To Sink into the Deep

He Saw You

“Well, we all make mistakes dear, so just put it behind you. We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.”
L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea.

You were probably his only friend. Really, you’ve never been sure if he considered anyone else a friend.

He drew a lot, showing you every time he drew something new. Mostly flowers. Silly people react strangely to a boy drawing flowers.

To add salt to injury, he detested almost all sports. The dislike extended past participation, watching them was an issue as well.

He once told you that someone he used to hang out with vehemently denied him when questioned about their closeness. Maybe you really were his only friend, although you can’t exactly tell how you became friends. 

The unwritten social laws of your school state that familiarity should be confined to individuals two classes’ below you. He was three classes below.

The law didn’t stop the older boys from throwing jibes at him when opportunity arose. But, as the New York Times will say, your friend was no angel. He was inconceivably rude to everyone but you, a trait that did him no good with seniors who may have otherwise ignored him.

One day, some months away from graduation, he decided to test his insolence on a classmate of yours. When he, your classmate, narrated the incident to the class, his face scrunched up and all, you realised the disrespect was getting out of hand.

During the lunch break, you sought your junior friend. You checked the emptying cafeteria, his class, the art studio; you even checked the sick bay. No sign of him.

Resigning yourself to scolding him after school, you made your way to your classroom where your classmates’ laughter (mostly the males’) rung through the halls leading to the room.

Once you entered, you discovered the cause of the laughter was none of the usual things but your junior friend.

Kneeling in the centre of the classroom, his fists clenched, lips pressed together, and eyes trained on your offended classmate who was scolding and mocking him in turn, prompting laughter at the right cues from his audience.

You wanted to say something, you really did. Then you remembered when another junior was punished similarly and you called out a classmate on her methods of discipline, in front of that junior, hence demeaning and diminishing her authority, drawing the ire of the girl and her friends for a couple of days.

Self-preservation kicked in and you left the classroom, hoping he had not seen you.

The next time you spoke to your friend you did not speak about his rudeness but something was… off. When you caught his eye, you realised why: he had seen you.

The next few months were a whirl of you trying to apologise indirectly. But there was a wall, and you knew the cause of the wall yet you did anything and everything but tear down that wall for fear of what it was hiding.

~~~

You know how in books and movies people shy away from real, deep conversations thereby causing huge problems. Yeah, there’s some truth in television.

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This story was for the 13 Reasons Why contest. Alas, because of my nationality, this is not an official entry.

But the prompt was so striking (write about an incident in your life that makes you wish you could go back and change your actions), I could not let it go.

So I grabbed it, held its hand throughout my writer’s block, added some fact and fiction to it during its moulding period and gave it to you.

Do you like it?