Two days. I just have to get through two days of school and then we’re free for Thanksgiving break and I will be across the country with my family that I never see. It will be uncomfortable and irritating most of the time with old aunts pinching my cheeks and uncles claiming that they feel so old because I’m about to graduate high school, but at least it’ll get my mind off of Andrew and how we broke up yesterday.
Pulling myself out of bed on Monday morning is almost impossible. All of my limbs feel like they weigh a ton and my head aches from all of the crying, but I have to get to class. If Sienna and Mason didn’t come barging into my room twenty minutes before class started, however, I’m sure that I wouldn’t have been able to make it on time because I was still sitting in bed, waiting for the heaviness of my body to wear off but it never did.
“I didn’t shower,” I mumble as Mason pushes a pile of clothes into my arms.
“There’s no time,” She tells me. “You smell fine so just get dressed and hurry.”
“Fine,” I sigh, realizing that I didn’t get up in time to go for a run this morning, which is something that I do every morning. I guess I slept through my alarm though, because I don’t even remember waking up to turn it off or anything.
Sienna kindly ushers me into my bathroom and closes the door behind me so that I can get dressed out of my pajamas that I’ve worn for over 24 hours now. After I ended things with Andrew yesterday morning, I never changed out of my pajamas. Instead, I just called Mason, who came over right away with Sienna and we all stayed in my room all day while I pigged out (which is something that I rarely ever do) on ice cream and popcorn and Sienna even ordered pizza and I ate a lot of it. I also cried a lot and watched sad movies and then cried some more. It was a rough day.
Today, my face is sticky with tears and I think there’s crumbs nesting in my ratted hair but I brush them out since I don’t have enough time to shower. In the bathroom, I get dressed in the sweatshirt that Mason handed me that’s gray with a black lipstick kiss print on the front and my favorite pair of jeans. They are really comfortable and not too tight but they still look kind of cute. I’m too tired to put on real shoes though, so I just slip on my Ugg slippers and pull my hair up into a mess bun.
“How terrible do I look?” I wonder with a yawn as I grab my bag ten minutes later to head for the academic building and one of the toughest days that I’ve been through in a while. I’m already considering the option of skipping English today.
“Not so bad,” Sienna assures me as they both push me out of the room and into the hallway that’s now empty since most people are already on their way towards class. We have a little less than ten minutes to get there so the only way we’ll make it on time is if we speed walk, which is hard on my heavy feet but I don’t want to make my friends late so I push through it and keep up with their frantic pace.
“I’m sorry if I make you guys late,” I speak up as we’re halfway through campus.
“We don’t mind,” Mason assures me. “How are you feeling today? Any better?”
I think for a minute. Ever since they pulled me out of bed this morning, I haven’t really given myself any time to think about how I’m feeling on this gloomy morning, so I speed walk and think at the same time. That ache in my chest is still there like a black void where a chunk of my heart used to be. My eyes still feel heavy and swollen, holding back a heavy dam but doing a much better job at holding it back.
“Not really,” I finally decide. “I’m not collapsing into a puddle of tears though, so I guess that’s an improvement.”
“Are you sure you’ll be okay with seeing him today?” Sienna asks sympathetically from my right side. We enter the academic building with five minutes to go so I’m confident that we’ll make it on time but we continue to speed walk just in case.
“I don’t know,” I respond honestly. “It’ll definitely suck.”
“Well, it’ll be fine,” Mason pipes optimistically- too optimistically, actually. We approach the hallway where I have to split from Mason and go with Sienna to Calculus. “Just text me if you need anything- I’ll be there in a jiffy no matter what.”
Before I can say anything, she’s hurrying down the hallway and Sienna, with her elbow hooked onto mine, is pulling me towards our classroom so that we can make it there on time.
“Seriously, Stell, how are you feeling?” Sienna wonders as we get into the classroom and then right after we sit in our seats, the bell rings for class to start. We made it on time.
I shrug. “I feel like there’s a hole the size of Texas inside of me and it hurts like hell but what can I do about it now? It’s over so I just have to deal with it and then move on. I’m sure that I’ll feel better eventually.”
She sends me a sympathetic smile as Mrs. Turner begins her lesson on tangent, sine, and cosine stuff that I already learned sophomore year in trigonometry. Since I already know all of this stuff, I decide to rest my head on the desk and maybe I’ll sleep or just lay here for a while because Mrs. Turner is one of those teachers that doesn’t care if people sleep in her class but she won’t repeat anything or go over it again if you ask her and she knows that you were sleeping or something. “It’s your own fault” she says, but since I already know this stuff, I don’t mind just laying my head down and ignoring her math talk while I worry about the raging headache I have right now.
Psychology and choreography go by in a complete blur. Charlotte is in my psychology class but my back is turned to her and I’m ignoring her existence. It’s not like she’s the reason that I broke up with Andrew but she sure did facilitate it and I just really hate that girl so much.
After my first three periods, it’s time for lunch, which is something that I’m dreading due to the fact that I have lunch with Andrew and all of my friends. Maybe Andrew won’t be there- maybe he’ll go eat somewhere else or something, but I don’t think that’s going to happen considering my friends are his friends too.
I’m proven right when I buy my salad and then approach the large table that I sit at with all of my friends and Andrew is there, sitting on the edge beside Brian.
Everyone at the table shoots me a sympathetic frown and then starts glancing between me and Andrew, waiting for what’s about to happen. I avoid looking at Andrew at all costs as I sit down across from Sienna on the other side of the table and eat my salad.
“Are you okay?” Sienna asks me in a whisper so that nobody else can hear it except for Mason, who is sitting to my left.
I shrug and nibble on my salad. “I’m better than I thought that I’d be. I’m also pretty sure that by the end of the day, I’ll be a puddle of tears but I’m hoping that I can hold that off until I get back to my dorm after school.”
“We’ll be there for you,” Mason assures me with a nod.
“You should go be with your boyfriend, Mase,” I tell her.
She shakes her head at me. “No way. We have all thanksgiving break to spend with each other. Besides, Brian is going to be with Andrew, doing about the same thing that we’re going to be doing only in a more masculine way.”
“Right,” I sigh.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t say his name, I won’t do that again,” She tells me apologetically. “Do you want me to go talk to him? Because I’ll go talk to him if you want me to.”
“No, it’s fine. I don’t really want anything to do with him for a while,” I say. “I mean, you’re still friends with him. You guys can go hang out with him if you want, I’m just going to keep my distance.”
“Yeah, we totally understand,” Sienna nods. “Whatever you want, we totally support you.”
“Unless you want to shut us out, because I read that people do that and that’s not okay with me,” Mason adds. “But other than that, we totally support whatever you want to do.”
“I would never shut you guys out,” I tell them. Just the thought of surviving this without my two best friends just makes me sick. I’d never be able to go through this alone.
All through lunch, I talk to Sienna and Mason about stupid stuff- anything we could think of to get my mind off of Andrew, who is still sitting on the other side of the table from us but I refuse to even glance in his direction. It just hurts too much.
And the worst is still to come because right after lunch, I have English with Mason and Andrew and I sit right next to Andrew.
“I think I’m just going to skip,” I tell Mason as we walk down the hallway together towards the classroom.
“You shouldn’t do that,” She tells me. “I know that it’s really going to suck and it’ll be really hard, but it’ll make you look like a bigger person if you show up. And who knows? Maybe he’ll skip anyway.”
I hate that she’s right- if I skip, I’ll look weak and I don’t want to do that. I know that Andrew saw me at lunch so he’ll know that I’m fine and I’m just skipping English to avoid him. I have too much pride to admit how much this breakup is affecting me, although I’m sure he already knows that it’s killing me. Without any signs from me at all, he still knows me and he knows that I’m over dramatic about everything.
“Stella, you’d need stitches if you got a paper cut,” He’d told me once in a fit of laughter after I was hysterical about the ending of some sad chick flick.
He knows that this is killing me regardless if I show up to English or not. However, my pride will deny the fact that he already knows because I will refuse to admit my pain to him in any way and if I skipped English, it’d be like admitting to him that he’s killing me inside.
“Yeah, I’ll go,” I mumble, biting my lip to stop myself from crying or panicking or both. I have no idea how I’m going to face him. “But I’m going to hate it.”
We walk into the room and I’m a little bit relieved when Andrew isn’t there and I feel a glimpse of hope that he won’t show up. Just like he knows me, I know him and I know that he’s hurt by the breakup too. Even if he stopped acting like he cared about me in the past few weeks, I know that he really does care and he is hurt too. Hopefully, he will find it in himself not to come to English today.
I fold my arms on the desk and rest my head on them, completely exhausted and only halfway through the day. Closing my eyes, I hear Mason shuffling around in her bag beside me as she gets her English stuff out but I’m just too tired to even sit up so I’m going to just listen to Jackie today. She’s so cool that she doesn’t really care if we lay our heads down during class. She really doesn’t care about what we do as long as we aren’t disrupting the learning of others and we’re on time for her class. I’m not going to sleep though, because I need to pass this next test, but when she’s giving notes, I’m just going to listen and absorb and then, if I still don’t get it, I’ll copy down Mason’s notes later.
My head is facing Mason but I can still tell that Andrew has arrived because I hear his chair squeak slightly as he pulls it out and then sits down. I keep my eyes closed and pretend that I’m dead. That’s the only way that I’ll survive this hour of class. I’m just going to completely ignore him and pretend that he just doesn’t exist or anything.
That works for the whole hour. I sit there unmoving while I listen to Jackie talk about Shakespeare and all of his wonderful plays that nobody understands because of his weird yet oddly romantic English.
Once the period is over, I stand up and immediately turn my back to Andrew, facing Mason as we walk out of the room before I even have the chance to see him in my peripheral vision. I just don’t want to see him at all right now.
“Okay, so that wasn’t that bad but I’m pretty positive that I’m going to be skipping dance today. Charlotte is in that class and so is Andrew and I just really don’t want to go. I can’t just put my head down and ignore the world while I’m dancing,” I explain to Mason even though I know that she’ll talk me out of skipping.
And she does. By the time that we part ways and I am on my way to Anatomy, she has me convinced that I need to go to practice today. I have no idea how she does it, but she does.
However, it still takes the whole hour of my anatomy class to continue to convince myself that I need to go. I shouldn’t let my academic and dance performance start slacking just because I broke up with my boyfriend. I won’t let myself stoop to such a pathetic level.
It still sucks though, when I walk out of the locker room dressed in my dance clothes and I see Andrew by the wall having a conversation with Brian. It hurts so bad to see him that I consider just running out of the studio and going back to my dorm and crying my eyes out into my pillow right now. I don’t do that though, I just swallow the pain and promise myself that when practice is over, the first thing I have to do is suffocate myself in my pillow and tears. Just two more hours and then I’ll be free to cry in private. Hold it out until then and I’ll be fine.
“You okay?” Anthony approaches me from behind and puts a hand on my shoulder.
I shrug. “Not really.”
“Don’t let him get to you, Stell,” He tells me. “You’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, I know that I will be fine, but I am not fine right now,” I explain with a shaky breath.
Just as Andrew looks up and we make eye contact, Mr. Lynch announces that we’re going to start class so I look away and get into position, standing and facing the front of the classroom as I wait, along with the rest of the class, for Lynch to give us the signal to start stretches.
I notice that Charlotte happily prances into the spot right beside me, glances in my direction with an evil “I won” smirk, and then looks ahead again at our instructor.
I want to tear her to shreds, but I remain still with my face looking straight ahead as if I don’t even notice her. I remind myself that it’s not her fault that me and Andrew broke up. It was so much more than just Charlotte, but I still hate her because it was like Charlotte was the last straw. Maybe if she wasn’t such an imposing bitch, we could have come back from the ledge, stayed a couple, gotten through this rough path.
Mr. Lynch finds somebody to start stretches, and so we stretch and I wonder if Charlotte can feel the hatred I feel towards her radiating off of my body like an aura.
After stretches are done, we all start getting in place to start practice when Charlotte turns to me and grins a wide grin that I want to slap off of her smug European face. “I’m sorry about you and Andrew. Honestly, I am.”
I roll my eyes at her but I’m afraid of saying anything back because I’m afraid that if we start arguing, I’m actually going to punch her and then I’d get in trouble and I know for a fact that she’d just let me beat her up just so that I’d get in even more trouble and people would victimize her. I’m smarter than doing that to myself, so I walk away.
About halfway through dance practice, I’m counting in my head like I usually do. “1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8” because that’s how it goes and with each number, there’s a beat and with each beat, there’s a dance move. Putting a number with the position is how I remember the dances. However, I notice myself feeling a sense of being overwhelmed, like I’m suddenly being suffocated by a pillow. The people behind the pillow are probably Andrew and Charlotte and Anthony and my parents and everybody else that’s putting pressure on me in some way or another. It’s suffocating all at once and then I begin to feel dizzy. I’m dizzy and all I can think about is how Andrew is not my boyfriend anymore. I think about all of the memories that we share and how it is all over. The only memories I have of being his girlfriend are over, there are no more to be made. We are over. There is no more us to be made. I become even dizzier and then my body feels kind of numb and then I see somebody bump into my right side but because my body is so numb, I don’t feel it, I just see it happen and then, so that I don’t fall down, I bend down and put my hands on my knees and tell myself over and over again,
Please, God, don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Please, I am seriously begging you not to throw up right now.
And then, I see a blurry version of Brian running up to me and he’s saying something but it’s quiet and echoing, as if he’s at the end of a long tunnel, shouting at me, and I can’t understand what he’s saying. I can hear Mr. Lynch calling something out frantically, but again, he’s at the end of that tunnel and I can’t hear what he’s saying. And then, next to Brian, Anthony is there and I can see his lips moving and I can make out what he’s saying.
“Are you okay?” He asks me through the tunnel. “Stella, what’s wrong?”
And all I can think is,
Please don’t throw up. Whatever you do, do not throw up.
And then the second worst thing that could happen, it happens. Luckily, I don’t throw up in front of my whole class. Unluckily, my body goes limp and I pass out.
“So you don’t know why she just randomly passed out?” I hear somebody’s voice near my head.
“It was probably a mix of exhaustion and dehydration,” I hear one of the nurses from the clinic speaking. “Overexertion could have had a part in it as well.”
“Well, she can still go to practice and everything, right?” I finally place that voice as Brian’s and I wonder why he’s with me instead of Anthony or Andrew, and then I remember for about the fifteenth time in the past twenty-four hours that we broke up and it hits me like a brick wall over and over.
“Not tomorrow. No classes at all, she needs to be in bed. Not because of the dehydration or anything, but the fall that she took hit her head pretty hard. It’s a good thing that thanksgiving break is coming up because if it wasn’t, she’d be missing out on about a week of practice. However, I’d say that she’ll be good to go when she gets back from break,” The nurse explains to him.
I decide to open my eyes now because I’m tired of just laying here, so I open them and then I slowly sit up on the small nurse’s bed that I’m lying on.
“Whoa, hey, Stell,” Brian greets me as he helps me sit up and steady myself. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I got hit in the head with a brick,” I decide with a groan.
“Close. You got hit in the head with a linoleum floor,” He corrects me. “Well, the floor got hit by you, but I’m sure there’s no difference to you right now.”
“Not really,” I mumble. “Can I go back to my dorm now?”
“Let me just give you a pill for the headache,” The nurse who, now that I can see her, I recognize as Nurse Kenzie, who is in medical school right now and works here with the main nurses on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays as part of her internship or something like that. She’s one of the very few interns we have during the actual school year, actually. She hands me a large white pill that resembles chalk, and then a small Pixie cup of water. I throw the pill into the back of my throat and then take the shot of water as if it was vodka to make swallowing the pill easier, and then it’s down my throat.
“Awesome. Thanks a lot for your help, now I can go?” I wonder, just wanting to get back to my room and either sleep or cry but I’ll probably end up doing both by crying myself to sleep.
“Yes, you can go,” She confirms. “I’ll call you both out of the rest of class.”
“Wait, class isn’t over? How long have I been out of it?” I wonder curiously.
“Only about twenty minutes,” Brian supplies as he wraps an arm around my waist to help me off of the uncomfortable bed and onto my feet. I’m a little bit wobbly at first but I quickly get my bearings again and I’m fine. I notice that Brian has my gym bag over his shoulder and his own gym bag in his hand which means that I don’t have to go back to the studio to get my clothes or anything and Brian is an awesome friend.
We walk across campus together at a slow pace considering I’m still half awake and suffering from a major headache.
“So An… Um, Anthony is really worried about you,” Brian stumbles. I know that he was about to say Andrew but decided that he probably shouldn’t, which was a good idea but it’s too late now because I already knew what he was going to say.
“You talk to my brother?” I play dumb for a moment before continuing on. “Well, you can tell Anthony that I’m just fine.”
“Are you sure that you’re just fine?” He wonders skeptically.
“I’m as good as I can be right at this moment,” I inform him. “Except for the fact that my head feels like crap and, you know, I feel like my insides are all twisted up wrong and my whole world is spinning way too fast for me to comprehend anymore. And no, it is not because of my period. Okay so no, I’m not as good as I can be right at this moment. But that’s normal, isn’t it? To feel like this after a breakup like this one? It’ll get better. It doesn’t feel like it now, but the heartbreak and the world-stopping pain, it’ll all go away eventually. It all ends. That’s what everybody’s saying.”
“Wow. You’re like your own therapist,” Brian tires to joke, but I’m not in the mood to joke at all, and after I don’t even attempt to laugh, he clears his throat and frowns. We walk into the dorm building and cross the lobby towards the elevators.
“It does end. Right?” I wonder. “Because it’s like the world is moving too fast but it’s also not moving at all. And every time I blink, I miss him even more. And my head feels like it’s exploding but I think that’s just because of that floor punching me in the face.”
We go into the elevator and I lean heavily onto the wall so that I don’t have to stand on my own because my whole body just feels so heavy right now.
“Do you need some help getting to your room?” Brian wonders, not waiting for my answer before he wraps an arm under my arms to hold some of my weight for me. I think the pill the nurse gave me is setting in now because I’m feeling even more exhausted than I was a little bit ago.
“Thanks, Brian,” I sigh tiredly as we walk out of the elevator and down the hallway towards my room. When we get there, Brian pulls my key chain out of my gym bag and unlocks the door.
“Sure. I’ll stay with you until you get to sleep,” He assures me as we walk in and I stumble my way over to the cozy warm bed.
“Okay. Oh, and by the way, if you ever put Mason through this kind of shit, I will be very mean to you,” I inform my friend in all seriousness. Mason is such an innocent, sweet girl. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to see her this miserable. I wouldn’t be able to take it, that’s for sure.
“I know,” He chuckles and then I’m closing my eyes and almost instantaneously, I’m asleep and everything goes black.
*I will be updating pretty frequently now since I just finished the story- it's only 24 chapters- so that's something <3*