Never Look Back

“How the fuck am I supposed to remember all these elements?” Jack mumbled.
“You play the guitar, how do you remember all the notes, chords, power chords and whatever?” I mumbled back. We had a test over the elements in Chemistry and Jack had been complaining about it all week.
“Guitar has patterns, it’s fun. This…this is just a bunch of numbers and letters that make no sense.”
I shook my head, “Even these have patterns, you just have to find them.” The bell rang and we piled up our stuff and headed to lunch. When we entered the lunch room, I looked over at our table to see a brunette sitting happily next to Rian with sleek straight hair, brown eyes and a white smile, she was insanely pretty.
“Who’s that girl next to Rian?” I asked Jack, she seemed familiar.
“Oh that’s Kara Diak, she’s Rian’s new girlfriend,” he said. Now I remembered that name, she was the one who went with Rian to the dance and she’s the one whose house I apparently went to so Patrick wouldn’t be mad to find out that I actually stayed at Alex’s.
We approached the table and her eyes flickered to mine. “Hey! You must be Alyssa! I’m Kara.” She smiled and stood up to extend her hand to me.
“Yeah I remember you from Winter Formal.” I flashed her a real smile and shook her outstretched hand.
“Sit over here, with us,” she patted a spot next to her and I sat. Alex appeared later and sat next to me.
“Hey you met Kara?” He asked, looking over at her talking to Rian.
“Yeah, she’s nice.”
“Good, you doing anything tonight?” He asked.
I shook my head and he grinned, “Perfect, I’m taking you out.”
“Where?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
“No!” I whined, “Tell me now!”
“I’ll tell you when I pick you up at eight,” he grinned and I sighed.
“Fine.”
He pecked me on the cheek and whispered, “Trust me, you’ll love it,” before he got up and went around talking to his other friends. I looked over to see Kara smiling sweetly at me.
“Wow. You must be something special,” she said and I raised in eyebrow as she continued. “I have never seen Alex this madly in love since his last horrible girlfriend Taylor, but even then when he was still so innocent and -a virgin for that matter- it was never as real as this.”
“Taylor came to see Alex,” I said.
“What?” She asked in disbelief. “What’d he do?”
“He told her to leave him alone, that he was with me now.” There was a pause before I continued, “why am I so different? Why am I such a big deal?”
“When Alex entered junior high, he was self-conscience and had little to no self- esteem. He didn’t know how to act around women so, when he met Taylor, she was his everything. He took a step out and they were together for two years and he claims he was in love. Then, when she moved away he was devastated. He called, text, sent letters, emailed, messaged and even visited her once and she blew him off and told him she wanted nothing to do with him anymore, she had moved on to another guy. It was horrible, it took him a summer of moping to get over it until when high school started and he became another person. Girls fell over for his good looks but he didn’t trust any girls anymore so he would just have sex with them so he wouldn’t feel pain,” she explained.
“She ruined his life,” I muttered.
“Until you came along, he looks happy now. You did something to him that I’ve never seen any girl do.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Alyssa, I have been friends with Alex since first grade and after seeing him swoon over Taylor then into depression and now happier than ever, I am 100 percent sure that you’ve changed him for the better, you have done what no girl or person has succeeded in doing.”
“What’s that?”
“You gave him meaning.”
The bell rang and I got up and walked with Kara, asking her more questions about Alex.
“Then why did Alex cheat on me?” I asked her.
“He was afraid, he thought if he opened up to you, you would hurt him.”
I felt like crying, I felt guilty and sad and angry that Taylor did that to him and I just wanted to give Alex a big hug. I looked around but I didn’t see him anywhere, I felt a small pang of disappointment. I walked to my next class alone, finding Alex absent from his seat.
“Mr. Gaskarth…Mr. Gaskarth?” Mr. Barlow called off role and marked on his sheet. “Where’s Mr. Gaskarth?” He asked me and I shrugged.
All throughout class, Mr. Barlow picked on me, he called on me for all the hard problems that I didn’t know and made me get up in front of the class to do them. I looked like an idiot and was relieved when the bell rang.
I text Alex after I had gotten all my things out of my locker, wondering where in the hell he was and how I was supposed to get home.
Me: Where are you? Is everything okay?
Alex<3: I’m fine
Me: Then why weren’t you in class?
Alex<3: Don’t worry about it, I’ll see you when you get home
I guessed that meant I was on my own finding a way home. I didn’t know anyone who had this period open so I supposed I was going to have to walk home. As I made my way to the main entrance, I noticed it had begun to snow, I groaned as I stepped out into it. The walk home was pretty long and I had to do it alone. Great.
As I trudged through the tall piles of snow and ice, the light snow that once fell was now falling very heavy, with freezing winds that stung my cheeks, nose and ears. I made it to our street and continued on, my whole body grew numb. I passed house after house, staring at the ground to avoid the wind. I looked up for a second to see how far from the house I was when I felt myself hit a patch of ice and lose my balance. I flailed my arms as I was thrown backward, my head slamming against the ice underneath me. I felt the bitter snow grabbing me, pulling me into the darkness, surrounding me and suffocating me. My eyes rolled up to my head as the darkness consumed me and all I could do was let it.
Alex’s POV
“Everything has to be perfect!” I called to everyone. I was setting up the dance gym I had rented out for Alyssa. I was putting together music, decorations, everything that would be considered romantic. I wanted everything to go according to plan, I had created an awesome date for the two of us instead of our usual lunch or dinner.
My phone vibrated in my back pocket and I pulled it out to see Jack calling me, I answered it angrily.
“What?” I snapped.
“There’s been an accident,” he said quietly.
“God dammit Jack! I told you, when she gets home to distract her!”
“Well, she’s not home exactly..”
“Where did she go, I’m not ready yet!” I argued.
“Alex, they just took her away in the ambulance, I guess she tried walking home from school and might have a broken ankle and hypothermia. I’ll meet you at the hospital.” He ended the call and I felt my face blanch. I sprinted out to my car, not telling anyone where I was going and sped for the hospital.
I parked in some spot and jumped out my car, running into the building and to the front desk.
“I’m looking for Alyssa Barakat,” I panted to the middle age woman behind the counter.
“She just came in not long ago but they are working on her so visitors are not allowed in yet,” she said in a bland voice, staring at her computer screen.
“Alex!” I turned to see Jack and Patrick sitting in the waiting area.
“Is she okay? What’s happening?” I asked frantically.
“We don’t know yet, come and sit, we can wait together,” Patrick said and I sat next to him and across from Jack.
“This is my fault, I usually take her home but I left to go set up our date…I should’ve made sure she got home safe I knew the weather was going to be bad.” I paced back and forth in front of Jack and Patrick, grabbing and pulling my hair in frustrated chunks.
“This isn’t your fault, she should’ve known not to walk home in this kind of weather especially in just her small jacket.” Patrick comforted.

An hour and a half went by before a doctor confronted us on Alyssa’s condition.
“Well, her ankle is definitely broken and she has a severe case of Hypothermia, she had to have been laying in that snow bank for about 20 minutes. Her core body temperature was at only 83 degrees and as we injected a heated IV into her system to raise her temperature her heart rate had decreased so substantially that she slipped into cardiac arrest.”
“NO! ALYSSA!” Jack cried.
The doctor looked at him then continued, “We barely managed to get her heart beating again and she is incredibly unstable so I will allow only one of you to see her but she is currently unconscious.”
“Alex, you go,” Patrick whispered to me.
“Are you sure?” I asked and he nodded, I followed the doctor into the room and saw a frail, sickly bluish pale Alyssa laying down on the hospital bed, the heart rate monitor beeping slowly but consistently. I approached her and pulled up a chair to sit on. I placed my hand on her cheek and rubbed my thumb against her temple, her cold skin sucking up all the heat from my hand.
“I’m so sorry Alyssa, this is all my fault,” I whispered to her. “I never wanted to hurt you but that’s all I’ve done.”
“Time to go,” the doctor told me.
“Already?” I asked and he nodded.
I kissed her cheek and whispered, “I love you,” before turning to leave. All of the sudden the heart monitor gave a long beep and the line went flat, the doctor turned to face her.
“She’s going back into cardiac arrest!” He said urgently and paged more nurses and doctors. They ushered me out, my heart racing as I watched them work on her, tears slipping down my cheek as I returned to Patrick and Jack, their faces took a horrified expression as they read my face.
"I'm so sorry Alyssa," I whispered to myself.