Two Of Us

Chapter Seven // BEFORE

And here we are, my posting is quickly catching up to my writing. Updates from now on will probably be slower, as when I first started this novel I was churning it out like I was on amphetamines. Now, not so much -- it's not that I'm losing motivation, but like I said last time, I am so, so, so, so, so, so, busy. I type this on my way out the door to go to work and inevitably return home to work on my Japanese homework. Someone pray for me the way Aria prays for her sister's redemption. xx

            And with this came a whole new world of growing ever closer to the human fantasy that was Samuel Setter. It was hasty and quick. It didn't need to develop like my friendship with Laramie had, instead both of us jumped in feet-first without considering the reparations. There were none as he was ripe for the picking as was I.

Lunch hours spent in the Jeep his grandparents had gotten him for his sixteenth birthday, talking about life and laughing and bonding over our shared music taste came first. I felt bad for abandoning the friends I'd brought to this school with me, of course. There was nothing I could do to ever escape the guilt that stalked me.

Next came texting him. It started off with missing days in English and needing him to send me the assignment. It became late night discussions, talks on religion and philosophy – talks about our past, who we were. We divulged our deepest and darkest secrets. I learned:

1) Samuel absolutely, one-hundred percent couldn't stand milk, as he was lactose intolerant. It made him throw up at an away football game one time when doing a snippet for the Idaho High School Activities Association's Snapchat story just weeks ago, meaning the entire state of Idaho saw him puke up chocolate milk in front of God and everybody;

2) His dad had bailed on his mom when he was seven years old, but had come back, and then left again, creating a cycle of uncertainty for him and his much-younger sisters Lyric and Bella;

3) He didn't think that he deserved everything that he had. He'd worked odd jobs since he could remember to try and help his mom out. Even though his dad paid child support, he'd always felt as if it was his fault that his parents had split;

4) Samuel believed very strongly in God, and destiny, though he didn't find himself aligned with any religion in particular. If Century actually won a football game? The work of God. When he came home to find his dad at the kitchen table? God. Why is this vodka so good? There must be a God in it somewhere...

5) He thought I was pretty. He said he liked my blonde hair and always had the urge to play with it. He told me he found my laugh irresistible and thought my thick-rimmed glasses I wore from time to time made me look like a sexy librarian, I kid you not that is what he said.

He didn't know as much about me. I couldn't bear to tell him as many secrets. I told him about how I didn't have very high self-esteem and that every morning I woke up in a no-mans-land of my own head. I promised him that I'd let him in eventually, but things took time. I told him that we should take it slow. And I asked to meet his family.

What came with family was the long drives that only seemed longer as of late on the way home from dance. Laramie would occasionally do her best to ignore me if she was in a particularly awful mood – even though we were not blood related we were sisters still the same and so every single little sigh or even so much as favoring her phone over my company, my heart felt heavy. However, this was only on her worst days. My chameleon souled best friend wasn't always as rude to me as I interpreted. Instead her coldness as of late derived not from hatred but from survival.

Laramie's panic attacks had only gotten worse, and more frequent. I didn't witness them all. No one did. A lot of them – I found this out just recently as I write this two years later, I am far removed from the girl you know me as – were in complete solitude, while many were in plain daylight in public. They came in different forms, all equally horrible. Sometimes she would shut down completely and disassociate from the world around her with glazed-over eyes and her heart thudding. Others she was shaking, crying, screaming, grasping for anything around her to make her feel secure. There were nights where she made irrational decisions. There were nights where she was too frightened of herself to get out of bed. There were nights where she felt nothing. And, the transverse – there were nights where she felt it all.