Teaching Mia

Chapter 15 - Coming Undone

Time passes slowly. The tick of a clock, the pulse of a heartbeat, the sound of breathing. The movement of white clouds crossing the sky, the struggle of a caterpillar inside its cocoon, the hatching of an egg in a bird's nest.

Yet time passes no matter how painful it can be. Seconds become minutes, blood circulates throughout the body, and lungs fill with air. Water particles turn into rain, a butterfly is born, and an eagle learns to fly. Time does pass.

Mia stepped off the bus on María de Molina heading towards school, feeling as lonely as she did the very first day she got on it. Perhaps even lonelier. It was a crisp morning at the beginning of March. Six months had already passed of the school year. Four more to go.

How did she make it this far already? She couldn't help think that soon it would be over. Soon she would be heading back home to reface reality. Had she evolved since, become a better person? No, she felt the same as always, the same she had always been.

Mia approached school, when she saw the figure that had brought all of her despair during the last two months. There had been so much she had wanted to tell him, so much that had been left unresolved. She had left him countless messages and emails but he never returned any of them. Like she didn't even exist.

It hadn't helped that he had broken up with her right before the two weeks they had off for winter break, and right before the holidays. She had thought that he maybe would have called her for Christmas or New Year's during a moment of weakness, but the holidays came and went, and she never heard from him. Afterwards, she felt stupid for even hoping that. It was clear she was the only weak one holding onto something that was no longer there.

Somehow she survived through the cold winter. She decided to go back to her routine and pour herself in school work. It was an easy thing to do, given it took up most of her time anyway. They had switched their study groups for the new semester, and Mia had found this group to be much more pleasant to work with than her previous one. It wasn't surprising that her grades were at an all time high. But even that didn't bring her any satisfaction.

She even made an effort to start going with some of her classmates to VIPS during their morning breaks. She never contributed much to those conversations though, she mostly sat back and found herself stuck in a daydream over her coffee. No one questioned her about it and they eventually took her silence for granted.

Every morning, she would get up and get ready for school. She would take a shower, brush her hair, dress, and go to class. Just like any normal person would do, just as she was expected to. They said that showing up was half the battle, anyway. Then, after a long day at school, she would come home at night and prep for the next day, only to repeat the pattern all over again. She really let herself fall into the daily grind. And she hated every second of it.

The difficult part, the excruciating part, had been keeping Leo out of her thoughts, and she failed miserably at that. He never left her mind. It was the one thing that never changed, the one constant thing in her life. No matter the day, no matter where she was or what she was doing, he never left her. The more she willed it to stop, for him to go away, the harder it would get. He just wouldn't leave. It was simply agonizing.

She never knew a breakup could feel like this, and she had gone through plenty. Could she even call it a breakup? They hadn't even been together for a month, and it was never official. Then why did she feel so broken? Still after all this time? Maybe it was because no one had ever broken up with her before. She had always done it in the past, made the unwanted verdict. This time, she wasn't given a choice. The decision was made for her.

No, that couldn't be it. Even if she had decided to end it, she still felt an enormous loss that she couldn't comprehend. Like a part of her was taken away. Like she had lost her best friend. Truth be told, he had been her best friend, her only friend. He was the only person in Madrid she ever considered to hold that title, even if he didn't think so. Now, she didn't even have that anymore. All that they had was gone, vanished. Now they were simply strangers, as if they had never met. She just wanted her friend back.