14 Minutes Before

14 minutes before.

“Thank you for everything.”

I heard a ping on my screen and read that sentence on my notifications. I opened Messenger and read the rest of your DM.

“I’m sorry for anything bad I’ve done to you or hurt you. Thank you for tolerating me until now. It’s been fun. Goodbye.”

I vaguely recall you sent something like this to me before.

I was still disturbed though. Your message was so final.

You were still online. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” I replied.

No response.

But you sent me something like this before. You came back to school after a couple days. I’ll ask you what you meant when I see you then, either tomorrow or the day after.

I closed the window and went back to my video game.

***

14 hours before.

You seemed normal.

Or as normal as you could have been. You were still weird, making jokes I didn’t really understand.

You never really fit in. Well, none of us really fit in. We liked nerdy things too much.

Terrance showed us watch how to watch anime for free on a pirate site. He really wanted us to watch Haruhi Suzumiya.

Jenna loved to gush over Sailor Moon. She always reminded us Sailor Mercury was her favorite.

I would always bring my dad’s video camera to school and film us hanging out, or make us act in little skits we made up on the spot.

Lexi was probably the most normal out of all of us, trying her best to keep up with the latest trends in fashion and desserts. And she just wouldn’t shut up about them.

The one thing that we all had in common was that we all liked your weirdness.

“What's worse than a dead baby nailed to a tree? A dead baby nailed to a hundred trees.”

You always said the darkest things at the most inappropriate moments. Sometimes you did it to stop Terrance and Jenna from bickering over something stupid again, like whether Naruto or Ichigo would win in a fight.

You always got my weird, obscure references even though you never really watched as many movies as me. We joked about everything. Nothing was off-limits. Not even dead babies. Not even hentai.

Yeah, we knew our way around the internet.

That day, I wanted to talk to you about something that has been on my mind for a while. You were the only one I could confide in.

I ran into you in the hallway during recess. You looked happy. You looked like you made up your mind about something, and you had no regrets about it.

I pulled you aside and asked you what would happen if I were to die tomorrow.

“I know what you mean. That there’s a hole in your heart that you can’t fill. Why bother when nothing matters? Well guess what? Who cares? It doesn’t matter that nothing matters. Is it worth ending it all over nothing?”

You were right. Thank you.

***

14 days before.

You broke up with Max.

I listened to you rant about him on Skype. You weren’t sad about it and you didn’t really cry. You just sounded pissed.

Max was the cool dude two years older than us. He would drive all six of us around in his beat-up five-seater Camry. He showed us how to have fun terrorizing the neighborhood on Halloween. We had a roman candle fight in his backyard.

Now you hated him for reasons I can’t recall.

You went on how you hated how much your mom looked pleased when you told her and that your dad didn’t really care. You were sick of switching between your mom’s and dad’s house every week. You hated that school started at 8 AM every weekday. You hated that our teachers were giving like 6 hours’ worth of homework every day even though school was already 8 hours long. You hated that detention was on Saturdays. You hated that school is a prison and we couldn’t learn what we wanted to learn. You hated that we were supposed to think about our own futures when we barely even knew anything about ourselves.

You were sick of the pointlessness of it all.

“Life fucking sucks, huh?”

“Yeah. Life fucking sucks.”

Secretly, I was glad you broke up with him. The entire time you were ranting to me, I was wondering whether I should confess to you. To tell you that I like you. That I like how you always tell it like it is. That you know how to express yourself. That you know how to deal with everything with that confidence and sense of humor of yours. That you are mentally stronger than I’ll ever be. That everything feels alright with I’m with you. That I want to rage against the world together with you.

…

Nah, it’s probably too soon. I’ll give you some time.

We have 3 more years until graduation, right?

Until then, I’ll see you tomorrow, always.