They were sitting under the trees. The sunlight was peeking through the leaves and glinting off her golden hair. She was rambling on and on about how cool it would be where everyone was the same age, and ready to learn and you got to live by yourself. She said she couldn't wait for it.
"Me too," he replied. She assumed that his reasons were the same as hers. She said that her parents were excited for her to go to Univeristy, they were proud. He said nothing. She said she couldn't wait to buy books and go live at a school and learn and meet to people.
"I can't wait to get out of here," he said. She asked him won't he miss his family, and he said nothing.
"Will they miss me?" he asked. She told him of course, but he had already answered the question himself. "I can't wait to get away from all of this… sameness," he said lamely. "I can't wait to get away from the shadows." He hadn't meant to say it out loud. He hadn't meant to share his analogy about the shadows with her. She furrowed her brow and took a sudden interest in her hands. He didn't want to explain to her how he no longer wanted to be masked by his parents' shouting, by his best friend's beauty, by the assumptions people made about him. He no longer wanted people to see only the labels that all the shadows had put on him. He wanted someone to squint, to peer through the delicate darkness until it shattered. Why, even now she was sitting in a small patch on sun that the trees provided while he sat next to her in the shade. He desperately wanted to sit next to her in the light, but he didn't budge. He thought she wouldn't understand this sudden shift in seating.
After many years of waiting, he found that University was very much filled with shadows too. He was pushed around, seen though the darkness but never retrieved. He still lived under her shadow, even though he now rarely saw her. One day many years later, after they both had migrated to new friend groups, she asked him why he hung out with them.
"I could ask you the same thing," he retaliated. She rolled her eyes and told him they're not good people and that he deserved better.
"I, again, could tell you the same thing." She sighed. "They understand me," he lied. She nodded and the conversation was over.
He eventually lost her friendship and left the school in his acquaintance-ship with them. It was almost like friendship. He wasn't under their shadows, yet he was still trapped under the veil of his own. After he lost her as a friend, he realized that there was a simple choice he had to make: being in the light, or having friends. There was no way that he could conceive where anyone could have both. He never admitted to himself that these friendships weren't real, he was still hidden behind the labels.
When he was an old man, on his deathbed, no one came to see him. He was left to wallow in the shadows cast for him until he died. Then someone was finally let into the shadows with him.
"Hello," he solemnly greeted himself.
"I believe I am the first person to have ever been here," he said looking around. "It's not very well decorated," he joked.
"Well, I've been here for years."
"Yes, alone."
"No one has ever found me."
"It's not like they haven't tried."
As the man closed his eyes for the final time, something amazing happened. The shadows finally retreated.