AM, PM

chapter 13

Layla

"Ariel, come over here."

I beckon her towards the shelf of spiral notebooks. "Which one is the nicest? I like that one," I say pointing at the one with the blue and grey cover that resembles a stormy sky.

"I like it too. Very Layla-y." She turns around the shelves.

"Isn't it?" I exclaim. I take four of the same notebook.

"Woah, Layla. Come here."

I walk over to her side. "Look over there."

When I look at where she's pointing, Calum walks into Target with his whole crew. I was really hoping to never see that face again. Going back to school doesn't really help that wish come true. A feeling of dread makes a home out of my body.

I absently keep my eyes on him, and stare. He looks at me, puzzled, but does not react. It might take longer for some people to remember. At least, Dom has for now. He's supposed to meet me here later and I'll go home. I'm terrified my mom won't remember me.

"Hey, it's okay," Ariel whispers patting my shoulder. "It doesn't look like he remembers you. Why are you forcing yourself to remember that night?"

"I don't know, Ari." My blood still boils in my veins and I can feel them about to burst. My fist clenches and unclenches at the sight of him disregarding me like that and leaving. A tiny part of me wants to run up to him and yell at him for having hurt me like that. Make a scene! Let the world know! The thing is that he doesn't even know what he did. He doesn't know that he still has a small piece of me, that he is the reason that I am forgotten.

"You know he's actually a big part of why I fell into my depression."

I turn around hastily. This news is not letting me dial down my anger. "What!?"

"Hey, don't freak," she squeezes my arm, in hopes to relieve my apoplectic state. "It was a while ago. As for how the story goes, he asked me out on a date once. I was amazed that Calum would ask me out. Me! Invisible Alexandra!"

"Hey, between the both of us, I was the invisible one."

"Maybe in that world. Anyway, I agreed after a lot of hesitation, because I'm not that naive. You have no idea paranoid I was. Wait," she looks around, and stifles her voice. "It feels weird standing in a cluster of shoppers and talking about my problems. Can we walk, talk and shop?"

I laugh at her face revealing her borderline diagnosable claustrophobia. We push through the shoppers to the other section of school supplies.

"Okay, continue."

"Yeah, so," she starts putting a strand of her black hair behind her ear, a colour I still haven't gotten used to. "On that first date, I was terrified of it being a joke. I was being careful of the waiters passing by thinking they were with Calum and would drop something on me. I kept looking outside in case I could see one of his friends and that would give away the prank. But: nothing.

"He was genuine and real. That first date turned into five more and those five more dates turned into 6 months of dating. I ended it. Because of him. He hurt me. Almost like he did to you."

She keeps a stoic face as she talks to me. She doesn't look into my eyes and picks up random supplies and checks them out every now and then.

"I trusted him. I told him about my mom and you know how hard of a subject that is for me to talk about. And the worst part was that I thought he trusted me," her hands fiddle with a set of pencils. "He confessed so many things to me. He told me about so many of the problems he had as a kid. So, when we'd break into fights and he'd get physical, I'd remind myself of those things he said and remind myself that he loves me and this isn't him. I was physical too. So, I just told myself. this was how our relationship would go. I was okay with it. I never thought we'd let it get out of hand."