Something? Anything? This is a dark bleak feeling, as cold as the snow on the ground, on the road, on everything.
People think it's dumb, I know. They think I'm dumb. Dumb for wanting Craig when he has Ashley. Sure he does. And sure, on the surface they have so much more in common. But it's not about that, it's not about signing petitions to keep genetically modified foods out of the caf or playing an instrument or writing songs. Those are surface things.
I don't know what it is. I know I love him. Love love, not some school girl crush or puppy love or anything silly. This is so serious it's frightening. Since eighth grade I've known what real love is, and frustration, and longing.
I'm 14 and in ninth grade so no one takes it serious, no one takes me serious. But I know what I feel. Just because I'm not 24 doesn't make it any less serious.
It would make me happier, at this point, to just forget him. It's gone beyond happiness. Sure, I was happy when he was at Spike's birthday party until Joey made him leave. I was happy when he asked me to dance at the 80's dance, even though it made Emma sad. I was happy when he said yes when I asked him on a date. Did I think that sort of happiness would last?
I don't know what I thought. I just know that somehow, somewhere, between seeing him get out of his dad's car on the first day of eighth grade and standing by his locker while he told me he didn't like me, that I was in trouble. I was in deep.
I'd never felt anything remotely like that, the way I felt when I was around him. Alive. Alert. Awake. I felt things were possible. I wasn't sleepwalking anymore, following in Emma's wake, doing what everyone expected me to do.
I guess it was inevitable I get hurt. Me. Not him. He seems to sail through everything untouched, unscathed. His heart isn't broken and bleeding, little glittery pieces of a heart shattered into so many tiny shards that there's no hope of ever being whole again. No hope. I love him without hope and without cause, this reasonless love like a monster inside me, a demon that eats everything. Reason, logic, sanity, happiness, balance, all devoured and destroyed by this love.
This is impossible. I lost him and Ashley lost him but the real loser in the whole thing is me. I had the most on the line, the most to lose.
I really expressed it that day in the hallway, the gray lockers all around us, the cold pressing on the windows. The edge of frost on the windows real low, by the ledge. I walked by his classroom on purpose, I knew it was his class. I looked through the little window in the door, I saw him. I can't describe how it feels when I see him. Like taffy being slowly pulled to the breaking point. I ache for him.
He followed me into the hall. He had on that hat, those boots, snow was still on the edge of his jeans. His eyes stared right through me, and I could see the exact shades of green and brown that made his eyes that color.
"I love you, Craig, and I thought you felt the same way," There was that heartbreak in my voice, the heartbreak I kept feeling, over and over and over. It was like a slow motion car wreck, the wheel useless in your hands, the skid deepening, metal grinding against metal until all is lost, lost.
"I do, but, I do, it's just-" Oh his voice, kind of deep, kind of scratchy, and I feel it when he speaks, like a deaf person reacting to vibrations.
"I know. It's Ashley. And she might love you, but not as much as I do,"
And that was it right there. She could love him but not as much as I did. I loved him first. I saw him first. He was just some random kid in her class, he was nothing to her. He was everything to me.