Hey there,

 

This one is about 'that friend'.

 

John had always been a loner. The kind of person you saw once in a while, you know? No one knew where he lived or what his life outside of school was like. And honestly, no one tried to find out either. Why take the trouble when you’re perfectly content in your own world of delusion?

 

He’d be gone for days and magically reappear out of nowhere and I don’t even know how the school would allow that. It seemed like the alluring build-up to a horror film. We had questions. Where was he? What was he doing? Was he okay? All of them unanswered, however.

 

One day, after being AWOL for quite some time, John came to see all of us with 'that friend'. I remember that moment vividly. We'd never seen or experienced that side of him before. He opened up to us, trusted us with information he had never shared with anyone before; told us that in times of despair, he often turned to 'that friend'. They were inseparable and we were happy for him. We all had a good time that night and we all left with a belief that it was only going to go uphill from that moment.

 

But to say that we were wrong, would be an understatement. Eventually, dependency did take over and before we knew it, ‘that friend’ was all we ever spoke about! He was different when they were together but we didn’t want to say anything because it was new to us and he was content with life. But there’s always a feeling you get, when situations like these arise. There’s always your gut telling you that something’s not right and something was clearly not.

 

'That friend’ wouldn't come to school though. It was out of bounds and for good reason. But did John care about the rules of an institution? Nope. Not at all. They sneaked their way into the forbidden zone but Icarus was flying way close to the sun by now; the wax was starting to trickle down the burning feathers. It was about time someone saw them and one day, the principal did.

 

Consequences were in store. John was expelled and because it was a tight-knit community, he was cast away. But we still hung out from time to time. We had the maturity of understanding that good people end up doing the wrong things. The community begged to differ but we didn’t care for their opinion much.

 

Overtime, some realizations came into light. 'That friend' overtly disregarded us. She didn’t like us hanging out with John at all and made it her sole mission to push us all away from him. As a matter of fact, that was the plan all along. It was not a healthy relationship and we tried to warn him. But John? It was already too late. He ‘loved’ her.

 

Eventually we all gave up. We weren’t proud of it. But they went on a long journey together after that. We wouldn’t know anything about it. How could we? When someone cuts off ties with you, they really make sure they’ve done a great job.

 

It’s been long since we last saw them but after all these years, we could only wonder, was 'that friend' really worth it?

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