Chapter One
If my high school life was a novel, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't even be approved to be published, let alone reach the bookstores. It's that boring.
Or it could be a bestselling novel, who knows? A book where everyone would kill to get their hands a copy of it, or the kind of story that everybody talks about and rages about on social media. But the catch? I'm the side character that has no depth or whatsoever. I was just put in there for the sole purpose of the main character to have a best friend. Or worse, I was just included so that there were more characters, hardly any dialogues at all.
The point is, while everyone else has their high school stories like something straight out of a book, mine would never cut out to make a novella.
People say high school were the best years of their lives, but mine? It was meh. It wasn't as bad as being bullied or being a loner but it's definitely far from good either.
I was practically invisible; hardly anyone noticed me as they went on with the oh so exciting and thrilling things happening in their lives. I felt like a flat character in a book where the main character was my best friend and I was the poorly written supporting character that only appears when the protagonist is in the scene as well.
Well, at least I had a friend, if being a friend means being asked out to accompany your friend in hangouts and listening to them tell their stories about how juicy the drama in their life is but never gets to be the one telling the stories. I felt more like a shadow than a friend.
It was the most grueling part of my life! Four years couldn’t go by any slower as if life really wanted me to take in every single moment of this dreadful thing called high school.
And yet here I am, laying in my bed with my face flat on my pillow, wondering why I agreed to an invitation to a week-long summer getaway with my high school classmates. Adding the fact that I ironically vowed to myself that I’ll never ever get involved with them again after graduation.
But what’s actually pathetic is the fact that I only got a hold of this invitation because they dropped it on our doorstep. Hadn’t I stayed in the same address living with my parents eight years after high school, I wouldn’t have gotten this invitation.
So I decided to blame it on the fact that if I had just moved out after college, I would’ve never gotten involved with them again like I promised, denying the reality that I can actually still get the invitation but not have to meet them again if I had just refused. I blame it on the idiot who controls my mind.
Dialing the number on the back of the invitation and saying yes to the person on the other end of the line was the last thing I would do even in my past life. I am a hundred percent sure I was possessed when I accepted the offer because there is no way in hell I would do this while I’m sane!
What was I thinking! Oh, I know. My overly confident self thought that this would be the perfect chance to show everyone that I’m no longer the same person from high school. My overly confident self thought that I also have a shot at being the protagonist in my own story and that I’m also worth paying attention to.
I am so stupid for making impulsive decisions thinking I am now a completely different person from the one I was during high school. When in reality, I didn’t even change at all! I’m pretty sure I’m still uninteresting considering the fact that there wasn’t really any changes from when I was in high school up until now. Only time passed by.
Although, I know that it’s not yet even too late to fix my mistake. I can still redial the number and say I changed my mind. But something inside me knew that no matter how dumb this whole idea sounds, I’m not taking it back.
Was it because I wanted to prove something to those people? Deep down, I knew there was a bigger reason why I wanted to come. It’s this silly, little heart that’s still hoping to see him even after several years later.
Him
. The person who gave me butterflies in my stomach, and made my heart beat so fast I thought it was gonna pop out of my chest.
The thing is, he was the only person that made me feel so whole but broken at the same time. He was the only one I ever loved, my first in everything, but he was not my boyfriend.
All these crazy and intense emotions that I felt for him but we were never even together. It felt like he completes me but the second I realize I don’t complete him the same way he does to me, it breaks me and forces me to pick up the shattered pieces of my heart. He was my first love, and my first heartbreak.
You could say it was a cliché story; we were friends and it was an unrequited love. I was in the friend zone for the entirety of the story.
I don’t even know why after all these years, I never got over him. What made me even hold onto him anyways? Was it because I never had closure for my feelings? Or was it because I never had the guts to tell him back then how I felt and so I could only look up at the starless night sky and wonder what could it have been like if I had just confessed?
But I know a thing for sure. The moment I see him again, I’m certain Kendric Miller would still give me butterflies the same way he did all those years ago.
