Burn.

Cameron didn’t believe me when I told him. Not that I was really surprised, because I honestly didn’t believe it, myself. It would have been a one in a million chance if it weren’t for the fact that I’d imagined her and witnessed first-hand everything emotionally important that had happened to her since I turned thirteen. I mean, with the circumstances being what they were, that must have boosted the odds in our favor, even if it was only a slight boost.

“So, let me get this straight,” Cameron said, drawing the cigarette he’d been smoking from his lips. “Even though you claim that, before today, you’d never seen her, met her, or talked to her, you seem to think you’ve found this girl.” He said it matter-of-factly and I had to resist rolling my eyes at him.

“Her name’s Julia,” I said, stressing her name, “and yeah, but it’s not so much that I found her as that she found me.”

Cameron groaned and ran a hand through his hair, leaning forward and holding his face in his hands. “You know,” he started, “you would think that. That is so typical Brody, you’ve always been so fuckin’, um,” he paused to redirect his train of thought as he squeezed his eyes shut tight, “spiritual,” he finished. “Ever since I met you, you’ve always kind of believed in that sort of trippy, ‘higher power’ shit. Know what I’m saying?”

I nodded, my eyes glazing over as I lost myself in thought. I thought about a lot of things, like how I was still saddened by the passing of Julia’s mother. I thought about how Julia looked in school, from the cross she wore around her neck to the way she stood with one leg behind the other. And I thought about how I couldn’t keep my eyes off her as she sat at her desk a row away from me near the front of the classroom.

And then, suddenly, I was dreaming.

Blinding. Hot. I couldn’t see anything for the longest time, just a bright light that blinded me. I got the feeling that, if I kept looking at the light, I’d go blind.

So I closed my eyes and found out that it almost made it brighter.

Overwhelming sadness was all I felt in those few moments I lost myself for. It overpowered every other sense; I lost feeling in my hands and legs, and my head fell backward. It hit the wall, but I didn’t even cry out in pain or flinch in the least.

Chewed up and spit out, Julia sat in her bedroom on the floor along the wall. She held her knees up to her chest, not crying and not acting like a child. Instead, she dealt with her sadness internally.

I miss her, she thought. I hate school and I hate my classmates and I hate how I’ve never been good at making friends. I’ll never fit in here.

My whole body shook as I opened up my eyes and began breathing at a rapid pace in order to obtain air in my lungs.

“Brody!” Cameron was shouting at me, shaking my body with his face all up in mine. His eyes were bugged out of his head and he was frantic. It was unlike him, as he was usually laid back and chill. But he’d only seen me blinded once before, and it scared him.

“I’m fine,” I said, clapping him on one of his arms he had outstretched toward me. I couldn’t look up at him directly in the face.

“What happened?” he asked. I have a feeling he knew what had happened but he just didn’t want to say it out loud. He didn’t really know what it was called anyway - but, then again, neither did I. “You looked like you were having a fucking seizure, man! Freaked me the hell out. I can’t deal with that shit… Fuck. Do you even know how scary that looks? You were shaking and your eyes rolled back into your head.”

He kept talking about what it physically looked like, but all I could think about was that feeling of pure emptiness, of not wanting to go on any longer, of utter failure and loneliness.

Loneliness.

Julia was lonely; motherless, friendless, and void of any and all happiness that may have once existed in her old town, wherever it was she had lived in. I didn’t remember.

I couldn’t see what I was seeing. All I could see was what Julia had shown me. Pain. Sorrow. She was cornered in her own home, in her own room, and no one was there beside her to console her. It didn’t make sense; she seemed to be a healthy, happy teenager in school. But she wasn’t eating. I could feel it in her bones.

Something inside her had snapped.

It snapped in me too.