“Make a wish.” He’d said.
Make a wish. And of course I did. And of course it was the same damn wish I made over and over again. I even threw a coin into a wishing well once (despite my non-belief in such things as wishing wells and leprechauns).
So I closed my eyes tightly, focusing all my attention on the moment and the star and the perfect holiday we’d just had. Please let Mike love me back.
“What was your wish?” he’d asked when I finally opened my eyes.
I blushed just thinking about it. Luckily it was dark. “If I tell you it won’t come true.”
He’d turned to face me. I remember it so clearly because he’d had this strange look on his face and I couldn’t read it.
“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” he’d said, holding eye contact in such a way that it somehow managed to suck all the breath from of my lungs.
“No. I can’t.”
“Okay, then I’ll say it.” He'd paused and for a second and I’d let my imagination run away with me. For a second I imagined Mike telling me that he was in love. Telling me he’d always been in love. My heart rate had quickened until it felt like I needed to call an ambulance because I was about to go into cardiac arrest, or it was about to fly out of my chest.
And then he said it…“It’s about you.”
I thought I was going to pass out. Was it possible to black out from sheer anticipation?
This was it.
The moment I’d been waiting for. And I was so ready for it.
But then… Gong, gong, gong -
“I wished that we could be friends forever.”
A deathly silence had descended as his words had slammed into me. In that painful pause it had felt like my heart had been ripped from my chest and thrown across the beach and into the waves. I imagined it sinking all the way to the bottom of the cold sea where it was doomed to stay forever. Cold and wet and lonely with nothing but some bottom feeding aquatic life to keep it company, and maybe a few sharks. I was in serious danger of having my heart totally and utterly destroyed.
So what the hell had I done? The only thing I could do? I’d smiled at him. It took every bit of energy I could muster. I'd opened my mouth, it had taken so much focus to get my muscles to do what they were supposed to.
“Me too. Me too.” Lie! Lie! Lie!
I hated this memory. Every time I’ve thought about it over the last year I’ve had a physical reaction to it, as if I’m violently allergic, like those kids with peanut allergies. I tried to push it out of my mind when my curtains suddenly moved and opened. And there he was. Climbing through my window as if he owned the place.
And then he said the worst word imaginable. The word the killed me every time he uttered it—which is at least ten times a day.
“Dude. Dude, you won’t believe what just happened.”
Chapter 2 (Mike)
The party was cool, but the people sucked. I think I’ve just gotten to that point in my life where I’m over clichés. They seem to be everywhere I look. There’re the girls trying to attract my attention, with their short skirts, dancing like they should be sliding up and down a pole. (Sometimes I wonder what their fathers would do if they saw them dancing like that.) Not that they aren’t hot, but it’s just so predictable.
Then there’re the girls standing in the corner looking, giggling and posing for selfies until their phones run out of battery power. Every now and then one calls my name and waves at me. I’m not sure if it’s meant as an invitation? Am I supposed to wave back, walk over there or are they just reminding me of their presence? I’ve dated at least two of them over the years, but they all end the same way. Boredom.
On the other side of the room are the one’s dressed in black, looking like they just bit down on a lemon. They all look pissed off. As if being pissed off makes them cool or unique in some way. Along with crappy, morbid poetry and depressing music.
Then there’re the Hipsters. Big, black framed glasses, black skinny jeans and I see that one of the guys is even wearing suspenders - and I’m sure it’s not to keep his pants up. It’s probably just meant as some ironic statement about the nature of pants in our postmodern world. The guys are pale, their hair seems lopsided and the girls are all wearing some vintage button up shirt that was probably hand –sewn and makes then look vaguely Amish. They’re all so against the mainstream, so against conformity and yet they all look the same. Like I said, cliché.
And then there’s me. Total walking cliché. The ultimate cliché. First team tennis star, destined to turn pro. Most likely to be prom king, most likely to date the hottest girl at school. God, sometimes I piss myself off. I was just about to look for Maria, the only non-cliché in the whole of high school, the only girl that doesn’t bother to fit in and doesn’t give a shit about what anyone thinks—she’s badass that way—and tell her it was time to duck. We could be having much more fun playing Grand Theft Auto, when the lights go out…
I’m disoriented for a few moments, and as I’m digging in my pocket for my phone, someone bumps into me. At first I thought someone had tripped and fallen onto me, but then I
