Today, my pain takes a dive deeper than I thought I was capable of feeling.
We are six weeks into Senior year, and by this point, I've given all that I have to try and heal from the loss that I've been facing since the end of summer. I've put more effort into my appearance, I've focused on school the best that I can, I've spent a lot of time with Nina, trying to be as joyful as I possibly can. I've gone to debate practice, and contributed without being head spokesperson, but contributed nonetheless. I've tried my very best to not look Nick in the eye, because I know that if I do, there's a black hole waiting to swallow me whole.
And all of this work I've done, all of this headway I've made to the light, is broken down completely, in a matter of seconds. I am sitting in the cafeteria with Nina, and we are talking about college applications, as this has become the only topic that any Senior is interested in conversing about. I am devouring a pudding cup when Nina says something that drags me away from my previous famish.
"You know whose looking really cute lately?" she proposes, and I glance up to see that she's gazing over my shoulder.
"Who?" I ask with my mouth full, my head still bowed in my pudding.
"Nick Muñoz." she says dreamily, and I freeze.
I feel sick to my stomach, and force myself to choke down my mouthful of food, and keep myself from showing any expression in my face except for a blank stare. Nina looks to me, and rolls her eyes.
"I know what you're thinking." she sighs.
It's becoming increasingly hard to appear careless.
"What?" I say, my voice as steady as I can make it.
"I'm not gonna do anything about it, okay?" she whispers, smirking gleefully, then sighs with exhaustion, "I probably only like him now because I can't have him."
But there's no way that she could know. There's no way that this would be how she would tell me that she knows, if she does. My terror congeals into dread when I hit a wall of certainty. She doesn't know, there's no chance.
"Why's that?" I say, shoving a spoonful in my mouth, as it's all I can do to appear impartial to the subject. Nina cocks an eyebrow at me.
"Cause he's with Zoey?" she says plainly, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.
This is when I feel it, a pain that I didn't know existed. I thought I'd faced the worst. I thought that I'd hit rock bottom, and yet these four words pull the rock out from under me and send me crashing down into an endless pit of despair. It's a shock, like an electric jolt, like I've been struck my lightning and now I can't sit still. I can barely even breathe.
How Nick and I ended was horrible. There was no yelling, no crying, no fight at all, in fact. One would expect a grand finale, something dramatic and intense. That was exactly why it was so horrible, because it was so quick, and empty.
It was the second last day of summer, and I'd gone over to Nick's, without an invitation, as I'd gotten used to doing by then. The door was open, and I walked in to see Nick watching the television on the couch, his face white. I hadn't noticed then how drowned he looked, and had walked right up to his, kissed him on the cheek and sat by him on the couch without any care in the world. When Nick turned to me with a weak, wounded smile, I felt my blood turn cold.
"Hey, you okay?" I asked sweetly, putting my hand over his. He moved his hand away to hold his own in his lap.
"We're going back to school in a couple of days." he said in a low, dry voice.
"Yeah, I know." I laughed, but my humour died as quickly as it had begun, and I edged closer to him on the couch, but he only tensed when I did this. "Are you scared for Senior year? College applications?" I asked softly.
