high school sweethearts | cranksepticeye

3 - text message

hey seán. i know it's been a couple of years since we last spoke but i just wanted to check in and see how you are. i hope you're well :)

i stared at the text message for what felt like hours as if looking at it would make it unsend itself. my old best friend mark had messaged me out of the blue. like he said we hadn't spoken in years. we drifted slightly when mark began his youtube channel, and i never bothered to get back in touch with him. so we just stopped talking completely. but even after all of that he was checking up on me. why now?

me and mark were best friends in high school. although, i couldn't remember much about him. i'd forgotten all about my high school experience for the most part. i could remember some of the people i went to school with and i knew that i was pretty popular. that was about it.

i decided it would be better to reply to the message as soon as possible rather than ignore it and grow more and more awkward.

hey mark. i'm doing alright, hope you feel the same. thanks for asking!

within seconds i got a reply from him.

that's good to hear. and i'm great, thanks. i never got the chance to tell you but congrats on 3mil!

i'd hit 3 million subscribers a couple of months prior to his congratulatory message, but i still appreciated it, despite its lateness.

thanks man. congrats on 5 mil :)

mark had always been a couple million subscribers in front of me since he'd been doing youtube longer than i had. also because he was just more likeable.

thank you. means a lot to hear you say that

after he sent me that message i didn't know how to reply, so i set the phone down and didn't say anything else. neither did he for a few hours. when i got a notification alerting me i had a text, i instantly knew it had to be him.

i've been thinking a lot lately about how we drifted. we were really good friends when we were kids and for some time when we left school. we should talk more, maybe meet up sometime? i think it'd just be nice to reconnect

i was the type of guy who made plans but never went through with them. i always agreed to do something and then i never bothered to sort it out with the person either because i forgot or i didn't want to do it in the first place. this was another one of those situations.

sure, i think that'd be really cool

awesome! i'm happy you said yes. i'm still good friends with bob and wade so i could try and talk them into meeting up with us. i don't talk to felix anymore though. i'm not sure if you do

felix. i forgot about him too. i was sure we dated at some point, but i couldn't really remember. my memory was super foggy. i stopped talking to him when his youtube channel started to get big. the fame got to his head and he grew arrogant. he started to act like he was better than me just because he had a larger following. i cut him off straight away; i can't stand that type of behaviour.

i don't talk to him either. he probably wouldn't want to come anyway

yeah, you're right. i bet he's forgotten about us

he said that as if it was difficult to forget. i very easily forgot about them. i started to feel really bad for doing that.

anyway, how's about we talk about it some more tomorrow and arrange a date?

sounds good

great. i'm glad you agree :)

i'm going to go now. see you around

see ya

i put the phone down and i didn't get another text from him that day. i was thankful for that. i was praying he would forget about this dumb reunion thing or decide not to do it. i didn't want to meet up with them. i knew it would be awkward and just absolutely horrible. it'd be pretty embarrassing if they all realised i'd completely erased them from my memory too.

i found myself thinking about high school and wondering why there was so much stuff i couldn't remember. was my experience there really that boring and unimportant? maybe so. i realised it didn't really matter. i was a grown man, and i didn't need to spend my time worrying about my old memories and my teenage years.