It was after I saw N take off on the back of Zekrom, I decided to go back home with Blair, Cheren and Bianca. Our middle school year began slowly, taught by my mother and Professor Juniper, like it had been through elementary school, and like a heavy, cold Winter, the next three years went by slowly. Nuvema town just wasn't the same after seeing the rest of Unova. Nothing was. Nothing could ever be, not even under the influence of the glowing white capsule I hid deep under my bed.
Swelling trees cried tears of pink and white petals, flooding the routes like the animes I watched when I was younger. The sun had barely risen, but the streets bustled with adults and their pained faces, or teenagers with nowhere to go. How nice would it be to no longer have those commitments, to ditch this terrible deed and find my way back to Nuvema. Back to Samurott. A couple feet behind me, Bianca chatted excitedly to Cheren, like this was something to look forward too.
"Whitlea! You're going the wrong way!" Blair said, reaching for my arm. I jerked away, and started into a sprint. No way am I going, I thought. No way.
Colors danced in my mind. I popped another pill, letting the explosion take me away from the murky alley, and into somewhere far away, distant. Somewhere new, with a stale taste. Another boom goes off behind my eyelids. "Faster," I chanted, wanting these LSD tablet to take farther away from the ground, the sound of purples and pinks spilling in my ears like a violin racing an eighty mile per hour wind. My arm dropped, and my new uniform felt wet. I must have had fallen, because by the time my eyes stopped fidgeting in my sockets, I curled in a fetal possession. A flame was ignited. How did he get out of his Poké Ball?
"Quii," the small fire mouse cried. To be nice, I tried to raise my hand as a reassurance to the annoying little pest, but it remained limp at my side. That's when the memories began to play like an ancient film, rolling in my mind, mixing with other memories and voiced that didn't belong in my head, didn't belong in me at all.
That's when I saw it.
Green hair, and the lightest pair of blue eyes giving a brisk glance from the corner, wide and curious, as though he had just seen any adolescent junkie burning brain cells before another school day. Then came the rich recognition and a grimace of disbelief, fallowed by the soft patter of quick to move footsteps.
Oh my God.
Jumping to my feet, I banged my elbow against a brick, but it didn't hurt as much as it had when he broke into a run. The end of the alley was only a few great leaps away, but he was gone. Only the crowds of nobodies jammed together as they lit cigarettes or talked furiously on their phones. I had let him go again, I had let him slip out of my grasp. And he was gone, gone, gone, and as I fell to my knees under the roar of rushing bodies, I realized it as I fumbled for another tablet.
I was too far gone, too.