3
Tessa, why didn’t you wait for me this morning?”
Bill was late for school. After class, he strode over to my desk, his voice laced with a playful grievance, and set a carton of milk down in front of me.
My hand, busy scribbling vocabulary words, froze. I glanced at the milk out of the corner of my eye.
‘I already ate. And I won’t be walking with you in the mornings anymore. I’m coming to school earlier now.”
Bill slumped into the empty seat beside me, clearly confused. He propped his head on his hand. “I haven’t done anything to piss you off lately, have I? We’ve always walked together.”
“Things are different now,” I said, putting my pen down. I took a deep breath and forced a smile. “You have a girlfriend. We should keep our distance.”
His expression faltered for a moment before understanding dawned. “She won’t mind. She knows that…”
“I mind.”
en you two.”
“Tessa…”
Bill’s temper was notoriously short. The fact that he’d even entertained this conversation was a miracle. His patience, always thin, had finally snapped.
His face hardened. He shot to his feet, the legs of his chair screeching against the floor.
“Fine. Whatever you want.”
I lowered my head, my eyes closing in silent resignation.
I had spent all of last night on my balcony, the wind chilling me to the bone, wondering what to do. Should I keep playing the fool, hiding my feelings and staying by his side? Or should I let our lifelong friendship die right here?
They say you can’t hide the love in your eyes. If I kept following him around, it would be unfair to me, and it would be unfair to Wendy.
No girlfriend wants another girl who’s way too close hanging around her boyfriend.
After that day, Bill never spoke to me again. If we passed each other in the hall, he’d look straight through
The girl who was always by his side was no longer me; it was Wendy. He introduced her to his entire circle of friends.
Wendy was his first love. The girl he cherished.
I focused on my studies, quietly listening, like everyone else, to the stories of their romance whispered thro- ugh the school.
When Wendy’s stomach hurt from hunger in the middle of the night because of her strict dancer’s diet, Bill would bring her low-fat dinners specially prepared by his family’s nutritionist.
When a jock from the rival high school cornered Wendy in an alley after school, Bill supposedly beat him so badly he ended up in the hospital.
On this month’s exams, I reclaimed my spot as the top student in our year.
My teachers had always told me to stop worrying about Bill, that it was bad for my studies. Bill’s family was wealthy; good grades were a luxury, not a necessity for him.
That afternoon, as school let out, I rested my head on my hand and watched the spectacular sunset paint the sky.
“Tessa, what college do you want to go to?”
On a sweltering evening long ago, Bill had sat beside me, his long fingers toying with a strand of my hair as he asked the question nonchalantly.
“Brierfield University,” I’d answered without hesitation.
“That’s so far away.”
I never told him the real reason. Brierfield wasn’t just a top-tier school; it was my escape. An escape from this city, and an escape from that house.
My father was like so many men who find wealth-he found a new heart to go with it. My mother refused tc divorce him, convinced it was her fault for not giving him a son. On her darkest nights, she would point a shaking finger at me, her voice a hysterical shriek, crying about why I couldn’t have been a boy, then her hus band wouldn’t have strayed.
Later, she did have a son.
My father returned to the family, but only briefly. My mother, now with a son to dote on, poured all her attent ion into my little brother. She finally had her security, a son to care for her in her old age.
“Hmm… well, I guess I’ll have to go to Brierfield too. You’re so clueless, you’d be a total mess without me there to look out for you.”
The bragging boy in front of me was the only light in my broken world. I desperately wanted to hold onto that light.
I was willing to waste all my time on him. Even if I didn’t get into Brierfield, as long as we ended up at the same college, that was enough.
