And I did what I had to do. I crushed it.
“Nice shirt,” I said, voice flat and a little too loud. “Did your mom pick that out for you?”
He flinched, just for a second, a tiny hitch in his shoulders, but it was there. I felt it, and it settled in my chest like proof.
I waited for him to snap back. To say something sharp. Something to make me feel like we were still…us. But he just shut his locker, turned, and walked away. He didn’t even glance back at me.
I stood there, staring at the metal door he'd just closed, and something twisted low in my stomach. Guilt, maybe, or some bitter cousin of it. I hated how quiet he was now. How he barely took up space.
He used to talk so much that it gave me a headache. About cartoons and art and what he’d do if he ever got a time machine. Now? He was silence walking on two legs. When I first met Tru, he was the quiet kid, but I brought him out of his shell, made him loud, made him visible. Now, he was back to hiding again, quiet… invisible.
I turned and slammed my fist into the nearest locker. Not his, just the nearest one. Hard enough to rattle it. Someone down the hall yelled, “Chill, dude.”
I didn’t reply. I didn’t even look up.
Because the truth was, he was still in my head.Alwaysin my head. And maybe that’s why I couldn’t let him go. Because if I stopped picking on him, if I stopped watching him, if I stopped sayingsomething—even something cruel—then it was really over. We were really nothing.
And I didn’t think I could live with that.
I wasn’t strong enough to forgive him. But I wasn't cruel enough to forget him, either.
So I kept hurting him. Because at least then, I still existed in his world. Even if it was just as the villain.
I couldn’t sleep. Again.
I stared up at the ceiling, tracing invisible patterns in theplaster, trying to ignore the tick of the clock on my nightstand and the occasional creak of the house settling into itself.
My room was too clean. Too still. Too full of things that didn’t feel like me.
I rolled onto my side and reached for the notebook I kept stashed in the bottom drawer, the one nobody knew about. My dad had tossed it on my bed after my mom left, muttering, “Here. Heard this is as good as therapy or whatever. Write about your feelings. Just… you know. Get it out.”
I flipped it open. Blank pages stared back at me, waiting for a confession.
Lifting the pen, my hand hovered over the page, then lowered again.
I didn’t know how to say what was inside me. My eyes burned as I tried to write something—his name. Just that. JustTruen.
But I couldn’t even finish theT.
Instead, I closed my eyes and let my mind drift.
I’m under the skateboard ramp.
It smells like dirt and plywood.
Tru is beside me, legs crossed, drawing something with a Sharpie on the wood post. His tongue peeks out of the corner of his mouth because he’s concentrating.
He looks over and grins. “Your turn.”
And for one suspended heartbeat, he’s mine again.
No silence.
No shame.
No lies.
Just us.
