Hello, I Dislike You Intensely. Have a Nice Day.

"Hey Dani, I saved a couple muffins for us, do you want - " I heard Alex's voice projecting closer and closer up the stairs; adrenaline hit my veins but my muscles were frozen. A few seconds later the door opened, he processed what was going on, and stopped mid-sentence. I cringed, waiting for something awful to happen - for him to drop the plate of muffins, or go on an angry tirade, or break up with me, even - but there was none of that. Instead, he carefully set the muffins on the bedside table, dusted ghostly patches of flour off his shirt, and went back downstairs without a word.

I didn't know how to react. I couldn't process any of it. For a really long time, the paper hung suspended in the fingers of my hand, gathering moist little dips where my sweat seeped through. I was frozen, starting from when I'd read what was on the paper until the arm I'd been leaning back on garnered pins and needles, then finally gave up and became pristinely numb. Until the doorbell rang, a sound so loud and sudden it felt like a natural disaster. The paper fluttered damply from my hand to fall facedown on the floor, and I raced downstairs to answer the door, not looking back.

The sight of a group of little kids in garish costumes on the doorstep was a prod to my dulled senses. "Trick or treat!" they chorused, and somehow I managed to pull up the corners of my mouth into a glazed smile. My voice was deceptively animated as I apologized for not having candy but added that we did have fresh-baked chocolate-chip muffins. They were satisfied with this and soon drifted away, one kid taking two.

I'd momentarily forgotten it was Halloween. Of course it was Halloween. Alex had mentioned it only earlier today and I remembered the words that came from his mouth like I remembered nothing else.

But Alex. Where had he gone? The house felt too empty to be holding him, so he had to have gone out. Without a second thought, I left the house and walked into the dusk.

The streetlights were on and another group of kids was approaching from the opposite sidewalk, their face paint inhuman under the stringent glow of the lamps. My fingers unconsciously found his number in my phone and pressed call. I knew he wouldn't pick up, though, and snapped the phone shut before his away message came on - it sounded exactly like he was there before you realized he actually wasn't. Hello?...Oh hey...Oh really?...Yeah, I'd love to let you go on, but see, the thing is, I'm not actually here, this is just a recording. Sorry 'bout that. Leave your name and number if I don't already know, and I'll get back to you for real sometime soon. This is Alex's phone, by the way.

God, Alex, where could you possibly have gone?I thought. And why? Why would you just leave like that?

I reached an intersection and stared helplessly at the cars hissing by, their fiendish lights tracking afterimages across my vision. I couldn't go further, I was scared; everything was too big and scary and hostile and complicated.

Suddenly my phone rang. "Alex," I said breathlessly into the receiver. "Huh? This is May. Where are you, Dani?" "What? Oh. Never mind, I guess..." "Dani, you said you would come." "Wait, what is this again?" I asked stupidly. "My birthday party," May answered pointedly. "That I've sort of been talking about since the middle of the month. That I expressly reminded you of at the end of rehearsal today, and you said you could come and help out and...yeah."

Ohshitohshitohshit. "Oh my God. That's right. I'm sorry, I just - " "Had other plans," she finished. "Okay. That's cool. That's...nice. Um, I gotta go." She hung up. I was left holding the phone dumbly and apologetically in my hand. I closed my eyes. Why I'd never interrupted her to tell her what was really going on, I don't know. It'd been horrible listening to her try to make her voice completely indifferent and nonchalant when I knew I'd hurt her.

I couldn't believe I was losing everything. Every solid friend I'd ever had it seemed like I was doomed to lose or let slip away. My mom could never me trust me now the way she had before; and Alex...Alex had literally fled.

I wanted to scream, but I couldn't, I refused to draw a scene. Oh, May, May, May, oh God... She'd been talking about the party for a while, and I'd totally been planning to get to her house early and help out with things and then have a great time with none of my usual party awkwardness. I'd really been looking forward to it. I never forget birthdays. But Alex made me forget everything. Two impossible forces set against each other, but he was the stronger by far.

For a tiny moment, I let myself be angry with him. How dare he have so much power over me, over my life? He'd been an indirect cause of Marina trying to kill herself and now he was taking May away from me too. How could he say he loved me? I fumed for about two seconds, then it was back to blaming things on myself.

My phone rang again. This time I recognized Alex's number. "Yeah, Alex?" I answered callously. A small part of me still wasn't over being mad at him. "Dani," he said, his voice shaking. "They tore it down. I can't find it anywhere. Oh God, Dani, they tore all of them down." At the sound of his voice, trembling and damp with tears, my heart seized and I instantly regretted ever blaming anything on him.

"Alex, it's okay. Where are you? What happened?"

"I was trying to find our old house again. Me and Mom's. I just, I needed to be there, but I couldn't find it. They gentrified everything! Goddamn it, Dani, they fucking gentrified everything! I loved her and she'll never forgive me and they tore the house down, they bulldozed it, and how could someone do that? How could anyone do that?"

He sounded on the verge of splintering into pieces. It scared me, he was never the unstable one. I didn't know what to do, tried being logical. "Alex...are you totally sure it's the right neighborhood?"

"Yes! I am completely sure. All the streets and everything, they're all the same. I know this is it, I can feel it. But these houses...I could fucking torch them and not care...I just hate them so much."

"Alex, please come back. Just come back. You scared me."

"I don't know how."

"What do you mean you don't know how? You found your way there, you can find your way back. Can't you?"

"I could find here from anywhere. Not so with my aunt and uncle's house."

"Oh, God, Alex. Okay. I'll find you. Don't move, okay? Just stay there - and tell me exactly where you are."

He gave me the address, one more important in that moment than any other.

And then I could feel things start to change. I wasn't scared anymore. I had a purpose and I could suddenly move through the world with perfect sureness and grace. It was all because he needed me, and because he'd given so much that I couldn't back down, I'd be terrible and thankless to back down.

And it was as if the universe knew this, and didn't try to give me shit. How a rare taxi came past at exactly the right moment, how I had ten dollars in my pocket from peole paying me back money I'd lent them, or winning the assorted bets and dares we made at rehearsal during slow parts.

I slid into the cab, giving the driver the address and hoping ten bucks would be enough for the trip. It was, at the end of the ride I had exactly a quarter left over.

When I saw Alex, he was on the corner of the street, pacing back and forth. I went to him, said his name, and put my hands in his.

"Dani. You came," he said.

"Yes...I wouldn't leave you on your own. And I'm so sorry. All of this is my fault. I'm sorry, Alex. I don't know what to say."

"Then you don't have to say anything."

A wall of emotion hit me and my insides went ripply like water. I seized him in my arms and whispered, "I love you."

"I love you too."

In that moment I felt so unbelievably grateful. I closed my eyes and pictured beautiful galaxies and gorgeous star clusters and nebulas that looked like floating silk scarves. I imagined the two of us making a hum that flowed out in all directions and made the universe happy.

"We should get back," Alex whispered, his breath warm on my ear.

"Yeah, I guess."

"My aunt's been calling me for like, an hour, I don't want her to call the police."

"That'd suck. What are you going to say to her?"

He ran a hand through his hair. "God, I don't know. What should I say?"

"Just...tell her as much of the truth as you can. Say you thought of your mom all of a sudden and you had to come out here. She seems like she would understand." I was making it so he left out the part about what I'd done, and I felt so guilty. But there was nothing I could do.

"Yeah..." he said. "Yeah." I could feel it, he was slipping away from me again. How could I have been so happy one minute and then gone back to being scared and sad? I felt like bawling my lungs out. It was so unfair, I could never hold on to real happiness, why was this?

"Alex, you have nothing to be ashamed about," I cried.

"Yes, I do. Don't say that."

"You can tell me. You know that."

"I do know that."

But he wasn't telling me. Him and his secrets, all over again.

A sound came from my throat, weak and keening. By the time I found my voice again, the tears were spilling from my eyes. "I'm sorry I don't have as many problems as you, okay, Alex? I'm sorry my past was mostly not terrible. The two biggest problems in my life are my supposed bipolarity, which I doubt is even clinical, and my inability to hold on to the few real frends I make. Maybe that makes me not worth knowing your dark secrets - "

"Dani, shut up! I don't think that. I don't think that! This isn't your fault, this has nothing to do with you." He was crying now too, which made me cry twice as hard. It was too much. I had felt too much and been through too much for one night.

Then Alex's phone rang. "Yeah, Aunt Morgan. Yeah, I'm fine. Everything's fine, Dani's with me. I just - I tried to find me and Mom's old house again. I, uh, came across some...stuff this afternoon, and it just really made me miss her...Yeah, I know I could've just visited. But something really just made me want to see the house again...No, they built a bunch of new houses in place of the old ones. It's pretty sad...I'm sorry I just left. I won't do it again...You'll come pick us up? Thanks a lot. Bye."

I sniffed. "You sounded so normal."

"Certain facades you just gotta keep up."

I cried intermittently for the rest of the night - when Alex's aunt picked us up, when she gave me a ride home and mercifully asked almost no questions, when I lay in bed trying to sleep. I only know I slept because I woke up again in the middle of the night. So in an effort to keep from crying, to make some sanity out of this mess, I decided to write. It is now 4 AM, my hand is cramping, and I don't feel much better. I'm thinking I should have just cried.