Just a one-shot I came up with. The darker side to Clare missing Eli. It was not supposed to come out like this AT ALL, but somethings writing just takes over you, you know?
Disclaimer: I do not own Degrassi. If I did, Imogen would get hit by a car and Jake would never wear his shirt ;)
It seems hypocritical of me to be angry at Eli. Yet here I am, looking at looking at an old picture I took of him lying on the hood of his hearse, and wanting nothing more than to punch that smug look off his face. Because even though I may be the dumper, the heart-breaker, the life-ruiner, I want nothing more than to have my desperate ex-boyfriend pining over my ever step. I want him to stare at me through the teeming halls of Degrassi with anguished eyes filled with past memories never to be experienced again. I want his lips to sting for my touch, his hair ache for my fingers, his heart die for my presence. I want him to belong to me, to be tied to my wrist with an undeniably tight leash I pretend to hate. I want to pretend to try and shake it off, to act as though I don't absolutely adore the life trailing behind me. I want the naked eye to see me as a girl begging God to give her ex-boyfriend the confidence and independence to move on and live his life.
I don't want this.
The way he acts around her, that menacing, manipulative, anorexic looking bitch makes me sick to the core. He's a human being, not a dog, not a toy that can be thrown in the attic and forgotten for years at a time. Yet each time I let my guard down and glance their way, she's always one step higher than him. She always has the last word, the final say, the level of authority and control that turns my once independent boyfriend into a slave.
Not that he seems to mind. Just because she's skinny, and tan, and doesn't look like a rat (at least not all the time), he's wearing a blindfold that keeps him from seeing what's really there. And when he smiles, it's genuine¸ a true, real, kick-ass Eli Goldsworthy smile that knocks me off my feet. Yet I know, in the deepest trench of my churning gut, that underneath such an honest grin lays tears and grief. Because not even when he was with me did he laugh so obnoxiously loud, or carry himself the hallways with such poise. Since when has he given himself the position of royalty? And to what exactly? There's nothing in this school, hell, nothing in this world, he would ever want control of.
Except himself.
And I guess that's how it all goes down in Eli Land, how his tires roll, or whatever. He can't control his life unless someone else holds the remote for him and tells him what all the buttons do. He doesn't know that Do Not Press literally means do not press. He doesn't understand the concept of left or right or east or west without a map representing everything with arrows. He will never feel the obligation to grab a hold of his heart and store it aside for someone who won't take advantage of it.
How can someone who sees the world in such a beautiful way get himself stuck in such an awful, ugly place?
I roll over onto my side, stroking the picture, trying to embrace his smell, his touch, his voice, for one more moment before it completely slips out of my reach. Because that's just how memories work. There's a time limit for everything, and eventually, you'll lose what you thought you'd always have.
One day, Eli is going to close his eyes and not picture Julia. One day, she won't be the first thing he thinks about when he wakes up. One day, he will forget which arm she broke when she got hit by the car. One day, he'll forget her all together.
One day, he'll forget me all together.
A knife slices through my heart and hunts around, looking for anything worth taking. But anything valuable is already broken, already shred to pieces.
He'll forget the first compliment he ever gave me. He'll forget the day my parents got divorced. He'll forget the first time we kissed. He'll forget my favorite color and how I love Nacho Cheese Doritos and which ankle I broke during gym class and who my celebrity crush is and why he has a random cartilage piercing and the abandoned church we discovered and how I can burp the ABC's and the way I scream every time someone pokes me in the side and how I love him more than I could ever love anything else in the world.
And I don't know the order in which he'll start losing me. Maybe his daughter will beg for a Todd Strasser book when she's 14 and he'll think of that one curly-haired girl who could recite every word of Can't Get There From Here. Maybe he'll buy his wife a lavender scented candle for their nine year anniversary and he'll wonder why it smells so familiar. Maybe he'll walk into a grocery store to buy bread and cheese and the teenage girl working at the cash register has such pretty blue eyes he can't help but compliment them.
I can't help but look up at the ceiling and beg God, for all that is holy, that Eli Goldsworthy will always have at least one memory of me. I don't care if he forgets my name or where we met or if I even existed at all, just one string of connection no one else will ever share with him.
Because there will be a time in my life when I forget Eli Goldsworthy. I'll see a hearse driving along the rode and not even consider that someone actually owns one for any other purpose than transporting dead bodies. I'll look at my cartilage piercing, shake my head, and wonder how drunk was I that crazy night.
A single tear dances along the skin on my cheek, and for once in my life the future looks like a dark, menacing place. Because the truth is, no matter how sad it may seem, I'd rather dream about Eli every night, knowing he will never be mine, than forget about him and move on.
His picture weighs a thousand pounds in my pale, slender hand. I consider ripping it to shreds, watching his profile disappear, piece by piece, and let the forgetting begin. But the moment my fingers pinch the top of the photo, my blood turns to ice, freezing my actions. So instead, I gaze at it one last time before opening my nightstand drawer and stuffing it behind all my thick novels and empty pencil cases and old report cards, pushing and pushing before it's squished against the bare wall.
I lay back down against my comforter and steal a glance at the drawer. It once seemed so simple to me: a place of storage to put things in that'll I'll probably never need again, but now, as I think back to all those secret kisses and times of laughter and suppressed smiles, I realize that this drawer will never go a day unopened.
Eli Goldsworthy, I'm not ready to let go yet.