Every single waking second started to slow down, the world was slightly out of focus and nothing quite calculated correctly. The fresh food was stale and the air was polluted. That is a world without her. Walking through the halls in the morning was different, people noticed me, for all the wrong reasons.
"I think he killed her." A voice would say.
"Maybe, it's some crazy prank all to get attention, after all it's not like he had any other friend." A chorus gasped. "What? It's not like you weren't thinking it."
I preferred being in the hospital, I preferred my nurse giving me endless glasses of orange juice when I was meant to have water. I preferred the sound of old people chattering away in a disorientated haze about nothing in particular. I preferred the pain killers they would pump into my system when the nightmares got too bad and I awoke in a pool of sweat. I preferred the hospital, but given the choice. I preferred the smell of her hair when she span around too quickly. I preferred having her here.
I glanced at the clock as I sat down in the form room (cupboard). The only thing that didn't change that day: Rahaan meditating in the hallway as he always did. I wanted the day to end and it had only just begun. The clock felt slower, humans spend all their lives desperately hoping for more time, yet there I was hoping everything would speed up or my emotions would slow down with the same effect of slowing down a recorded voice, the voice became inaudible. So my feelings would become intangible, and I would not feel them.
"Joseph?" Mrs Sky took the morning register sat in front of her computer loudly chewing the remaining scraps of her breakfast.
"Here Miss!"
"Samantha?"
"Here Miss!"
"Zoe?"
"Here." Mrs Sky looked away from the computer screen and gave Zoe a stern look prompting her to say 'Miss.' it was a game they always played and Mrs Sky never won because Zoe didn't care enough. Mrs Sky was just a teacher who looked like a Sixth Former who thought too her highly of herself.
There was a long intense pause.
Zoe eventually got up and walked out the door.
It always ended that way.
"Kids today! Whoa! No manners." The reality is teachers are people who probably didn’t give a damn once and then they were hit by debts and they suddenly resented children because children never know how good they have it until they become adults.
The whole class chattered a little bit and views were exchanged about who was in the right and who was in the wrong, it was the daily morning song.
"Mill-" Mrs Sky stopped mid-sentence when she realised Millie of course, was not here, and would not be here. The class went silent. Pitiful eyes gave me commiseration looks and I held back the tears that began to fill mine.
"Stop! Ry, it’s never going to happen!" A small petite girl was sat in the corner with O'ryan, they were giggling and touching each other inappropriately, and no, it wasn't inappropriate because they were fondling in class it was inappropriate because that moment was for Millie and they had stained it. I didn't realise I had been shouting all these things at them until, a hand touched my shoulder.
"Calm Down, Ry." Joseph whispered. The world and all the stars tilted for half a second.
The days after Mille was kidnapped, those days were hell, flumes danced around my heart; violently. I lay in bed anticipating another wave of nightmares and sleepless nights. It was then that I understood. Aleasha Gregory and I could no longer be friends, not in this world or the next. The wind rested on my cold sweat drenched body.
