Greene's intentions for getting me back into school life are working, but fuck me. My classes are so boring without Chance's relief in our shared study periods or our shared lessons.
At least I have Max. Thank fuck for Max.
He constantly checks on me throughout the day after the incident with Lilia Engel in the performance hall, but thankfully he doesn't ask me if I'm okay. Instead, he just keeps an eye on me like the good friend he is.
We're sat in physics class, and our teacher is going on about black holes. How there's no time or space within them. How we have no idea what they really look like inside.
Chance would roll her eyes at this; why does it matter what's going on in space? Why does it matter what's going on up there when there's already so much going on down here?
Chance would be too preoccupied with the state of women and their lack of education in third-world countries. She'd be too busy trying to save others, instead of thinking about the 'stupid black void' of space, as she used to call it.
A sharp pain pierces my finger, and, frowning, I look down to see that I'm digging my pen into my skin again. It doesn't hurt as much as it should when the blood starts dribbling down my finger, gathering in the crook of my hand.
"Rory..." Max speaks, but he feels so, so far away. Like I can't reach him. Like me chasing after Chance is pushing him away from me
A few blurred seconds later and Max has got me out in the hallway, trying to get me to calm down. But it's not working; my breathing is getting shallower and more ragged by the second.
"Rory, you have to chill out." Max grabs my shoulders and shakes me hard.
I clutch onto his forearms, gritting my teeth as I try to will air back into my body. But it's like I don't think I deserve it; like I don't think I deserve to be happy or alive without Chance. Like my existence depends entirely upon hers.
Dropping down to the ground, my fists make contact with the hard floor — the pain making me blink. Making me somehow remember my will to live.
I let out a shaky breath and breathe in a strong one. Slowing down my heart rate so my recovering body can catch up to my racing brain. Running my hands through my slightly sweaty hair, I lean back against the wall.
Instead of asking me if I'm okay, which I'm clearly not, Max sits down beside me in the hallway — watching me as I pant and shake my head.
Why the fuck can't I stay in one piece without her? Why the fuck am I so dependent on her?
"Wanna go skating tonight?" Max asks like it's any other after-class conversation. Though he's not pretending I didn't just break down, he's also not making a huge deal out of it either.
"Sure." I nod, grateful for both his friendship and how he deals with my 'situations'.
I've had not one, but two situations in the past couple of days, and both times Max has helped me through them.
Thank fuck for Max.
Biting my lower lip, I mull the words over in my head before speaking, "I think I'm ready to talk about Chance. Tonight. To you."
"That means a lot to me, Rory." He smiles at me softly, before rushing out, "That you trust me that much, I mean..."
"Maybe Greene's right," I sigh a little, "Maybe I do need to talk about it before I can heal."
Max shrugs. "Maybe."
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."
"Don't you want more from life?" Chance asked me, watching the firelight flicker before her tanned summery face. Those emerald eyes of hers clouded over slightly, though I wasn't sure if it was just from the smoke or something else.
"I definitely don't want it to end." I shrugged, unsure of what she was really asking me.
She'd do that to me sometimes. Ask me something confusing, just to make me sound like a fucking idiot.
"I mean, wouldn't life be so much more exciting if we just... ran away?" She turned to me, eyes clearing and lighting up eagerly at me, "Just me and you, against the world?"
"I can't just run away, Chance." I glanced across at her, wondering what the fuck she was on about. "I mean, we've got lives here, in New Ridge."
"Lives that will finish after we sit our A Levels. Lives that won't mean anything. Don't you want to mean something, Rory? Don't you want to be someone? Don't you want the name Rory Ashton Brewer to mean anything?"
I bristled at that; for ages, my biggest ambition had been to succeed and make something of my life. And Chance knew that. "How will running away help us?"
Up until that point, I thought she was just speaking hypothetically, whimsical half-drunk imaginings. But then something in her manner changed, and she took on a defensive front.
"You don't get it, do you?" She hugged her knees up to her chest, trying to make herself as small as possible. "My family is falling to pieces around me, whilst yours is fucking perfect. Of course, Rory Brewer doesn't want to run away from his perfect life and his perfect parents and his perfect grades and his perfect plan for the future."
"Hey, I never said that!" I exclaimed at her, feeling the wuzzy rush of alcohol hit my head.
Unfolding herself, Chance leapt up to her feet, throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation. "Fuck, Rory. Why are you even friends with me?"
The worst part was the fact that I knew Chance wasn't drunk; she could drink three bottles of that cheap, warm rosé and not feel a fucking thing.
I clambered up too, cursing my lack of power when I'd had more than a few sips of alcohol.
"Because I fucking love you, Chance. I've loved you for years." I admitted, throwing my words out at her, admitting the love I'd kept hidden away for so many years.
But now it was too late. I should've told her I loved her sooner, maybe it could've changed her mind about life.
"You shouldn't love me." She shook her head rapidly, trying to deny it. "I'm not worthy of being your friend, or of having your love."
"And why not?" I stepped towards her challengingly. I was not ready to let this slide easily.
"Because you put me on this pedestal and expect me to be this perfect, golden girl!" She cried out at me, grasping at her hair manically as she desperately panted for air, "Because I'm messier and more fucked up than you let yourself believe. Fuck Rory, I was the one that caused my parents to divorce. It's my fault that my sister's gone, that my mum and brother are gone."
"You didn't, you don't know that you did." I stepped close to her and held onto her arms, "You are the most beautiful soul I know. I don't care what anyone else says. Chance Noah Harn, I love you with all my heart and I'd never let anything bad ever happen to you."
Chance was always beautiful, but that night she'd descended into trouble and trauma before I knew what was going on — I was so stupid and so naïve to think I could save her. To think that my love alone would help her.
"Too little, too late." She whispered in the firelight, a single teardrop gliding down her cheek.
Then she turned and ran, slipping out of my grasp. Her garden backed onto the forest and she fled before I could get another word out.
"Chance, wait!" I ran after her, chasing her up through the forest. Cursing the branches and my drunk, fuzzy head. Cursing everyone and everything. Mostly cursing myself.
I lost track of time as I ran through the woodland, trying desperately to keep an eye on Chance through the thickening undergrowth. She turned a corner quickly, throwing me off balance, but I kept running all the same — my lungs burning and my throat screaming.
"Chance!!!"
Before I knew it, I'd chased her to the edge of a waterfall, hidden deep in the woods — deeper into the woods than I'd ever been.
How the fuck did we end up there?
"Chance, wait..." I softened my voice as she stepped dangerously close to the edge. "Please, Chance, you have so much to live for."
"Do I?" She asked, not once turning around to face me.
"I don't understand... What the fuck is happening?" My head span in my utter and total confusion — time seemed to slow for that brief moment; how had we descended into such chaos so quickly?
"Don't look for me." Was the last thing Chance said to me before she tipped forwards over the ledge of the waterfall — arms outstretched, reaching for that freedom she so desperately desired.
"And then she was fucking gone." I shut my eyes, a single tear escaping down my face.
Remembering how I screamed and screamed for her to come back to me. How it took anyone two days to realise the two of us were missing. Two days that I spent alone and unconscious, out in the wilderness, before anyone came and found me.
How could they forget her so quickly? That was the hard part; whilst I'm unmemorable, Chance Noah Harn could never be forgotten. At least, not for me.
Max is silent for a moment, before he figures it out, "You didn't tell anyone because you didn't want anyone thinking that you had a motive against her."
"I know there were other reasons, but I was the one who pushed her to run away." I shake my head, "And now the police think she's dead. But I know she's not. She can't be."
"You know what you have to do, don't you?" He stares across at me, dark eyebrows folding downwards.
"What?"
"You have to remember her. I don't give a fuck about what Greene says; if you want to find out why she did what she did, you have to remember her as much as possible." Max says strongly, never once letting his eyes glide away from mine. "Remember her, and then maybe you'll figure out what really happened."
"Why are you so adamant I do this?" I frown back at him; I'm pretty sure Max has always hated Chance.
"Because even I know that Chance Harn's story, no matter how fucked up it might be, is far from over. And it's up to you to either continue that story, or conclude it."
Someone else who sees the beauty of
The End.
I realise with a little smile.
And I sure as hell won't stop remembering Chance.