November, Age 16
Well, Jack was right–technically Iamdoing it.
It’s been fucking awful.
We’re almost three months into the school year, and the dull ache in my chest is pretty much constant. Every time I see Eleanor laughing or talking with her friends, it’s a punch to the gut–a daily reminder of how good I almost had it.
The only class we have together this year is, once again, seventh period Spanish. David, Jack, and I took the same desks we had last year.
Eleanor sits as far away from us as possible.
I sneak glances at her as often as I can without being a total stalker, always hoping she might be looking at me too. She never is.
The first week of school, I tried every day to talk to her. To explain. To apologize. And every day, she walked past me like I wasn’t even there.
She clearly wants me to give up, but I don’t have it in me to do that. Not yet, anyway. Probably not ever.
God as my witness, I will keep trying to get her back until the day I die.
“You can’t say stuff like that, dude,” David says. We’re back to our usual routine–well, ouroldusual routine. The one without Eleanor.
“I hate to say it, but I agree with him,” Jack chimes in. “Either she’ll forgive you or she won’t, but you’ve got to stop letting it consume you.”
I want to argue that it doesn’tconsumeme, but that’s a lie. It feels like every moment, from sunup to sundown, I’m either missing Eleanor, trying to figure out a plan to get her back, or downrightyearning, like some kind of Shakespearean sad sap.
“How do I just live with that though?” I look ridiculous lounging on the new, much smaller, chair we added to the basement. I grew about 3 inches over the summer, it might as well be a toddler’s seat.
Even though it was technically my spot first, I haven’t been able to bring myself to sit in what will forever be, in my mind at least, Eleanor’s chair.
Kicking my legs absentmindedly over the arm of the chair, I exhale deeply (and loudly).
“That’s it,” David stands up and stomps over toward me. “If I have to hear you sigh dramatically again I’m going to scream. You’ve got to snap out of it.”
He grabs me by the collar and yanks me upright.
“It’s November, dude. It’s been six months. Don’t talk about it, be about it. Either that or let it go.
I didn’t hear a word he said after “November.”
“It’s already November? November what?”
“Uhh, it’s the seventeenth I think.” Jack looks at me quizzically. “Why?”
“That was not the point,” David mutter under his breath.
“Eleanor’s sixteenth birthday is next week.”
They both groan. I know I’m a broken record, but what else am I supposed to talk about when I feel like I lost the love of my life before I even had her?
Love of your life is dramatic, Griffin. You’re sixteen. Get it together.
“I know we’re not talking,” I continue in a subdued voice. “But I still think it would be nice if we did something.”
“Like what?” Jack has actually perked up at the suggestion. Even though he doesn’t talk about it, I know he still sees her. I don’t know if it makes me feel better or worse that I still have some lifeline to her.
I feel like I have some kind of chance as long as Jack is still there, but it’s also a cruel joke that she’sright there,but still so unreachable.
“I don’t even know,” I say, throwing my hands up in exasperation. “Maybe we could do something in class, something that’s not so obviously from m–us.”
