Torn Between Two Ways

I didn’t know why John looked so upset. I mean, he had a right to be upset, but why was he this upset? What had happened while my mom and I were at the store? He was just sitting on the couch. The TV was on, but he wasn’t looking at it. He looked like he’d been crying. That was very bad.

I found out, though, after I walked into my room. Anna was there. Her face was stained with tears and her makeup was running. “Close the door behind you,” she said weakly.

I did what I was told, but I was scared. I knew something bad was coming. I saw it in her eyes. Then I sat down on the bed next to her and waited.

When she turned to face me, fresh tears were in her eyes. “I don’t love you, Mikey,” she said, her voice like steel.

I felt the weight of it sink into my chest and settle there. It would probably stay there forever. How do you answer something like that? Do you say it’s alright? It wasn’t alright. I remembered the look on John’s face. She’d told him the same thing. At least I didn’t have to live with her choosing him over me.

“I’m going to live with my aunt. She’s picking me up tomorrow,” Anna spat out.

“What?” I asked. How could she leave? Even if she didn’t love me, I wanted her here. “Why?”

“I can’t stay here with you,” she said, looking away. “I need to start over.”

I started to tremble. My whole body was shaking. “You can’t leave! You don’t have to. You can stay. You didn’t have to choose one of us!”

She shook her head sadly. “You’re wrong about that. I did have to choose one of you. It was that or this.”

I was such and idiot. How could I be crying? “Please stay,” I whimpered. “Do you hate us so much that you’d rather start all over with no friends than try to stay friends with us?”

She started to sob. “I don’t hate you,” she said strongly, taking my face in her hands. Then she kissed me. “I don’t hate you,” she repeated. Then she turned away so I couldn’t see her beautiful face. “I just don’t love you, and I can’t stay. Nothing you say will change my mind.”

So I didn’t say a word. But I did force her to look at me. If I wasn’t going to see her… I wanted to look at her as much as I could now. “I’ll help you pack,” I said at last.

She sobbed, nodded, and wiped the tears from her eyes. For the next fifteen minutes, we silently put all the clothes she had at our house in her suitcase.

When she took off the locket I’d given her for her seventeenth birthday and held it out to me, whimpering, “Keep it,” I laughed bitterly.

“What would I do with it?” I retorted. “Even if you never wear it, don’t give it back to me.”

She nodded. “Good. I love it anyway,” she admitted. I watched as she slipped it into a little bag. And idea was slowly brewing in my head. A ghost of hope remained in me, but I didn’t let her see it. I needed to think about it. If only I had more time to think!

When John finally trudged up the stairs to go to bed, he looked horrible. We exchanged a long, hopeless look. The look said so much. We were sorry for being jerks to each other. We were sorry for each other. We were sorry for ourselves. We would be broken together.

But I wasn’t giving up that easily. My heart was already broken. What did I have left to lose?

I slept on the floor that night in a sleeping back, letting Anna have my bed. I told her I didn’t want her to be sore on her long drive the next day.

That night I stayed awake thinking. After hours, I was ready, and I was sure they were both fast asleep. I slipped out of my sleeping bag and grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. I couldn’t see much in the dim light coming from the hall, but it was enough.

First I tore off a tiny corner from the piece of paper. I wrote, Look in the smallest pocket of your suitcase on it, and then folded it so that it was even smaller. I opened Anna’s suitcase, took out the little bag for her jewelry, and pulled out the locket. Gently, I opened it and put in the tiny scrap of paper.

Eventually – probably soon – she would miss me. She would wear the locket. Somehow she would open it up and find the piece of paper. Then…

I looked at the big blank sheet of paper for almost an hour, just thinking of what to write. When I got it all down, I folded it up also and tucked it into the miniscule side pocket in her suitcase.

Then I went back to my sleeping bag and cried. I cried because Anna didn’t love me. I cried because she didn’t want to stay with us. And I cried because I worried that she would ignore what I wrote and I would never see her again.