Getting There.

getting there.

“I do. You always look pretty. Every time I see you, I think that.”

With this, she bursts into a flood of fresh tears. “Oh God, you’re so nice.”

“Look, I know this isn’t helpful, probably, but if things were different, if I wasn’t leaving, then maybe… maybe things would have turned out another way. I know you don’t think much of yourself, but I think you’re a great person. You’re really sweet and sensitive and talented and you make me laugh, and from my point of view anyway, you light up every room you walk into. Whoever the next person is that gets to be with you is lucky.”

“But it won’t be you.” Her mouth is so down-turned at the edges that she looks almost cartoony. Those looks are one thing I will miss most about her. If I were lucky enough to know her for longer, I think I’d fill a hundred sketchbooks just drawing the expressive shapes of her face.

I simply shake my head, and my arms are outstretched and ready to catch her as she falls into them for another round of sobs. There’s nothing I can do. I learned this a long time ago. Sometimes all you can do is hold someone until they’re ready to be let go again. I’ve spent whole nights holding Ivy like this, and I’ll spend hours with Evie if it’s what she needs.

Into her hair, I murmur an admission I have never made to another person. “Leaving is going to be so horrible. Sometimes I can’t think too much about it. Like, I know I won’t be that far away, but it’s going to change everything. I have amazing friends here that will be so hard to leave behind. And my family, obviously. I have a sister who’s nine. Ivy. She’s in that stage where she’s obsessed with me. She wants to do everything I do… Jesus, it’s going to be rough. I’ve never lived away from home before. I don’t really know how to be a functioning adult who, like, pays electricity bills.”

“It will be hard at first, but then eventually it will be really good,” she sniffles. “You’ll meet all these cool new people and you’ll forget all about everyone here.”

“Is that your way of telling yourself that I’ll forget about you, too?”

“You will.” 

“I won’t. We’ll still be friends. I’m not great at keeping up with people, and I don’t use Facebook that much…”

“So you’re saying we’ll be friends, like, on a symbolic level, but we’ll never actually talk to each other ever again.”

I laugh. “Shut up and let me finish before you start getting cross with me. I’ll email you. Old school, like.”

“Hm. That will be nice, like sending letters.”

“Exactly.”

She squeezes me, and I squeeze her back, gazing down at her face, red nose and smudged makeup, and I still think she’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen in real life. “How are you doing?”

“Very badly.”

“Well, one day, you won’t care about me at all. And maybe when you go to college, in like a few months, a year, or after that, you’ll look back on this and think ‘oh, ew, I can’t believe that when I was seventeen, I liked that lanky guy with the weird accent. That was so embarrassing.’ And you’ll wonder why you ever cried over this at all.”

Her face becomes fierce, like she wants to be serious, but it’s hard not to smile when she sticks her lip out like that. If I was being stupider, I might like to push my thumb into that crease between her eyebrows. “You don’t have a weird accent.” She insists. “Well, okay, you do, but I like it. And there’s nobody on earth that’d be embarrassed to have ever liked you.” 

“Okay, Evie.” I chuckle. “Lets see how you feel in a year.”

“A year?”

“Yeah, one year from now, I’ll email you, like I will every single week, mind, and you’ll roll your eyes and think, ‘oh God, him again?’ I’d be willing to bet on it.”

“You underestimate my feelings.”

She overestimates them, more likely, because we’re young and stupid and that’s just what we do, but it’s fine. She’ll learn, like I did with Michelle and all the girls that came before her, that the things that feel raw and real in the moment, the people you swear you’ll spend your life loving and wanting and missing, you forget them in the end.  

We lapse into silence as the grasshoppers chirp in the long grass. The cleaner comes by to pick some of the rubbish nearby and makes small talk with me about various happenings at the festival. Ignoring Evie, firmly locked in my arms with her damp cheek against my chest.

When he finishes, and the rubbish is gone, and the music in the distance goes silent, it is just us and the insects and the blanket of dew, and the smell of lingering summer in the air. Evie shivers, and I draw back to look into her sad little face.

“Are you cold?”

“No.”

“I think you are.”

She smiles, and her teeth chatter. “If I say so, then you’ll make me go back to the tent.”

“We have to go back eventually, don’t we?” I take the opportunity to stretch out one of my legs, which is cramping. “What time is it?”

“Don’t care.”

“It’s got to be… I don’t know. You can see the sun rising a bit.”

“If we leave, then it’s over,” she whispers.

I murmur, “It’s over, anyway.”

Green eyes skim my face in one last pursuit of a truth they won’t find. And then she sighs with resignation. “You’re leaving.”

“Yeah, I’m going away.”

“It’s just sad.”

“Of course. For me too.” And I’m not sure there’s much left to say. “Come on. Let’s just end this day.”

She doesn’t protest. Climbing to our feet, we make our way back towards the campsite, hand in hand. Though she’s not my girlfriend and never will be, it feels good to pretend while I can.

It’s lights out in our circle, embers smouldering in a campfire that we missed, and someone’s, Joe’s, Kasper’s, snores float from their tent. Evie’s is wet with morning dew as I unzip it for her with the same chivalry as any man opening a door for a lady. She shuffles inside, and the moonlight shows up the goosebumps on her arms and legs. Claire is not inside, her shoes stacked neatly outside Shane’s tent instead.

Evie grabs my wrist before I zip her inside. “Do you want to come and stay with me?” She whispers. “We won’t do anything. I just think it’d be nicer than being alone.”

We will do something. I’ve been a teenage boy for long enough to know the score, and tempting as it is to have one final, movie-magic experience with her to round off the summer, I know it is different for her than it is for me.

I shake my head. “Not a good idea, Evie. Sorry. Goodnight.”

The last thing I see is the dismay on her face before I zip her inside the tent, and head for my own.

There is Jen, cocooned in her sleeping bag. She stirs as I fumble with my clothes.

“You’re back,” her voice cracks with sleep. I ignore her, as the anger I felt for her in the woods resurfaces with a vengeance. My heart thuds with the memory.

“What time is it?” she says, and again, I say nothing. I struggle into bed and turn my back to her.

“Jude?”

“Talk to me in the morning.” I whisper sharply, and I shut my eyes, willing away the heaviness of the day, and all the things I know are still to come. 

Beginning // Prev // Next

Corresponding LG Chapter

rowan michael dupree - rapscallion and general trouble maker also voted most likely to get a visit from the men in black one day...👽

imagine being short

She's literally the softest, sweetest, most precious sim ever.

literally feeling so :o after seeing the roadmap teaser when i've been quietly working on my magic HQ renovation for the last few days