Fallout

Hayley Ecker

Ms. Tompkins

World Lit Honors 1st Period

24 April 2015

Fallout

“We need to talk.”

I nodded nonchalantly and followed Dylan to the side of the hallway, away from our group of friends. I was eager to get a chance to speak to him without the constant snickering of our friends in the background. Since our ten-month anniversary was on the horizon, I was hoping to give him some thoughts on how to spend the day. The weather had been surprisingly warm for December and I wanted to take advantage of the sunny skies while they lasted.

He led me to the hallway, hands intertwined with each others’. Dylan suddenly stopped and turned around, with a nervous glint in his eyes. I had been a witness to this twitchy, nervous side of him, but I paid it no heed. Maybe he’s just excited for the big day!

“So… I know we’ve been distant lately…,” he started shakily.

Have we? I couldn’t remember anything feeling misplaced between us. Just the other day, in fact, we were planning on what would happen if we stayed together after high school ended. He even waved goodbye to my mother and I after he waited with me after school. I tried scrounging my memory for any moments of distance but none came to mind… I pulled the sleeves of my jacket past my hands and bunched them up, deep in thought. I pressed my hand to my chin and crossed my arm across my torso.

The friendly giggles from my friends suddenly paused for a minute. Dylan stared at the pavement and then met my curious eyes with his dismal ones, “I think we’re too different for each other.”

Like a vase, the silence shattered with the sound of my light-hearted, amused laughter. This is just another joke, I thought to myself. Like an April Fool’s Day joke, but in December. He had tried something like this before. I wasn’t going to fall for another one of his tricks. There was no way Dylan could ever say something like that and not mean it!

“Very funny. This is another joke, isn’t it?” I said all-too-knowingly. I shook my head, still amused with Dylan’s joke, and walked myself back to the bench where my friends sat. looking back at the rest of our friends whose laughter was now aimed at the conversation between Dylan and I.

“No! I’m not joking!” Dylan yelled, causing all the students around us to stick their heads up like meerkats, interested in the stir that I had caused. His cheerful, beaming expression was replaced with a serious, stern frown, a look that I had no idea existed in the wardrobe of his personality.

The snickering continued while he attempted to bring some sense into the misinterpreted joke. Not longer aimed at a mindless joke being share, but now aimed at the joke I thought that I had just heard.

A mindless, attacking voice rang out from the group. “Listen to him!” someone yelled, clearly annoyed by my aloofness. “He isn’t joking!”

It was in that second, that the siege of mocking laughter and words of aggression finally spelled out the truth of what was happening. To confirm the jab from my “friend” I faced Dylan, crossing my arms across my chest to brace myself for the impending sorrow about to flip my world.

“Is this true?”

His head slowly bobbed in a deploring manner. The smile on my face waned and I froze in my seat on the bench. Was this really the end? Is this really a break-up?

“Are you serious?” I muttered repeatedly, more to myself. I couldn’t even listen to Dylan’s justification because of the amount of denial I was in. How could the closest person I knew suddenly decide that they don’t want me anymore? Why did none of those snickering idiots in the background warn me beforehand?

“I’m sorry… but we can still be friends…” his voice trailed off, and he shuffled backwards just to re-emphasize the distance that was now between us.

There was no way I could ever go back to friendly terms with someone who I had shared a piece of my soul with. No one, especially not the group of cackling, friendly imposters, had been through something like this. The people who I thought I could actually find sanctuary and balance with had gone on knowing all along what was about to happen. And not a single warning was shot my way. Why?

“‘Kay,” I murmured. I turned my back away from my former partner-in-crime and my used-to-be-flock-of-comrades, hiding the somber look on my face. I pulled out the phone from my back pocket and called my mother, asking if she could take me home. The idea of me trying to hold back tears while taking Trigonometry and Chemistry notes was inconceivable and I couldn’t bare to look any of those traitors in their eyes.

Throughout the phone call, I was successful in holding back the crack in my voice from the incipient flood of tears. I gently placed my phone back in my pocket and hauled my mountainous backpack over my shoulder as I prepared to wait for my savior out in the front of the school. I took a few steps towards the solitary single road ahead of me and peered over my shoulder to look once more at the group I had long considered my friends. Some of them giggled at the sight of my watering eyes while others just stared, their eyes piercing me straight through my gut, practically screaming Just go already.

And so I did. Starting the down the long arduous path to where my mother would be waiting, I walked away from the life and friendships I once knew.

And that’s when the first tears began to pour.