but the roots of the tree we were sitting under would grow over my arms and legs, binding me in place.

I'd cry and scream as I tore at the branches that would turn into chains as Stella walked away. Far, far away, leaving me behind. I would see her walk to someone, someone with dark hair and dark eyes, and I would scream. The tree would then swallow me up whole, leaves clogging up my lungs and weeds growing in my stomach.

But then I would fall. Fall and fall, the leaves and weeds breaking away, until I was floating in a pool of water suspended in nothing. Alex would wade up to me, pretty Alex, who was the person who made me think that boys were pretty, too. Alex, who was too pretty, and that had made me angry. Something would grab my foot in the water, dragging me underneath. Alex would follow me down, but he wouldn't drown like me. No, he would swim with other people, love other people who also thought he was pretty, and I would scream. The water would turn red with my rage, rage that didn't feel like me at all.

Alex would swim over to me with the hands of other people all over him, and smile that too-pretty smile that I hated. 

"Crazy, clingy, crazy, clingy," Alex would chant, making me shake my head, the water flooding down my throat.