"thank you to the people who donated, and even if you didn't donate, thanks for watching and spreading awareness. this has been super fun and i hope you guys enjoyed this stream as much as i did. make sure you stick around for the next charity stream which will be a month from now! thank you all again, and goodbye for now." i ended the stream with a short and simple message. we'd raised a lot of money and i couldn't be more proud of my community. i owed them everything.
i found that i was unable to stop thinking about a message i saw pop up in the chat about an hour before.
hey, it's ethan from high school. do you remember me?
i pretended that i hadn't acknowledged the message during the actual stream, but i couldn't get it off my mind. it was bugging me, but i didn't know why. i was certain i'd never met a guy called ethan in my entire life, let alone went to school with one. maybe he was one of those weird kids that i barely talked to but he thought we were friends anyway.
"great stream babe." i heard a voice say. i turned around and saw eveline standing behind my chair. she bent down and kissed me on the cheek, making me smile.
"thank you." that's when i realised that maybe she could help me out with the situation.
"we went to high school together, right?" she nodded slowly, unsure of where the conversation was going. we didn't talk about high school a lot, even though we went to the exact same one. from what i could remember, me and her didn't know each other very well in high school, so that's probably why. we reconnected when i went to college since she ended up going to the same one. we became really good friends and for a while she was the closest friend i had. after a while we got even closer, and eventually decided to give dating a shot. we'd been together ever since.
"do you remember anybody called ethan?" she stared at me with a blank expression before looking off to the side slightly. she was taking a while to reply. she was probably just thinking.
"nope. why?"
"some guy left a comment on my stream. he said his name was ethan and that we apparently went to high school together." she looked angry. was there something she wasn't telling me?
"probably just some random guy trying to act like your friend. i wouldn't worry about it anymore." she then left the room with a frown on her face. she didn't say goodbye, she didn't give me a hug before leaving like she normally did. well if that wasn't weird i don't know what is...
i contemplated asking mark if he remembered a guy called ethan, but i decided to just take my girlfriend's advice and not worry about it anymore. she was right. if i did go to school with a guy called ethan, i would remember him. it was just some guy acting like my friend. he just wanted fame and clout. other people had tried playing that game before, and it never worked out. but even though i had convinced myself of all this, i still found myself thinking about it constantly. why couldn't i stop? why was it having so much of an effect on me?