Long-Distance Calls

41

Dear Future,

In the late days of my fifteenth year, my parents were my worst enemies.

They were the only thing standing between me and a little ounce of happiness.

Sure, school was making me pretty miserable, but it was going better those days. And, besides, it was about to end.

"I've never seen them agree on something," I told Evelyn, "and it's also the first time they don't shout at each other, but together at me. It was terrible."

"Come on, Avsam," she said, "you're gonna have to try a little harder."

"You're joking right?" I smirked. "If I said one more thing, I'm afraid they would've tore my head off. There's no trying a little harder. Usually, if there is a chance of convincing them of something, I can see it. This time, well, I just don't see it."

"But I wanna see you," she said.

"Then why don't you ask your parents to come here?" I asked.

"There's just no point," she said, "they'd react the same way as yours."

"Yeah but, come to think of it, you could at least tell them about my existence, you know?"

She sighed. "I don't know how my dad would react to that. I'm scared."

"Well, this is bad, anyway," I said, "I don't see any chance of us meeting, right now."

"Never say never, right?" She said.

"Right," I said thoughtfully. Maybe there'd be a way. Maybe some day, I don't know. Maybe a miracle. Or maybe my parents just thought of me as too young to go around meeting girls in other states.

My train of thoughts was interrupted by the sound of an incoming message on Facebook. It was Andrew.

"Hey Pete, can you like this page? It's for a friend of mine."

I clicked on the link he sent me, and it redirected me to a page called 'I didn't want to let you go', with two lovers as profile picture. I scrolled down to take a look at the page's posts, and I realized the page was all about love quotes and stuff like that, mostly of someone regretting a break up and writing to the girl.

"Okay," I simply typed back, as I liked the page, unsure whether it was really for a friend, or maybe Layla had found out about the One Direction lie and had left Andrew.

So then I realized Andrew always updated his Facebook profile. So I clicked on it and, indeed, the first thing that came out in big, blue, bold text was 'Single'.

"So wait, is it a page you made?" I wrote to him.

"No, I told you, it's a friend's." He remarked.

There was no point in getting the truth out of him, so I just gave up. It was already pretty obvious that he was feeling bad about the break up. But if he wanted to keep up the cliché tough man facade, then who was I to stop him?

• — • — • — • — • — • — • — •

The next day at the cafeteria, as I was walking with the boys to our table, I had this urge to think of something clever to say in that moment so, as we walked by Christine, the first of the class, I said, "Look at this nerd, with her head in books even during lunch break."