Broken Dreams ✓

o1 | born broken

day 1 ➜ a letter to my best friend

Dear Jaime,

I don't really know why I'm addressing this to you, Jaime because you're not my best friend anymore, but since you were the only person in my life I've ever called my best friend—I'll give this one to you, for old times sake.

It's funny really but this is actually the second time I've tried to write this letter. The first time I attempted to write this, I was sat on the wrong bench outside, so when Killer Kieran came back to his spot he left me with a black eye and ripped up that letter. So here's this one.

The other day in the chapel I was thinking about you. About the first time we met. I must've been, what, around 8 or 9.

I was sat on the table playing Match Attack with Mike when Shelley brought in the new kid. I took one glance at your perfect black hair and pearly white-teethed grin and to be honest was I jealous of all the instant attention you'd get by being the "new kid" and I didn't like you.

You were too perfect, too likeable.

You were an extrovert.

Which explains why you had all my mates staring at your shiny new red and yellow football boots 10 minutes after you'd arrived, of course, my mates liked you better. I'd like to write I disliked you because it's petty to say I hated you for basically just being yourself, but if I'm being honest here... I did hate you a lot.

You were always the centre of attention.

We only really started speaking at around your four-month mark of being at Aldertree. You were sat by the windowsill of the ground floor's living room. You looked so deflated. You'd spend your whole day just sat there waiting for your Mum to turn up and she never did. You'd go around telling everyone "she's coming today" and run off from the football pitch to go wait by the window. You'd done this every Saturday since you'd arrived and I hadn't seen her once.

I don't know what was different about that Saturday, but I walked up to you and asked: "You had lunch yet?"

You'd looked at me annoyed and said: "na, I haven't". I know deep down you were secretly glad I came up to you because it distracted you from the reality of your Saturday. Your Mum wasn't coming.

I think it's because I knew what it felt like, to sit there, waiting, longing, to see that familiar face walk past the window and through the front door and tell me "I've come back for you". It hurt like hell when months and months had gone by when I realised my Dad wasn't coming back for me. You know what I learned though, that because I spent nearly all my days waiting for my dad to turn up, I'd forgotten to talk, to play and make real proper friends.

So when my mates instantly started following you around everywhere, the fact I wasn't in the group anymore didn't affect them. At all. We never really made a connection. We were always just mates because we were boys around the same age in a care home—so it was natural we'd group together I guess.