"Eleanor, I need you to stay away from me." He says as he holds tight onto my hand. I look up at him in confusion and hurt. No hint of anger is in his eyes.
"What, why?" I ask, voice breaking.
"I just need you to trust me okay? I don't want you to g...
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The moment I realized I was in love with Isaac I couldn't think of anything else. Every time he was over at my new house to do homework after school I would find myself staring at him from across the table. While Isaac spent his time diligently studying science and math, I studied the gentle curl of his hair and the curve of his lips. Isaac never caught me though, as he had become quite consumed with getting perfect grades. He just didn't want to disappoint his father, he would tell me. This fear of disappointment lead Isaac to do other unexpected things as well, like taking up playing lacrosse.
Isaac was never a particularly athletic boy, so I was surprised when one day while studying he told me he was joining the lacrosse team at our middle school. I tried to picture him, my sweet and gentle best friend, playing such a dangerous sport and I couldn't. When I expressed these concerns to him Isaac told me I just wouldn't understand. He also said that meant he wouldn't be able to come over as much due to practice, which broke my heart.
Soon after Isaac began playing I started to notice bruises appearing on his arms. After pointing them out he just told me I didn't get it, and to leave it alone. Isaac assured me that he loved playing lacrosse and that it wasn't as dangerous as I was saying. Weeks went by and Isaac started coming over less and less. I understood it when he had practice, but even on days off he would come up with some excuse to not hang out. Either he was helping his father at work, cleaning up the house or too busy with his studies. I started to worry that he had just grown out of our friendship, a thought that terrified me more than anything else.
One morning after I had gone a week without seeing Isaac outside of school, I decided to bike over to his house. I had brought along a few DVDs and microwave popcorn, hoping we could watch a movie together. When he opened the door he looked nervous and I noticed his right eye was bruising a deep blue.
"Eleanor, what are you going here?" He said, shutting the door behind him so that we were alone outside the house. I reached up to trace his eye.
"What happened?" I asked and he flinched.
"I got hit in the face with a lacrosse ball at practice. But I can't hang out, okay? Can you just go?"
"Is something going on? Why can't we hang out?"
"Look Eleanor," He says, eyes darting to the windows on the side of the house, "I thought you could just take a hint. But it doesn't look like you can."
"What?" I ask, tears starting to well in my eyes.
"I just don't want to hang out with you anymore, okay? I don't want anything to do with you, don't you get it?" He says, unable to look me in the eye.
"I just don't understand Isaac, what did I do?" I sob.
"You didn't do anything, I just don't want to be your friend anymore. Can you just get out of here?"
Isaac doesn't wait for me to respond before going back into his house and shutting the door in my face. I stand there for a minute, shocked and confused by what had just happened. I thought back to the kiss, and wondered if I had scared him off. I wanted to knock on the door again and beg Isaac to tell me why he didn't want me anymore. Instead I biked home crying. When I see in the hallways at school he avoids my eyes, and I am too hurt to try and talk to him. I'm too hurt to notice the way he has begun to retreat from all of our other classmates; somehow he becomes even more shy and even more reclusive. I don't notice his grades slipping, or the numerous injuries he gets. I don't notice any of this until years later, and by then it was too late.
