"Jeremy, are you coming?" A rather short teenager, clad in a worn red hoodie covered in patches in a variety of colors and details, is standing in the back courtyard of his high school. His face has a deep look of concern, and his right hand is resting gently on the shoulder of another teenager standing next to him.
This other teenager, Jeremy, is standing by his side with a somewhat out of place look of determination on his face. He's staring off into space, something which Michael has noticed him doing more and more often in the past weeks. His expression, changes making it look as if he's trying to listen to someone or something, despite the two being pretty much alone in the courtyard. Much to Michael's shock, Jeremy shoves the other's hand off of his shoulder. "Optic Nerve Blocking… on!" Jeremy's eyes dilate for a moment, seeming to flash a bright shade of electric blue. Shocked by both the action and Jeremy's sudden change in eye color, Michael stumbles a few steps backwards.
"What does that even mean? Jeremy? Jeremy!" He waves a hand in front of his friend's face, trying to snap him out of whatever daze he's in. The taller teen doesn't notice, or if he does, he doesn't make any indication that he so much as realizes Michael is next to him. The shorter teen snaps his fingers, but Jeremy continues staring into the distance.
A short girl with bouncy blonde hair calls out to Jeremy from the foot of a large willow tree about a dozen meters away. "Come on, Jeremy! If you want, we can listen to Eminem back at my place. My older brother has one of his earlier albums, I think." She holds out a hand, beckoning for the taller of the two to grab it. Her eyes seem to shimmer in the early-afternoon sunlight, and after a moment she shakes her hand a bit, as if telling the teen to hurry up.
The taller teen breaks out into a grin. "Yeah, that sounds great. I don't have any other plans tonight, anyways."
"Jer- Jeremy?" Michael fruitlessly attempts to get his friend's attention one last time. The latter doesn't so much as give Michael a sideways glance. With an air of absolute confidence the teen strolls forwards, shamelessly shoulder-checking the shorter teen in the process. Not at all prepared for his best-friend-of-twelve-years to treat him with such sudden disdain, Michael nearly trips over himself, barely managing to catch his balance at the last second.
Jeremy strides over to Brooke, confidently clasping her hand into his own and walking with her off to who-knows-where. Without missing a beat, Brooke turns her head towards him and begins chatting about Eminem or older brothers or some other bullshit topic Michael can't bring himself to eavesdrop in on.
Michael stands still, almost unable to believe that any of the last five minutes just happened. This all has to be some sort of nightmare, right? Sure, it isn't often that Michael is able to remember dreams of any kind- especially since he started smoking weed- but it's still possible. Since he doesn't carry an Inception-style totem around with him everywhere, he decides to check his phone, just to be sure. Electronics aren't supposed to work in dreams, right? That, and written words always change each time you look at them in a dream, supposedly. He heard it in a documentary, once.
Michael pulls out his iPhone 5S and, almost reluctantly, presses the home button. The screen lights up, an image of Jeremy and Michael smiling and eating cotton candy at the last county fair brazenly displayed across the screen. No new notifications. 2:31 PM. October 2nd, 2015. Just as he thought it would be. He presses the power button to turn off the screen, then tries again. 2:31 PM. October 2nd, 2015. Nothing changes. This is all happening. Everything is really happening in real life. This is all real.
The weight of this hits Michael like a truck.
He frantically clicks his phone on and off a few more times. 2:31 PM. October 2nd, 2015. No new notifications. 2:31 PM. October 2nd, 2015. No new notifications. 2:32 PM. October 2nd, 2015. No new notifications. Oh, God. He tries pinching himself, just to be sure this is all really happening. It hurts. Oh, God.
The teen takes a step towards the direction Jeremy left from. No, wait, he shouldn't. Jeremy doesn't want to see him. Jeremy is probably busy making out with Brooke in the back of her mother's car. Jeremy doesn't want to be friends with him anymore.
With each passing second causing Michael to feel more and more like his veins are full of lead, he decides to sit down under the willow tree. His lungs burn with each breath he takes, and he can feel tears prickling the corners of his eyes. In an attempt to hide his face, the teen brings his knees to his chest and rests his face on top. His glasses press awkwardly against his knees, so he takes them off and tosses them to the side without thinking to care where they land.
As much as he tries, he can't completely stifle the sound of his whimpering and sniffling. Michael raises his head a bit, to make sure nobody is around to hear him cry. Between his tears and the loss of his glasses, everything looks like a mass of color and light. If somebody is within range to see him, he isn't able to tell.
After a few more minutes, with tears streaming down his face and each inhale more of a gasp than a breath, Michael slowly tries to stand up. His head is pounding, and his stomach is ever so slightly upset, but he manages to get to his feet. With a shaky hand, he wipes the tears off of his face, and then wipes his hand onto his worn blue jeans. He considers driving home, but he isn't sure that he's in any state to get behind the wheel. If he starts crying again while on the road, nothing good could come of it. He sits back down, leaning against the bark of the willow tree's trunk.
It's all bullshit, really. Michael didn't even do anything to make Jeremy lose interest in him. What could he have possibly done wrong? All he had done over the past few days had been exactly the same as the last few years. Video games, old music, weed, school… not much deviation, if any at all. Was it not enough for Jeremy? Is he bored of Michael? Is it Michael's fault that Jeremy is acting this way, since he never intervened? Did his feelings for Jeremy have anything to do with this, despite him not knowing about it? What could the Squip possibly be doing to Jeremy's brain to make him act this way?
Why is Michael fading away into the dark?
As the teen tries to make sense of it all, he can't help but feel a slight sense of anger burn in his chest. The more he thinks about the past week's events, the more this anger grows until he feels entirely consumed by it. He decides to go over the facts, to himself.
Jeremy had taken the Squip in order to become more popular with Christine.
The following days, Jeremy stopped greeting Michael in the hallways at school.
This also led to Jeremy ignoring Michael's attempts to talk to him.
And his texts.
And his occasional phone calls.
Until Jeremy stopped interacting with him entirely.
Now, Jeremy only talks to the 'popular' kids, and Christine.
And now, he's dating Brooke, apparently.
Jeremy is acting like he never knew Michael.
And Michael did absolutely nothing to bring this on.
Everything is so unfair.
After everything Jeremy and Michael had gone through together, it had all been thrown away in a matter of seconds. All of the video games they beat together, the 3 AM conversations they had about school and parents and life in general, the sleepovers they had on warm summer nights, the times they had acted as each other's shoulder to cry on during the divorce of Jeremy's parents or when life had just become too much for Michael to handle, all of it had become obsolete. All of the time they spent helping each other across the jungle gym in elementary school, or the times Michael had helped Jeremy escape from Rich's wrath, or the times they narrowly avoided being found smoking in Michael's basement… what was the fucking point? They had known each other for as long as Michael could remember, and Jeremy trashed it for the chance to get with a girl who barely even knows he exists. It's as if Michael never even meant anything to Jeremy, in the first place. Like their friendship was nothing more than a way to pass time.
Twelve years. Down the drain.
Twelve. Years.
Jeremy can burn, for all he cares.