Chapter Text
You were avoiding me at school, that much was obvious. All of that first day you had found new ways to sit away from me. A few times I caught you looking at me. I didn't know what to think about that. You just looked sad. All I knew is that in those two weeks we didn't talk my thoughts of wanting to touch you and kiss you didn't go away, if anything they got stronger.
In the last class of the day- history, I remember it well- our teacher had us all stand at the back while she put us in our new seating plan. My seat was conveniently placed on the aisle across from you, I'm sure you remember. This is where you passed me the note.
meet me at the harbour after school. i'll wait for you.
When our new teacher turned her back to write something on the board, you had quickly passed the note to the boy I was sharing a table with, who passed it straight to me.
I didn't look at you, I didn't know if you were serious. I knew I would be there, even if I had to wait for you.
The harbour was not far from our school. I walked there and waited. I was, predictably, there first. I counted boats and seagulls, I watched clouds. I tried to not look at my phone. I had sat there for just over twenty minutes, and I had started to resign myself to the fact that you wouldn't turn up, that you had chickened out. That I would never know why you stopped talking to me, that I would never know what it was your mother suddenly disliked about me. That you had sent that note to make fun of me.
"I can't stay long, my mum thinks I'm at netball." You said.
Your voice broke me out of my daze, I hadn't expected that the sound of your voice would cut through me. The familiarity of it, and my deprivation from it nearly knocked me clean over. I whipped my head around to look at you.
"I owe you an explanation," you said.
Your usually perfect posture was gone, you looked dejected and slouched. It was like you were carrying some heavy baggage on your shoulders.
"Yes, you do." I said to you, bluntly.
"Yeah," you said, you took a pause. "My mum took my phone off me, I haven't had a phone since summer. She knew that I'd find a way to talk to you, she's not giving it back for a long time. I'm only allowed to use the computer for school work."
"What is her issue with me?"
I knew I wouldn't like the answer, but I needed to know.
"That last sleepover we had, she came downstairs to turn the TV off," your voice started straining a little, your eyes were watering. "In our sleep, we'd kind of started cuddling for some reason. Well, no, not for some reason, I purposely moved closer to you when you were asleep and I was awake."
I could only stare at you, were you like me? You looked so embarrassed at your confession, you couldn’t even look at me.
"You-"
Then you cut me off, "don't ask. I can't answer, I can't," you whispered, still unable to look at me. You were so quiet you barely made a sound. "She saw, she made some assumptions, she wasn't happy, now she doesn't want me talking to you, she's literally told all my teachers to not let me talk to you, if I talk to you she's told them to tell her."
"Since when have you cared about what your parents tell you to do?"
I had said it flippantly, of course this was a bit of a bigger deal. Of course it was.
"I'm scared of her, I'm so scared of her," you said, the crack in your voice made my chest twist painfully. You looked at me, then, your eyes were red rimmed and your chin was wobbling. "You should have seen her, I've never seen her like that."
You started really crying then, the kind of crying that took over your body, the kind of crying I had done a few weeks before as I rubbed my hands red raw under the hot tap. You fell to the bench near us and I sat down next to you and held you. Because what else could I do?
"I'm sorry," I said. Because what else could I say?
"I'm scared we're going to die."
"Everyone's scared of that."
You let out a bitter little laugh then, "do you think we'll go to hell?" You asked, bottom lip trembling. "You're the same aren't you?" I was quiet, but I nodded. "We're cursed."
We skipped around the world gay, but knew exactly what the other meant in our own little way. We could read each other's minds, I was so sure of this. You could communicate a whole story to me with a look from across the classroom. I could make you squeal with laughter with a glance. I didn't believe in god anymore, but you you did, after all of that you still believed that there was a god. Sometimes I wonder if you still do. But it didn't matter what I believed in the moment. "Of course we're not." I told you, making my voice as steady as I possibly could. My own bottom lip was trembling. “We’re not going to hell and we aren’t cursed.”
"I missed you," you told me. "Those two weeks."
Earlier in the day I didn't know what it was I wanted to hear from you. Turns out, that was precisely what I needed to hear. I missed you, I missed you so much my stomach hurt and I could barely eat or sleep. And to think that you missed me too. We sat there for a while, you eventually let go of me and shuffled to the other side of the bench. My left side was cold without you leaning on me anymore. We were quiet, we watched the boats like I had been doing alone earlier. We didn't have much longer.
"We should run away," I said, ridiculously. The more I thought about it, the more I really wanted to do it, the more I convinced myself it was a possibility. "We should take your dad's boat and run away."
The boat was moored in the harbour. He used to take you fishing on it. I came with you once, but I was too scared to fish. I remember sitting and watching, and reading my book and feeling nothing but bliss.
"Don't be stupid."
"You know how to fish, I was a Brownie, I can start a fire." I said, beginning to smile at the idea, really believing it. Believing it so much I could practically feel the flames licking the tips of my fingers, feel the sunburn I would undoubtedly get on my shoulders, smell the salt air. It's when I think of this day I realise that no matter how grown up we thought we were; we were children. We were thirteen years old, and when you're thirteen you don't realise how young you are.
You laughed at the idea, not in a mean way but in a disbelieving way. "You can't believe that would work."
"I do," I said. "We should go tonight, you need to get away from your parents."
"You're being stupid." You told me. "We'd get found so fast it's not even funny and then my mum would actually murder me."
"I'm not." I said, getting defensive. "If your mum is like that, it's not going to be safe for you, how do you expect to be yourself?"
It was an exceptionally privileged thing to say, my own mum would not see me being gay as a negative, she would go on to be hugely supportive of me and my dad was the same. It wasn't something I worried about, and would never have to worry about at home, of course I could think it was as simple as being yourself. You were terrified, of course you were. What sane person wouldn't be? You were thinking about survival, being yourself was the last thing on your mind.
"I'll have to wait until I move out," you said. “Maybe I’ll go to uni or something.”
I didn't know what to do except look at you while you watched the boats. Of course in hindsight I can dissect this moment and think of a million things I could have said, could have done. I would say it doesn't matter anymore, but I have been playing back this moment over and over again in my head at night. I dream about this moment more often than I'd like to admit.
"We can go to the same one," was what I said. "Even if we aren't allowed to be friends now, when we're grown up we can do what we want."
How naive of me to suggest that at eighteen you are grown up. Ten years have passed since this moment and I still don't feel grown up, who has ever felt grown up?
"Listen, I have to go," you said. You were plunging the knife in, through no real fault of your own. To this day, it's not you I blame. "We can't go back to how we were." Twisting the knife.
You sounded like you stopped talking before you finished your thought, but what went unsaid was understood. If your mum got an inkling that you were gay she would have made your life even harder. If her reaction to the sleepover incident was that bad, I didn’t even want to think about her reaction to you talking to me at that moment, or her reaction to you kissing a girl or dating one in secret. She would have sent you to conversion therapy and nobody would be able to do anything about it, because it would have been completely legal for her to do so. We were sitting close, and I started crying and you were crying and our knees were kissing again. I remember how you bounced your knee up and down while you summed up the courage to stand up and leave. You hugged me tightly, so tight it hurt and I could barely move my arms to wrap around you. I didn't mind it hurting, it hurt a lot less than having to watch you walk away. I wish I'd kissed you, I wish I'd have let you be my first kiss. But maybe that would have made the ache worsen, knowing that we wouldn't be able to try again.
I didn't see you much after that. Small hellos in school here and there, but you couldn't risk anything. A few times you told your mum you were hanging out at another friend's house and we would meet and catch up at the harbour, we never had much of importance to say anymore. You told me that you got your phone back, but your mother was doing random checks. That one time we almost got caught was the final straw. I didn't see you at all after that. You had ducked under the bench when we spotted your mother's car from a distance. It didn't even drive near us, but it didn't stop you from having your first of many panic attacks. In the coming weeks at school you would have them almost daily, in the weeks that followed you were constantly running out of class.
I walked past reception once to see you on the seat breathing into a paper bag.
"You okay?" It was the first thing I'd said to you in weeks.
You nodded. "Mum's coming to pick me up, you should get out of here."
I nodded and practically ran, I wouldn't forgive myself if I had got her in trouble for speaking to me.
Before we even knew it, Christmas break came around. I thought about you on your birthday, but of course I couldn't see you. I thought about you on Christmas morning and nearly went to text you before I remembered. Reality was starting to sink in. I hated reality. I hated seeing you every day and not being able to say hello, in case some teacher noticed and told your mother. I hated having to watch you running, distraught out of classrooms and having to grip my chair to keep myself seated.
I didn't have to worry about it anymore, because when I went back to school after new years you were gone. When I asked our head of year she had no idea, just knew that you had moved to a different school, no clue where. I thought about you daily. The whole time. I missed you so deeply, even when I had to resign myself to making new friends I thought of you. I wonder if you missed me. A part of me hopes you did. My compassionate side hopes you didn't, that you could just move on.
Where did you go? I never even saw you around town again. Did your mother move you all to another town or were you just that good at hiding?
Childishly, I remember thinking about playing hide and seek when we were small. You were always good at hiding. But I was better at seeking. So maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough for you. Maybe I was sparing you from the trouble that my friendship brought, sparing you from the mess and from your own mother. I hope she got off your back in the end, you didn't deserve that. I'd be lying if I said I don't look for you now. I am always looking for you. I understand if you're not always looking for me, if it's too painful to remember. Because, honestly, it's pretty painful for me to remember.
Sometimes I think back to that day at the harbour. I dream about it all the time.
In the dream you don't walk away, because I grab your hand and say:
"Let's do it, I dare you."
We tried playing truth or dare a few times but it was never fun. We had no shame around each other so we could never figure out a good dare that would make the other feel silly. We didn't have many secrets, so finding a good truth was impossible. In the dream, I guess I finally found a good dare.
You'd look at me, with those big eyes still full of tears. And this is always the part where I'm sure it's a dream. Because you say:
"Is it a double dare?"
That always gives the rest of the dream an air of bitter-sweetness.
"It's a triple dare, I triple dog dare you to get in that boat with me, and we'll sail away and they'll never find us," I always say. And in the dream, they never do find us. "You're such a chicken if you don't come." We both laugh at that, every time.
"Well, I guess you've got me there."
In the dream you don't walk away, in the dream we walk away together and sneak in to pack a bag. I always forget sun-cream. We run, holding hands with our backpacks bouncing. This part is always in slow motion like we’re in a film, our families are always chasing us down the street and they never catch us. Sometimes in the dream I leave my mum a letter to let her know I still love her and my dad, that my issue isn't with them. They still chase after me every time. Your mother always chases us the longest, but she never catches us. Never. Sometimes she chases us all the way to the harbour and watches the boat drift away, scowling.
We sail to a new place every day, and because it's a dream we always have enough money and nobody questions why two teenage girls are walking around alone on a school day. We spend our days in the sun and reading books and there are always fresh peaches to eat, and an empty beach to dance on. In these dreams we always kiss, and we are always together so we can try again if it's bad in the way that your first kisses are always a little bit bad. We try again, and again and again.
Our faces always end up on the news. In these new places we always come across a TV, somehow, and our faces are always on the TV. Missing schoolgirls, last seen leaving Cornwall in a boat together. Could be anywhere. They always give up the search, we end up being cold cases. Missing, presumed dead. They sent divers to look for our bodies. We listen to the news on the radio and we laugh because in the end we’ve outsmarted them all.
I always wake up in a moment of peace, you peeling a clementine and giving me every other slice, us swimming in the sea or dancing on the sand. I always wake up, and for a brief second I think you could be lying beside me. It always hurts to see that empty space, or to see someone there who isn't you.
Of course I know that's not how it would have gone down. We would have been caught immediately, or we would have starved. We would have been two dead girls for sure.
I always think about what I could have said to you in that moment, each option more unrealistic than the last. Nothing could have made you stay, or I should say that nothing could have convinced your mother to let you stay. I know this now. I really do. I've played the moment over and over again in my head like a movie in the years that have passed. I've thought of every single possibility, I've thought of screaming, I've thought of begging your mother. In my younger and angrier days I thought of killing your parents, storming in and taking them by surprise, digging my thumbs into their eyeballs, that was my idea of vigilante justice. What if I had got on my knees and cried? None of it would work. I know this now.
I'm still making sense of it all. Ten years on and I'm still confused by everything, how fast it happened. And how, at the end of all of it, we were children. We were girls together, and we never got to be women together. Nothing worse could happen now.