Two and a half weeks ago

A week went by without seeing her. I walked laps of the park every evening. I practically staked out Bradbury’s, the newsagent’s, but never caught sight of her. On day three I found the courage to step inside and buy a packet of Benson & Hedges and a lighter. I was served by a guy I didn’t recognize, who didn’t question my age, but I stopped myself asking after her. The next day I went in for Fruit Pastilles and asked. He didn’t answer straight away, then he told me she was on holiday. He was a terrible liar. I sat on a concrete block outside the engineering works each day after school, smoking and gagging, but she never showed. My worst fear was confirmed each time dusk fell, that I’d have to spend another night writhing in unanswered questions.

The weekend was the worst of all. I had no clue how she spent her Saturdays and Sundays. Without the ritual of school to distract it, my imagination was free to terrorize me with suggestions of what she was doing. And who she was doing it with.

Sometimes, for an hour or two, I could convince myself the Mackies had been lying. They lied about me all the time, why not about her as well? But logic would soon leave me and I’d be assaulted afresh by what they’d said, unable to shake the fear that it had to be true.

It was only a week and a half since that incredible evening on the school field, but it seemed a distant memory. The things I felt towards her had collapsed in on themselves and turned inside out. Still she occupied my mind night and day – the image of her, or just the saying of her name in my head, retained the ability to break my breath from its rhythm. But the feeling was different. Not hate perhaps, but disappointment for sure. And fury. A fury that fed on itself daily, multiplied like a cancer, until it filled me to the brim.

But, like no fury I’d ever known, it didn’t push me away from her. It sucked me in. Still I practised lines for our next meeting; lines that would accuse her, belittle her, lines that would make her justify her choices.

Lying in bed, eight days after running from the toilets, realization dawned. To turn away from her was to turn away from myself. I’d seen myself differently when I was with her and I’d loved it. Without her, I had just my many critics by which to gauge myself. With her, I knew who I was.

I screwed my restless feet into the sheets. I had to salvage something. Anything.