Once upon a time, there was a boy who loved a girl.
The boy was at first unsure of what the word "love" meant, due to the unfortunate fact that his mother was…well, dead, and his father felt anything but "love" for him. He lived that way for twelve miserable years, until the boy's father received a job offer from an old friend on and island in the tropics and happily accepted. After all, not having to deal with snow for three months out of the year was a plus.
The first person the boy met – really, truly met – was the girl.
She was kind and pretty, told him her name (Annie – simple and clean rolling against his tongue) and shared a candy bar (We can have as many as we want) with him. She took him to his new home, shiny and yellow and pretty and clean, oh so clean, made sure he was settled, and took him around the little town on the tropical island.
After they had eaten dinner with her family (his father did not show up, preferring to get drunk instead), she continued to sit with him on the swings until day became night and her father had to come out and remind them to get to bed.
After that first day, the boy knew that he loved the girl. And the love for her grew more every day.
When they sat together at school and ran around at recess and she would stand up for him if the other kids teased him he knew that he loved her, when he saw the sunlight catch her red hair and turn it gold he knew that he loved her, when she let him stay in her room overnight (on the floor wrapped in spare blankets, of course) he knew that he loved her, even on those rare days when storm clouds crossed her brow and nobody would dare touch her but him he knew that he loved her.
On his birthday she gave him the first (and best) gift he had ever received.
To the others they would be nothing but crude, hand painted dolls, something to fuss over once and then pack away forever. To him, however, they were symbols of care and friendship, of precious time and painful splinters all put into making them, the painted wooden girl and boy. It's us, the girl had mused, that's you and that's me. Now we never have to be away from each other. A pause. Happy birthday, Ben.
Thanks.
You're welcome.
At that moment, he knew that he would always love her. And hoped (prayed?) that she loved him too.
But one day, the boy disappeared.
When the girl first heard of it, she had absolutely refused to believe it. The boy would never run away, never leave like that without telling her. She had known him for the better part of four years, and he would never go away without telling her. But even after running around the camp three times straight – daring to go only as far as the sonic fence would let her – she didn't find him.
Whispers abounded throughout the camp: abduction, defection, poor kid was probably found by that thing out there, but the girl refused to believe any of it. She knew the boy better than them. She knew he would come back.
The boy did come back one day.
After his wounds had healed, after Richard had made sure that it was safe for him to return to his people, after so long away from the girl, he came back.
But the girl wasn't there anymore.
Horace told him the story of the emergency evacuation, how all the women and children had to leave, how the girl had to be dragged by her hair to the submarine because she refused to leave without him.
The boy was heartbroken from that day onwards.
Back on the mainland, the girl was heartbroken too.
She missed her friend, the lost little boy on that island who she had adopted like a puppy and had cared for for so long.
In her dreams at night she would see that boy, hear his voice and sometimes feel the touch of his hand caressing her wrist, nervous eyes behind glasses and a small chuckle of Sorry, but he doesn't mean it and she doesn't accept it.
Sometimes, in her deepest dreams, she sees him sleeping next to her, curled up in her spare blankets, moonlight flitting across his cheek. She hears his breathing, the mutterings of a distant nightmare passing through his lips and subsiding. She turns away from him, ready for the same slumber to embrace her again, and hears it.
I love you, Annie.
The girl always wakes up at this point.
Because it's her nightmare.
She never got to tell him that she loves him too.