She'd dumped him.
Jeremy was running down the street, hardly looking where he was going through the tears that were streaming down his face.
She didn't love him anymore.
And she'd done it at their favorite coffee shop. When he'd gotten the text from Christine that morning, "Jeremy, we need to talk.", he knew it had to be something serious. But he hadn't expected this.
He stopped his wild sprint, and leant against a tree that was growing on the sidewalk, panting hard and sobbing harder. He struggled to breathe in the cold, December air. The darkness had fallen hours earlier and he was afforded some privacy in the long stretch between lampposts.
At least the street was deserted that evening, so no one could hear him crying his broken heart out against a tree in the bright light of a seven eleven.
He looked pathetic. He was pathetic.
Had Christine ever even loved him? Had it been fake the entire time? She was a good actress, after all.
It hurt to think about the times they had spent with each other over the past 3 months they had been together. Jeremy pulled out his phone, wiping his face on his jacket sleeve, making the world slightly less of an indistinct blur. He hiccuped violently as he opened the gallery app. What was a little more pain now, anyway?
After "The Play Incident" had been behind them, Christine and Jeremy had started dating. And they were the perfect couple.
Or so he had thought anyway.
They sat up late at night, cuddling and watching bad movies on Netflix just to laugh at them together. They went out to the nearby park and sat on the grass talking about nothing for hours.
Jeremy did his best to be the most perfect boyfriend he could possibly be. He wanted to make Christine smile and laugh everyday, he listened to all her problems and anxieties, brought her chocolate when she was going through some rough patches.
But apparently his best wasn't good enough.
Jeremy walked into the small coffee shop, the bell signaling his entrance. He walked around and eventually spotted Christine, sitting in the farthest alcove, 'the lovers table' as they called it here. It was the most tucked away and offered the most amount privacy. Couples of hopelessly romantic teenagers liked to come there and make out.
But the look on Christine's face was serious, Jeremy couldn't help but feel she'd picked the private corner for another reason. He smiled and waved at her as he walked over. She gave him a weak smile in return that he couldn't help but feel was slightly forced.
This concerned him even more. He sat down in front of her, his smile faltering slightly.
"What's wrong, Christine? You look worried." That makes me worry. He said in his usual tone that lacked any kind of confidence that Christine had said was 'really cute' just weeks prior. Probably another lie.
"Oh, Jeremy... You're a sweet guy, really..." She didn't look him in the eyes, just stared resolutely at the hot chocolate she had barely touched. "And you're a great friend but... Oh, this is harder than I thought it would be, I... don't think we should see each other anymore." She said the last part in one breath and then looked straight into his shocked face, with a look of guilt and sadness.
Jeremy just froze. Christine started going off about how it would be better it they saw other people, and how the just don't click together like they use too.
But he stopped listening.
A million question fought amongst themselves in his head, a buzz of confusion and words. But one stood out from the rest.
"There's someone else, isn't there?" His question cut through Christine's rambling like the knife through his heart. She stared at him with a look he couldn't stand. It made him angry.
Pity.
"Tell me, Christine, who was it?" He said, his voice colder than the air outside would ever be. He'd never acted like this. If he had been less blinded by anger and hurt, he would have been scared of himself.
Christine sure was. "There... was no one, Jeremy." But it was a lie, clearly written on her face. With all her talents, she couldn't even lie when it counted.
"Who, Christine!?" He was almost standing up in his chair, at the time he didn't get it but after reviewing the events, the choice of table was now clear to him. "It was Jake, wasn't it?"
She didn't answer.
He should have known. Jake wasn't a better boyfriend than him, he treated Christine like a prize he had won at a fair game. But he had something Jeremy would never have. Popularity.
"Since when?" Jeremy felt like he was going to break down, but he would do that later, when he knew he was alone. Christine had tears starting to form in her eyes.
Jeremy turned off his phone, his tears having lessened considerably. He no longer had pictures of him and Christine on his phone. Now the only light in the vicinity was the constant, harsh light coming from the store front of a seven eleven.
Jeremy got up and put his phone in his pocket. All the running and crying had left him parched so he slowly and silently crossed the street devoid of any cars and entered the small shop.
The owner was an older man, in his mid to late 60s who had a kind, caring looking face. He offered a warm smile to the teen who couldn't muster the strength to give one back.
Jeremy walked around the store blearily, not sure what he was looking for till he came to the drink section. Water, juice, energy drinks, sodas, cold coffee... and beer. Lots of beer.
He had a thought that seemed somewhat rational at the time.
He would get drunk.
He couldn't be in pain if he could remember why he should be. Only one slight problem. He was 17, four years away from ever touching an alcoholic beverage let alone buy a pack at seven eleven.
But he didn't care, not right then and there. His broken heart and shattered mind were on board with the idea of drinking till he blacked out. So he grabbed a random 6 pack of beers, fully prepared to talk his way into getting it.
He walked up to the front counter and placed his beers in front of the cashier. The man looked up at Jeremy, with a slightly sad expression in his blue eyes.
"I'm gonna need to see some ID there, kid." He said, softly. This clearly wasn't his first rodeo.
He was an idiot for thinking that would work. He bowed his head like a child who'd been caught breaking the rules. The universe clearly didn't want him to drown his heartache in alcohol.
"Please, sir, I really need-" but his voice broke again and new tears found their way down his face and into his jacket.
He only wanted some beer, was that too much to ask for, in this world of misery. What did he deserve to be dumped by Christine, he'd been nothing but perfect the whole time. It wasn't fair!
"Why did she leave me?" He clutched the edge of the cold counter and cried in front of some random stranger. This was definitely a mortification event he would never get over. One thing he knew for sure though was that he wasn't getting those beers. He hardly looked 16.
The man leant over the counter and pat Jeremy in the back. "Its gonna be alright, kid, you'll pull through in the end." Jeremy just cried harder, trying to muffle the sound with his jacket.
"I can't give you the beers, but tell you what..." He reached under the counter and pulled out a few vividly colored bottles.
"I'll give you a discount on something I can sell you. My kids used to go nuts for this stuff."
He put the bottles into a plastic bag and rung it up on the till.
"So how about that?" Jeremy just blindly nodded, drying his eyes. Anything if it meant he could just go home.
He pulled out his wallet and passed over some bills. The man handed him his change and the plastic bag with his customary warm smile. Jeremy thanked him and turned to leave.
"You'll find someone else, eventually, son, the world is full of people yet." He said warmly. "One day you'll meet the one and you'll never look back."
Jeremy turned and looked at him "T-thanks..." and started walking back home. He was a wreck.
The house was dark when he got there, his dad having obviously already gone to bed. He silently unlocked the front door and made his way through the kitchen and up the stairs to his room.
When he was in his room, he closed the door gently and locked the door. He carelessly threw the plastic bag in the direction of his bed, but judging by the sound of several heavy things thudding against the floor, he had obviously failed. He flicked on the lights and trudged over to collapse onto his bed, stepping over the colorful assortment of bottles now strewn about the place.
He lay on his back staring at the ceiling.
How could he have missed it! Was their relationship really that bad? He tried to think over the past few weeks if Christine had acted any differently at all.
It started maybe 2 or 3 weeks ago, she's started pulling back a little bit. She seemed to be busy more often. They hung out less often. She smiled at him less.
Was she at Jake's the whole time?
All those excuses of more homework that she gave were just a front so she could go cheat on him behind his back.
Jeremy has never felt more betrayed in his life.
But he didn't seem to have the strength to cry anymore.
If there was one thing he wanted above everything else, it was to talk to Michael. His best friend for years. But Michael had left, transfered to another school, leaving Jeremy alone, without his player 2. Their friendship was never quite the same after the Squip had come and gone, but Jeremy was sure he would never share such a strong bond with anybody for the rest of his loser life.
Sometimes, life just really sucks.
He started coughing hard and suddenly realized how thirsty he really was.
He sat up on his bed and reached down to grab one of the bottle off the floor at random. He unscrewed the cap and took a long sip. Instantly, the sickly sweet, fizzy taste of Mountain Dew filled his mouth.
Jeremy's body spazzed and he spat out the contents of his mouth.
Mountain Dew.
But it was too late, he'd already swallowed loads of the stuff. He sat, frozen, on his bed, hardly daring to breathe. What had he done?
Minutes passed, and nothing happened. He let out a shaky sigh and slowly relaxed his muscles.
Then a blinding pain shot trough his head, like a flaming sword was forcing its way through his brain. Jeremy cried out in pain and grabbed the sides of his head, twisting his body around to muffle his yelling in his pillow, in an attempt to stop his dad from hearing.
No, no, no, no, no, no... this was not happening.
It couldn't.
Christine has taken the Mountain Dew Red. The Squip was gone. Right? They'd destroyed it.
Right?
Wait, Mountain Dew red.
He dove off his bed and on to the floor. He desperately scrambled to pick up all the bottles from where they lay on the carpeted floor and dumped them on his bed.
There were 4 one liter bottles of Mountain Dew, but to Jeremy's great despair, none of them were red. There was a green one, a blue one, a purple one and a white one.
Jeremy groaned, the combined stress of being dumped and his headache were weighing down on him. He looked around the room fearfully. If 'it' was back surely it would materialize and take over his body to act out its wish of world domination.
But again, nothing. Jeremy wasn't relaxing this time, however. He sorely wished he had someone to talk too.
Very carefully, Jeremy got up and grabbed a thermos flask of cold water from his desk. Hopefully it would lessen the throbbing inside his head.
He placed the flask on his burning forehead and sighed, then opened it and downed a few mouthfuls.
Until a bright flash of blue light had him choking violently. He slammed the flask back down on his desk and adopted a battle stance. Preparing himself for the worst. The light assembled itself into a glitching form, seemingly having difficulty making anything recognizable.
Jeremy started breathing erratically. How could he have done something so unimaginably stupid? He took a step back from the amalgamation of glitching blue light.
This was obviously the wrong move, the thing started glitching more violently and came closer with difficulty. It was coming together, though, and assuming a more and more human-like figure. First the feet formed, wearing their customary dress shoes, then it moved up the legs, up to the suited torso, the arms and finally, the bowed head.
But something was wrong.
This couldn't have been the same Squip as before. It was wearing the same clothes but they looked like they had seen better days, ripped up and clearly uncared for. The head was still bowed, but the thing's hair was wild, sticking up at odd angles, clearly having not seen a comb for a long time. It looked like it had been in a fight or had roughed it outside for days.
Jeremy stood, fixed, eyes not leaving the unmoving intruder. He regrets putting down his flask, he would have at least had a weapon. But how do you fight an apparition in your mind?
It had done nothing but sit on the floor, on its knees, head bowed down, not saying a word. It was still glitching way too much. It looked wholly unlike the cool, dominating figure it had been before. Always an insulting quip on its lips, ready to shock Jeremy if he put a toe out of line.
"Um..." Jeremy took a shaky step towards it.
This provoked a reaction, some movement. The Squip slowly raised its head.
Jeremy froze again. Something was definitely wrong.
The look on the Squips face was one of pure pain, desperation. Silent, bright blue tears fell from its desperate eyes below its nest of wild dark brown hair, down its face and onto the carpeted floor. Its eyes widened when they came to rest on Jeremy's frozen frame.
"J-Jeremy?" It said, with a broken voice. It shook him how desperate it sounded.
"Uh, Yeah?" He was unprepared for this, what was he suppose to do? There was a broken Squip on its knees, crying in the middle of his room.
The reaction was instantaneous. The Squip made a loud strangled gasp like sound, though Jeremy didn't understand why the intake of breath if it didn't need to breathe. It tried to get on its feet but fell back on ground. Undeterred, it got on its hands and started crawling towards him, fueled by pure desperation. Jeremy couldn't move or process what was happening.
When the Squip arrived at Jeremy's legs it flung its arms around them and collapsed back on the floor, clutching at him like a drowning man to his lifeline. It started sobbing harder. And then loudly mutter.
"I-I'm sorry, Jer-emy." It buried its head in Jeremy's left thigh, its tears cold against his skin through his jeans. He was at a loss. "I try-ed, I re-ally d-did! Plea-se forgiv-e me. I'll.. I'll try h-harder, I p-romise! Plea-se don't d-deactiv-ate me a-again." It devolved back into desperate crying, clutching harder at his legs.
This was surreal. The Squip was easily a head taller than him. Jeremy didn't know what to say, what to think. "H-Hey, it's ok, just stop crying, alright?"
What if its system was malfunctioning. Yes, that was it. Maybe being deactivated for so long messed with its computing system. The Squip wasn't really listening to his advice, but it did reduced the volume of its sobs, anyway.
"Uh, I need you to do something for me, if that's alright with you..." It was awkward talking down to it like this, he was so used to being spoken down to.
The Squip's head jerked back from his thigh to look up at him. Jeremy couldn't get over the despair and pain in its blue eyes.
"Anything! W-what can I-I do?!" It said, and stared straight at him, desperate to please him, prove himself to be worth keeping around.
"Um, could you reboot for me?" Jeremy prayed this would work, he didn't know what he would do if it didn't. A brief look of confusion passed over its pained featured, but it was gone the next instant. "Of c-course."
It slowly removed its arms from around his legs as if it physically pained him to do so, and sat back on its heels. "O-one mo-ment." It stared straight ahead for a second, then its expression went blank and it fell on its back. Jeremy sat back on his bed, stunned.
He stared at the Squip as it did nothing for a few seconds, then a minute. He started to feel like he had done something wrong, but after being prone for a bit, the supercomputer became animated again.
"How do you... feel? I mean, are you okay?" Jeremy asked it, cautiously.
It slowly sat up, it's face still blank. It turned to look at Jeremy and nodded robotically. "I am fully functional." Any trace of emotion had completely vanished from the Squip, it was almost scary. The reboot had washed away the previous, desperate, damaged Squip and replaced it with an emotionless robot.
"Wha- really?" His reboot idea worked, but was it actually the right one? The Squip got up, robotically. It was unnatural.
"You are tired, it is late. You should sleep for a few hours for your body to function properly tomorrow." It said in a monotone voice. There was absolutely no variation in his tone. It scared him slightly. Jeremy was indeed extremely tired and was holding up exceedingly well concidering the things he'd gone through that day.
The Squip stared at him as he removed his jeans, Jeremy was slightly uncomfortable but he couldn't bring himself to say anything. He walked over to the door and flicked off the light. Now the only illumination for the room was coming from the Squip, the blue light making the room seem as if it were underwater.
He climbed into bed and tried to sleep but found that he was unable to relax with the Squip staring at him with those dead eyes.
"Are you gonna stand there and watch me all night?" He said, half jokingly, half concerned, to the staring computer.
The Squip struggled to stay emotionless. It opened its mouth to say something, shut it, swallowed hard and said. "I can... leave if you would like that." It's eyes seemed unable to stop from conveying how much he did not want to go.
So the reboot had not really worked. It was merely the Squip putting up walls to stop from showing any emotions whatsoever. Jeremy didn't know how he felt about that. Sure, a broken, sobbing Squip clutching at his shins for dear life wasn't ideal, but an cold, emotionless husk of a Squip wasn't much better. At least it hadn't tried anything... World dominaty yet.
"No, its... Fine. Good night, I guess." He rolled over to face the wall. He could still feel the stare of the Squip on his back, but hopefully he would be too tired to lose sleep over it.
He decided to try something, he slowed down his breathing and his heart rate fell and he pretended to fall asleep. For a few minutes there was no movement from the Squip, but after a good ten minutes it got closer. Jeremy felt a cold hand touch his cheek. Well, 'felt'. his body told him that's what was happening anyway.
The hand carressed his cheek, then moved up and started petting his hair. "I'll be better for you, Jeremy. I promise I won't be such a failure. I'll make you see why you should keep me." The hand carded through his hair. "Please don't get rid of me, I'll do anything. Please..."
The Squip stopped touching his hair and bend down low over Jeremy's bed. Jeremy was slightly scared at the lack of movement when suddenly he felt the Squip get into the bed with him. He almost gave himself away when he felt a cold chest press against his back. The Squip gently put its arm around Jeremy's chest, in a fiercly protective hug.
Jeremy went to sleep at some point with the Squip's whispers in his ear.
"Please let me stay...please let me stay... Please let me stay."