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Three years pass like the wind, far too fast — too carelessly.
It’s as if it was yesterday, when Todd drowned in the Lake at Welton. He must’ve been so miserable and downright lonely.
He feels like his mind is slipping. He was so used to having someone wake him up for classes, have a routine set, make sure they’re both on time, and had already completed all the homework a day prior.
Now, not only is he forgetting the entire schedule, he’s forgetting Todd — his memory is faltering, fighting against him. What color were his eyes? Were they brown, blue or green? God, he’s horrified.
How can he forget the most important detail? Todd was here, he existed, and when Neil found him, it had been too late. He’d ran straight into Keating’s classroom, and in a slew of rushed words, and half crying, Keating had figured out what happened.
Regardless, the hospital had taken Todd to try save him, to get his heart moving again, but when there was no avail, they officially pronounced him dead.
Jeffrey had cried his heart out that day, his baby brother would be young forever. He’d never grow old, fall in love, finally morph from a caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly who’s not afraid to speak his mind.
He remembers having to wake the rest of the poets, god it was impossible, he sat at Charlie’s bed, he wasn’t made for this—he wasn’t made for delivering death as if he were a physican.
He so desperately wised he didn’t need to do this, but he had to, Charlie needed to know. Gently shaking Charlie, he couldn’t stop the tears that poured out of him like a lake.
”Charlie? Charlie, wake up,” Neil spoke over tears and a breaking voice.
”What?” Charlie had said before fully turning around to see everyone in tears, sobbing. “What happened?”
”Todd’s dead.”
He remembers that day clear as day.
His dorm feels colder, darker and far more lonely, there’s no more presence of Todd, when he died, Jeffrey had come to collect all of Todd’s belongings, only leaving Neil with Todd’s unfinished poetry book.
The only evidence he had of Todd.
But, more questions than answers plague him. What was his hair color? What was it again? I can’t remember if it’s blonde or brown.
Oh, oh.
Todd was truly disappearing, he can’t remember any of it, but he knows that Todd existed, every one of the poets had confirmed it too. Was he finally losing his sanity?
It feels as though guilt had found a way, tearing inside his body, snapping apart his ribs, nestling inside him like it’d always meant to be.
At first he didn’t feel it when Todd had been there.
Todd was incredible at hiding the fact he was not okay. That he wasn’t in the mood to talk, but bless his heart, had been too worried about expectations to push them away.
Todd shouldn’t have had that many expectations to live up to. He wasn’t Jeffrey, he was his own person.
Neil vaguely remembers Todd as being an introvert, afraid of crowds, thinking everything inside of him was worthless.
He was so, so, incredibly wrong.
If Todd was an Angel, he would’ve been everyone’s favourite, wings so pure of virtue, feathers so gentle they looked like a swan.
But now, he lives in Neil’s mind, as he desperately tries to recall everything he can.
He’s forgetting.
And it scares him.