Violet

 "Are we safe?" I ask.

"Yeah, nobody can see us," he whispers back. I curl into a ball inside the playground tunnel, feeling younger and more vulnerable than I already was. Although my body is racking with sobs that I eventually swallow down, the silence is comfortable; it is safer than the tunnel that keeps us hidden. Various jeers and footsteps pass by, but we remain unnoticed.

This ritual repeats itself over the span of 3 years: in playground tunnels, behind lockers and cubbies, under tables, behind teachers. To this day I cannot fully say if we were escaping to get away from bullies or escaping to just be alone together. Each year we get a little cleverer; finding childish witnesses to send people who were looking for us on wild goose chases, or finally learning to take life as it was, but when you're 5 and best friends with a bald boy there's not much you can do.

Jarrod really was my only friend. We did everything together, hiding and planning the rest of our lives being our favorite activity. And I already knew that I was in love with him. My immature and girlish mind was already planning a happily ever after where we would become a prince and princess and grow old in a gorgeous castle—I was taking and unstable, fleeting present and twisting it into an unjustified and unfathomable future.

We were at school when I told him I was moving. His blue eyes went wide then quickly contracted, a harsh movement I'll never forget. His brow furrowed in pain and confusion. We were not meant to be separated; the moments that we were were unpredictable and unprotected, too raw...they didn't feel right.

On my last day he brought me a violet sprout as a going away present. When we moved into our new house I set it on my windowsill, looking at it sparingly to save myself from the avalanche of memories that would come crashing down.

Every time he called me on the phone I water the violet, and after a year it had several blossoms. Talking to him on the phone was so peaceful, so comfortable, so normal...

We talked on the phone lots after I moved but suddenly the spark was gone. I felt like I was talking to the shell of my best friend. I told myself that I was still in love with him, that we were meant to be together, but I was in love with the idea of him—the prince, the castle, and the happily ever after. He stopped calling me a year ago. Subsequently, the violet slowly died, just like a part of my heart did.

Throwing away the violet was the hardest part. I picked off the dead petals one by one; the most depression game of "He loves me, he loves me not" I had ever played. I almost didn't let go of the last petal: through all the unreturned calls and birthday cards I never got I still wanted him to love me, I still wanted him to be the home I had always wanted. But he was the playground tunnel I had been hiding in for 9 years. And when I finally crawled out, the world had never looked brighter, full of the most beautiful violets I had ever seen.