I Love You Because

October 16th

         I can't say I remained calm.

        My friends at school bombarded me with questions as to why I was so fidgety and nervous, but I couldn't explain. Whenever the topic of my internet friends came into the conversations, I was drowned in comments like, "Well how do you know their not fifty year-old perverts?" or "Why would you want to meet someone who's probably a stalker?"

        It was probably for the best that I didn't tell anyone I had a suicidal virtual friend.

        My friend Charlotte, the only friend that I had in France that actually seemed to believe I was befriending real people and not villains, kept asking me what was wrong, and as gentle as she might appear, she is the quite possibly most stubborn person I have ever met. She approached me at my locker with an eyebrow raised.

        She looked at me up and down and said, "I've heard that you've been acting moody, and while that really isn't new," I scoffed but didn't deny it, "I thought I'd be a good friend and not assume things. What's going on?"

        I looked at her warily, considering my options. "It's nothing."

        Charlotte said nothing, simply tapping her foot impatiently. I knew she wouldn't move until she got at least a semi-truthful answer. While I could have just made something up, I decided to just tell her the bare minimum.

        "Okay, fine, it's an internet thing," I admitted, glancing at her expression to see if she was convinced. She gave me a satisfied nod before leaving me at my locker, unknowingly abandoning me to deal with the unrelenting interrogation of my other classmates. I was about to commit mass homicide by the time the final bell rang, dismissing us from the building and into a flood of noise on the way to the busses.

        At home was no better. My mother didn't say a word to me when I quietly slipped through the door, and my dad was still at work. He worked for Delta Airlines, so he often worked late, since he was usually the one stuck writing reports and such for his boss in his office. My two brothers, Daniel and Eric, roped me into playing Monopoly with them, though I'm fairly sure the elder of the two, Eric, was just trying to get our resident pest to stop whining about how bored he was.

        During the game, Eric turned to me quizzically. "You alright, Astrid?"

        "Not really," I sighed, shoulders slumping. I hadn't been able to release any tension all day, and it was only then that I realized just how guarded I had been at school.

        The twenty year-old smiled at me gently, and my spirits were immediately lifted. I was glad that my brother and I got along so well, especially after he had moved to his own apartment when he went to university. It made his visits ten times better.

        "Want to tell me what's wrong?"

        "Not really," I repeated, feeling only a little bad about hiding things. "I'll figure it out."

        "If you say so," Eric responded, shrugging, but his pinched expression of concern lingered.

        After that, we mostly played the game in silence, with the occasional outburst from Daniel. It was so boring, I had to try my best to act surprised when my little brother kicked me out for "cheating". I trudged up to my room after that, and while I knew I should be checking with Nina, but I couldn't bring myself to pick up my phone to text her. Instead, I picked up my notebook to write, continuing the story I had been writing for over a year. I was so proud of it, and couldn't wait until I finished and got it published.

        Suddenly, though, it didn't seem to matter much.

        After I had sat on my bed for an hour, not moving at all, I realized that I needed to be addressing the situation. But I still had no idea what to do. No words seemed exactly right, and I eventually decided that I was just overthinking everything. But even when I went downstairs to eat dinner with the family, I couldn't shake off my growing feeling of unease and panic. I sat wordlessly at the table, only contributing to the conversation with the occasional nod or grunt. I just wasn't interested in the drama of my dad's job, or the teachers at Daniel's elementary school, or even the details of Eric's university life, which I usually couldn't stop listening to.