It Got To Him

They say not to feel bad, that it was the pills that got him. Too many, too soon. A lot of bad choices all wrapped up into one cute little vintage package. It’s his fault - he let himself get overrun.

Yeah. He did, I want to yell at them. He got overrun by you.

I remember meeting him, seeing his soft, freckled face, his gorgeous gray-brown eyes, and I remember wishing I never had to be near him again because he was exactly the type of boy that would break me down. It was June, and it smelled like new grass, and the grass looked like it was brushed with vibrant green paint. The sky was this unearthly blue that almost seemed to have no color in it at all, and the only clouds were huge and puffy, and if that wasn’t the perfect day to be playing soccer then the rest of the days must have been unbelievably amazing.

It was halfway through the season and we were against a team we hadn’t played yet. For the most part, they were subpar, and I was excited to trample them. When the game started, we got the ball immediately, and I sprinted ahead towards the goalpost to catch our midfielder’s assist. Just as I did, I turned to send it spinning into the goal, and I saw him - him.

From far away, you couldn’t see it, the brilliant energy he exerted, but I was so close it stunned me, and when my feet stopped, the rest of my body didn’t, and I collided into him. God, if his stare was enough to steel me, his touch, well, there was something just exhilarating about touching somebody with so much life, so much thereness. It’s hard to explain.

The rest of the game, I was caught between fighting the urge to sit on the ground and just look at him for hours, and trying to do something uberly impressive. It was kind of painful.

I remember being glad when the game was over and I could leave, because my heart was pounding unevenly and I swear it wasn’t from the running. I almost wanted to cry in that “Oh God, what’s wrong with me?” sort of way. I was about to head back to my car when he walked up, and introduced himself, and suddenly I was talking to this dazzling guy named Matt, and I knew I had to get out of there because I was digging myself a hole, but I was so stupid and mesmerized, and somehow when I did finally go Matt had my number. It didn’t take him a day to use it.

We talked for hours in the next couple weeks, and his voice was as smooth as his flawless brown hair. I started to get to know this boy who loved choir and hated band and wanted to play soccer forever; this boy who always seemed to have laughing kids and an angry father as his background music; this boy who so much wanted to just have someone to talk to. I was sure that someone couldn’t have been me because I never said anything important, but, you know, I think I made him happy. God knows why.

We spent the rest of the summer texting and talking and eating ice cream down at the pier, our feet in the water, constantly threatening to push the other into the lake. I never got over his eyes, and more than once I caught myself just staring at them, not hearing a word he was saying. I guess this gave him lots of opportunities to lean over and kiss me, and he didn’t have any problems with taking them.

It took me a long time to realize something was wrong with him; it was midway through October before I noticed the smiles had turned sad and the eyes were almost scared. Sometimes, if we were watching a movie or holding hands at the dinner table, he would hold on just a little too tightly. His voice was always kind of strained.

“Ella?” he said to me one night on our way back from a youth group event. He said it in a voice I’d only heard him use when he talked about his mother, who died when he was eight.

“Yeah?” I bit my lip.

I noticed he was driving slowly and that other cars were passing us.

“Do you ever think… Have you ever wondered what would have happened if we hadn’t met?”

“No.” I couldn’t. He had became so much the focus of my life that any thought of being without him made me want to hide in my bed, go to sleep, and never wake up. I hated being that dependent, but, God, those gray-brown eyes…

“I do,” he said matter-of-factly. “All the time. Sometimes I wonder if I’d be so much happier, more free. If I wouldn’t lay awake at night trying to figure out what I’m doing with my life. If it wouldn’t hurt to much.”

I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt my eyes full of tears.

“But I know that’s not true,” he went on. “I’d be miserable, I know it.” He said something else, too, but he said it too low for me to make out.

He slowly drifted the car to the side of the road and pulled over. We sat in silence for a long time before leaving, and it was uncomfortable, but it was the kind of uncomfortable you felt on a first date. Somehow, there was something about it that just seemed right.

For a long time after that I wanted to hug him when I saw him, as though if I held onto him hard enough maybe it would keep the pieces together. We went to theatres and art museums and indoor fairs, and for every canvas of artwork we saw, I could tell he was looking at the tears that went into creating it. He listened to a lot of music with violins in it. Violins and soft, sullen piano. Every kiss felt like it might just have been the last one.

He’s falling apart, I remember thinking. Like that one pretty wildflower that was never really meant to endure the wind.

We used to go to this one bridge a lot. It was high with magnificent metalwork, but it was tucked away in the woods and no one remembers it’s there anymore. The river below it was long and wide and clear and beautiful. We’d spend whole days sitting on that bridge, glancing down at the river, and for a while things felt normal again, like they did that summer by the pier. I heard him laugh, and he made me laugh. It was like, when we were out there, everything was okay again. When we got back into town, his sadness returned. I tried to get him out to that bridge as much as possible.

“I love it here,” I would sometimes say. “It’s so peaceful, like the river’s lulling us to sleep. Like we could stay here forever.”

“Yeah,” he’d say. Just “Yeah.”

I wonder now if I was supposed to ask what “yeah” meant. I guess I just never thought I’d get an answer.

One of the next summers, we were both playing soccer again - although, none of the days was ever quite as perfect as the one where I met him - and it was kind of like being on the bridge in that things just sort of fell into place. Standing in the goal post, he seemed to come alive again, and it was like meeting him all over again. We collided, and this time it was almost on purpose. I never did get over those eyes.

Afterwards, when everyone left, we hung back on the field until it got dark, and we watched the stars for forever, and I memorized his beautiful lips. We were there until morning when the sun slid over the horizon with its glorious light and a little before we were going to leave, I sighed and said, “I love you.”

We both stopped. Somehow, until then, neither of us had ever actually gotten up the nerve to say that. I started to smile. He frowned.

“No, you don’t,” he said.

“Matt-” I began.

“No.” He pulled away. “Look, just forget about it. What we have isn’t love. I don’t know what it is but… It’s not that.”

I stared up at him, at his eyes, and suddenly all of that energy, all of the life - that excitement, that thrill, that thereness - it was gone. Gone completely. All that was left was a heavy, foreign sadness and a whole lot of nothing.

Tear welled up in my eyes and fell down my face. My voice caught. “I hate you,” I whispered. “I hate you.”

He left - he ran - and I knew he wasn’t coming back, and I was left there crying for hours until the sun came up, and when it did I ended up walking home because I didn’t want to - I couldn’t - call anyone to come get me. And when I get home, I slept and slept, and I calledl in sick to school, and for days I couldn’t eat anything. I didn’t talk to him once in that time, and it killed me, and I realized I was right from the beginning - that he was a boy who could break me.

And he did.

I got a call three days later. Too much sadness, too many pills. The school blamed his friends, his friends blamed his parents, and his parents blamed me. And then there was everyone else, who kept saying no one was at blame - it was the drugs - the lure of intoxication got him. He just couldn’t say no to the pills.

But here’s the thing: they’re all wrong, every one of them. They don’t get it. They didn’t see him fade. It wasn’t the pills that killed him - that was just a fancy way of saying the world got to him.

The world got to him and, the thing is, he got to me.

Okay, so this is a short story for my English class. I just wrote it up, but I have to submit the first draft of it tomorrow. Any comments would be really helpful, but particularly on things like pacing (I feel like this is really rushed, maybe because I wrote it with double-spacing on, making it visually seem different to me) and character dynamics. Thanks in advance!