Concerning Chance ✔

FIVE

Thankfully I make it to the end of the day without any more breakdowns; though that isn't to say I didn't keep seeing Chance in the corridors. Greene's ideas of trying to get her out of my head haven't been working. It's like my brain keeps making up scenarios in which she'd be in; I can't go more than an hour without seeing some sort of a Chance-like apparition.

After the disastrous and embarrassing end to physics — where the class came out to see me almost crying on the floor — I avoided everyone except Max for the rest of the day. Lilia tried to sit with us at lunch, but I made up some bullshit about how we were trying to revise physics, and she'd just get bored.

I'd be lying if I said the hurt on her face didn't pain me whatsoever.

I guess I'm empathetic like that

I was too preoccupied with equations in maths to even have the brain capacity to daydream about anyone or anything apart from the squiggles on the page in front of me. Likewise, the philosophical questions being asked in Religious Studies were too all-consuming for any other benign thought to penetrate my brain.

Computer science, my third and final A Level option (and the only one without Max), was the closest I came to a third breakdown. I kept my eyes on the coding all the while, never allowing my concentration to slip elsewhere.

And then at last, I can go home, grab my skateboard and the Count and head to the skatepark — where I'm due to meet Max in about 15 minutes.

I skate there, hands casually in my pockets and the Count running alongside me. He's literally the dream dog; amazing off his lead and manages to refrain from chasing cats on the way across town to the skatepark.

Max and I end up arriving in sync, even though we both come from different directions.

"How was the rest of your day?" Is the first thing that Max asks, and I kinda feel like a bit of a hopeless case.

Shrugging, I reply, "Yeah it was okay. You?"

"Not bad." He shrugs back at me, before dropping his board into the bowl and skating a couple of rings of it.

The Count plonks his ass down unceremoniously and sits there panting at me for a couple of minutes — eyes expectant.

Suddenly not feeling in the mood to skate anymore, I sit down on the edge of the graffiti-covered bowl near the Count. I watch Max skate, without really seeing him.

It feels like I'm about to do the hardest thing of my life in telling Max about that night. It's true that I only know fragments, and that my memory is hazy... but I also know how badly I need to get it off my chest — tell someone, anyone about it.

"Wanna talk about it?" Max sits down next to me.

I nod slowly, "I think I'm ready, yeah. Will you, umm, just be patient with me?"

"Yeah, of course." He nods next to me, then sits and waits for me to start.

"It was a couple of weeks ago, on the last day of summer when that night happened." I begin to explain, taking time over my words, "Chance and I'd had the best summer we'd ever had together, barely spending any time apart and doing almost everything together."

"I know." Max smiles sadly beside me, but I don't have the concentration to focus on him right now; I have to keep talking about Chance whilst I still can, whilst I still have the words in my head.

"We had a bonfire in her back garden on the last night of summer. It was wild and crazy like we were little kids all over again. Apart from the fact we were drinking cheap wine." I laugh lightly to myself; we'd acted like total lunatics. "Then she got sad, after a while. Started talking about how stupidly pointless the future is. How we'd grow up, go our separate ways... marry and have kids with people we didn't love, grow old and then just die."