SOPHIE
I hoped,prayed even, that with a good night’s sleep, my head wouldn’t be trying to split open, but even the pills that usually helped were useless today. It was as if the universe was out to get me. After that horrendous Saturday when I saw Noah and Jared, Sunday turned out to be even worse, with me avoiding my entire family since everyone was in a foul mood, and spending it in my bed because my head decided to burst from the inside out.
At least that was what it felt like.
So here I was, on a Monday morning, my eyes trained on the clock showing six-thirty in the morning, and I just didn’t want to get up. The two blankets covering me did nothing to warm me up, and I knew that this kind of cold wasn’t coming from the lack of heating—our house always felt like a furnace during the winter. This kind of cold was coming from the inside, and if I could wrap my heart and my soul in a blanket, I would. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel as if the ice was slowly taking over my body.
I slowly pulled myself up into a seated position and turned off the blaring alarm that kept going and going on my phone. I looked at the window where the soft morning glow was just starting to trickle into the room.
I’d spent countless nights sitting in that window, talking to Noah. His window was just on the opposite side, and like a fool, I forgot to close my curtains last night. Now I knew that the first thing I’d see when I got up to look out would be him.
I knew him like the back of my own hand and judging by the time showing on the screen of my phone, he probably just came back from his morning run. I used to go on those with him—he’d be training for the next game and keeping in shape, and I’d be preparing my body for upcoming competitions.
It wasn’t too long ago when we ran together for the last time, but these days, it felt as if it was years since the last time we shared space together. Since we last talked, laughed, hung out… Funny how these things work. You never know when the last time that the person you loved more than most other people in your life would become a stranger.
For an entire month after our fallout, I’d been wondering what it was that I did that made him so angry that night. I wondered if it was me or just him, and then I realized that no matter how much I break my head over these things, nothing would change.
In a few months, he would probably go to some college far away from here, no doubt getting a hockey scholarship, and I would never see him again. I just had to survive these next couple of months and that would be it.
Slowly, I stood up, pulling all the blankets with me, and walked toward the adjacent bathroom, flipping the light on as I came to the door. I preferred to walk around in the dark for as long as possible. I wasn’t a morning person, and if I could spend at least a couple more minutes pretending I was still asleep, I would. The light from the bathroom illuminated my room, and as I walked in, I dropped the blankets on the floor, staring at myself in the mirror above the sink.
The dark circles around my eyes seemed better today, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stand on my own by the end of the day if the pills I usually took in the morning did nothing but cause more nausea. I wanted to go through at least one day where I didn’t have to worry that this thing I had to live with now wouldn’t cause more pain.
The last thing I wanted today was to have to call Andrew or my parents to pick me up. I still didn’t say a word to anyone at school and I begged my brother, my mom and dad to keep all this on the down-low. I still wanted to skate, and if I couldn’t do it for much longer, at least I wanted to finish the last two competitions coming up.
This shit that was happening wouldn’t be the end of me. I could still do things I loved. I could still live my life.
Taking a shower while freezing wasn’t the nicest experience, but I knew I had to wash my hair and the remnants of the last two days from my skin. It was a new week, and I’d be damned if I started it on a shitty note.
Some days I went through motions—thanks to muscle memory and the years of doing the same every single day—but I was thankful that today was one of the days where my mind wasn’t trying to disassociate from life. Even with the throbbing pain in my head, I still managed to go through everything in half an hour. Once I dressed up in the warmest clothes I could find, I pushed three notebooks into my backpack and started zipping it up, standing right in front of the window.
When I first met Noah, it felt as if this weird kind of electricity pulled me to him. Since that first day when we were in kindergarten, while he still lived on the other side of the town, I always knew where to find him.
And now, as I stood there, holding the backpack to my body as if it could save me from his inquiring eyes, I kept my eyes on the floor, looking at the small scratch on my Doc Martens boots, avoiding looking up.
But I was always a little masochist when it came to him, and I had to see him. I had to see if this separation hurt him as much as it hurt me.
I inhaled deeply, as if bracing myself for an impact, and looked up, a thousand emotions crashing into me when I saw him standing there, in front of his own window, shirtless, and looking at me.
Time stood still and nothing else existed but him and me. My heart violently beat against my ribs, bruising me, reminding me what he did, but nothing could deter me from looking at him. At that dark hair, those blue eyes, and those arms that always felt like home until he decided that he didn’t want me anymore.
I always knew he looked at me as a sister and nothing more, but never would I have thought that he would so easily throw me away and forget everything we went through together.
My lower lip trembled as I remembered the first time I held him while he cried. His parents were going through a divorce, and for two nine-year-olds that felt like the end of the world.
If I remembered all these things, how was it possible that he forgot? How was it possible that all those promises we whispered to each other underneath the dark skies when the stars shone on us meant nothing to him?
I nodded at him without a smile, without a wave, and turned around, leaving him standing there like he always did. Sometimes I think that how I used to see him was just a figment of my imagination, because that version of him was the one I wanted to see.
Sometimes when you love somebody, you decide to turn a blind eye to all those bad attributes they had, because the good ones were the only ones you cared about.
I guess that I never really knew him at all.
Shaking my head as I exited my room, I went downstairs, only to find Andrew and my mom sitting at the counter, slowly drinking their coffees in silence. Both of them turned and looked at me as I entered the room, their faces betraying their emotions.
“Morning,” I mumbled as I walked toward my mom, hugging her from behind. She smelled like cinnamon and apples, so soft and always accepting and supportive of everything Andrew and I wanted to do. I still remembered the first time I told her I wanted to do figure skating. Even though she feared for my life, she took me to the rink and it was love at first sight.
“You guys already ate?” I asked as I went to Andrew, hugging him as well. “What are those faces for?” The two of them were uncharacteristically quiet, staring at me as if I grew another head. “Is there something on me?” I looked down, trying to gauge if the sweater I put on in the room had a hole or a stain somewhere, but there was nothing. “Come on, guys. You’re freaking me out.”
