Shattering Crystals

From the outside, we look like normal girls.

Normal life, normal friends, normal schooling. Everything remains the same, other than our new friendship. We do everything together – see movies, have sleepovers, talk all day and night. Of course, that’s from the outside.

The outsiders don’t know the true meaning of our friendship. Lorraine and I are not normal girls, no matter what it looks like. Because our friendship is based around one thing – our escape.

That isn’t to say that we aren’t real friends, because we are. We still do the things that normal friends would. We tell each other secrets. We talk about people in our school, the latest movies, and of course, guys. But along with that, we talk about magic.

We talk about how everything is going to work out, and how we’re going to do it. We experiment with spells and things that we would have never dreamed of. We tell each other how much it hurts to have to leave home.

That being said, we can’t actually leave home yet. There is still another person here, Marigold told me recently. A guy who was once a part of our lives.

When she had told me this, my mind jumped directly to Jesse. Could he be the one we’re looking for? I highly suspect it, as I had always felt something around him. Something magical. And I’ve decided that today is the day that I find out for sure.

All princesses have a prince, right?

----

I walk into my homeroom, annoyed by the sound of squeaking shoes from the rainy morning. I look over at my seat and there he is, at his desk, the seat directly beside mine. He looks nice today, compared to everyone else. Probably because he gets a ride to school, instead of having to stand out in the rain like everyone else...

I brush those thoughts off as irrelevant. I wonder how to ask him. Over the past month, we’ve still been together. Quite a shocker, considering the average length of relationships in this time.

But I feel we work together well. The popular crowd has now fully accepted me. I may not be the most outgoing of the group, or the most fitting, but I’m in. And it’s nice – like everyone worships you, when you barely did anything at all. You have to watch what you say, though.

Which is partially why I’m worried about today. I don’t know how exactly to ask Jesse. I don’t think I can tell him in the same way I told Lorraine. He wouldn’t be interested enough to actually think about the story, meaning he wouldn’t realize what it means.

Yet if he’s my prince… he shouldn’t need that. He should know, at the sound of the name, who I really am, and who he was. Even if he’s forgotten the name, just the mention of it should bring memories flooding back into his mind.

I sit down. He smiles at me, that beautiful smile that I love dearly. That smile that I am slightly envious of.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” I reply. I rack my brain for something else to say to him. It seems that my mind has gone blank, which is rather confusing. It had always been easy to talk to him before, so why is it so hard now?

“English test today,” he says, filling in the silence (and also reminding me that I didn’t study).

“Oh yeah,” I say making a note to cram during first period. “What was it on again?”

“I don’t know, reading stories or some shit. Then answering questions. Gonna be boring as hell.”

“Some stories aren’t that bad,” I say defensively. But I’m glad that he mentioned stories. It might make it easier to slip something in…

“Eh, like what?”

“Like this one that I read online last month,” I say, going with the story that I had told Lorraine. “It was pretty good, actually.”

“What was it called?” he asks, not sounding genuinely interested.

“Diana Crystal. About a girl named Diana Crystal.”

“Well, obviously. Weird name, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sounds too fake. Kinda stupid. Like it’s trying too hard. Kinda sounds like a stripper name, too.”

“Really?” I say, raising my eyebrows. I wonder if anyone in the past had thought that about my name. Or if Lorraine thinks it now. She’d tell me, though.

“Yeah, I don’t know. That’s just what I think.”

“It was a fantasy story, though. So I guess it has to be kinda weird. And have some meaning to it.”

“It doesn’t seem like it has any meaning. Just trying to sound cool or something.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter about the name,” I say. I check the clock. Five minutes until first period. Five more minutes to figure this out. “The story behind it was good too.”

”I don’t know, the online stories usually suck, I hear. But I guess if you say it’s good…”

“Then?”

“Then it’s good,” he says, rolling his blue-green eyes. “I’m not gonna read it, so I’ll just take your word for it.”

“I see…”

He doesn’t say anything in response to that, and I look at him again as he makes sure he has all of his textbooks. Maybe it takes more than that for him to remember. Maybe I should try again later, or another day. Or maybe he remembers, but doesn’t want to accept the reality of everything. I know I didn’t, at first. But eventually, you kind of have to.

The bell rings, making me jump a bit, but no one notices. I’m still looking at him. He smiles at me once before he leaves the room. I figure that it’s worth a try to ask him once more, tomorrow.

Yet I get a sinking sensation in my stomach, because inside, I already know that he’s not the one I’m looking for.