The Sadness Feels Heavier Underwater

WAKE ME UP WHEN SEPTEMBER ENDS - ollie

Denver is looking at me. I think he can tell something's up. I dunno. Maybe. Just the way his eyes flicker when they meet mine. 

I switch the playlist we're listening to and put it on shuffle. Denver's music kinda gets to me sometimes. The first song that comes on is by Keshi...I'm pretty sure its called Magnolia, or something like that I think.

Even though I've turned away now, I can still feel him watching me. I try instead to focus on Skeggs poster Denny got me last year. I doesn't help much. I want to turn around, but I'm so glued to my position that moving would feel unearthly. I can hear him breathing behind me.

I lie still and imagine his chest rising and falling under his old black t-shirt from when we went to The Falls Festival together. I can see his sparkling, bottomless blue eyes burning holes through my skull. I can see his messy dark hair, hacked off unevenly above his ears. I can see the minute pale freckles scattered over his face, and I realise just how well I really know that face. I feel almost like I'm cheating on him, keeping things from him when we're meant to tell each other everything.

I realise how I subconsciously turn my body to look at him. He looks me right in the eyes.

"Ollie," He speaks carefully and precisely, like how a kid tries to sound when they're telling their parents they failed a class. I don't say anything. I know I want to, but I'm scared out of my wits. I know I can't tell him. As soon as I tell just ONE person, my sister will find out. And then my dad. And if my dad found out...well. I don't really want to go there. 

Silence pierces through my eardrums. I don't know what to do. Sometimes I think that silence is the loudest sound of them all. It caves in on you; it caves in on you with this sort of coal black smoke; it chokes you.