Chapter 8
TRU
Once upon a time we were best friends. Now we’re strangers with memories and a shared past.
It had been a year since the closet. A year since the kiss. A year of learning how to survive without my other half. I’d turned fourteen in that silence, like crossing a line no one else could see.
I caught him watching me, and I stared back, hoping he’d give me the smallest smile, just a slight nod of his head, anything to let me know he didn’t hate me. Anything to prove that the Darien I knew was still in there somewhere.
But Dare didn’t smile. He didn’t nod. He leaned in close to the guy standing next to him and whispered something. Then they both looked at me.
They pointed and laughed. I was the punchline to a joke I’d never get to hear.
All I’d done was exist. And somehow that was enough to make me the enemy. Just breathing the same air as him and his golden-boy friends was a crime now.
The Darien I used to know—the one who used to link pinkies with me during movies and write his name in Sharpie next to mine under the skateboard ramp—he would’ve cut out his own tongue before laughing at me like that.
But that Darien didn’t exist anymore. And maybe the version of me he once loved—if he ever really did—didn’t exist anymore either.
His friendship had shaped me once, molded me into the kind of boy I wanted to become. But his absence had carved me into someone else entirely.
Someone I didn’t recognize. Someone I disliked—desperate and na?ve, and at times, hopeful. Someone I despised almost as much as I was coming to despise him.
I used to be soft. Trusting. Forgiving. Now? Now I held onto my newfound bitterness with both hands, clenched tightly as if it was the only thing keeping me upright. Because it was the only part of us I had left, and it was a heck of a lot better than hope.
My tray clattered when I set it down at my usual table, the one in the far corner, half-shadowed by the vending machines and mostly ignored by the rest of the room. I didn’t sit yet. I stood there, pretending to check my phone, anything to avoid glancing back at him.
But I sensed him—a splinter just beneath the skin. A laugh echoed across the room. Not loud, but sharp enough that my name might as well have been stapled to it. My chest pulled tight.
I sat down slowly and stared at the food on my tray like it might explain something to me. Soggy fries. A sandwich too dry to swallow. A warm bottle of water. I wasn’t hungry, but I forced a bite down anyway, just to prove I could.
Just to show them all—show him—that I could keep surviving, even when it felt like I was unraveling under the force of being stared at as if I was less than nothing.
A chair scraped the floor across from me. For one electric second, I thought it might be him. My heart thudded. I lifted my eyes, but it was just some kid, fumbling with his tray, eyes glued to his phone.
I looked back at my sandwich and tried not to let the disappointment show. Tried not to let it seep into the cracks I kept patching over with bitterness. I should’ve known better.
Hope was just a new way to bleed.
At the other end of the room, Dare threw his head back and laughed at something one of his friends said. The sound carried over the noise, piercing through my heart. His hand clapped another guy’s shoulder like they were brothers.
That used to be me.
My stomach turned cold and hollow. My chest tightened so hard I couldn’t pull in a full breath. I shoved my hands into my pockets to keep them from shaking, nails biting my palms.
Now I was the invisible one. The weird kid. The art freak. The one people stared at just a second too long before looking away, as if they watched me for too long, they might catch whatever disease I had.
And maybe I was contagious. Maybe heartbreak was a virus, and Dare was the carrier.
I stood up to leave because I just couldn’t do it today—the noise, their cruel eyes, the way every glance felt like a needle. I just wanted to disappear.
I took one step, then another. My foot slipped on something. A shoelace? A crumpled wrapper?
Didn’t matter. My tray went flying. It hit the ground with a loud crash enough to silence the room. Milk spilled across the tile. My sandwich landed face down. Fries scattered like shrapnel.
I didn’t move. Couldn’t.
All the air left my lungs in a single, choking exhale. I stood there shaking, staring down at the wreckage. My hands clenched at my sides. My eyes burned with unshed tears.
Laughter rippled around me. Not a roar, but worse. A hush filled with smirks and whispers and amusement that slithers under your skin and makes you feel filthy for existing.
I felt them watching. Felt him watching. I looked up. Just once. Just to see.
Dare was halfway out of his seat. His eyes locked on mine. Something flickered there—guilt? Regret? Recognition? Then one of his friends slapped him on the back and pointed at me, grinning like I was the funniest thing they’d seen all day.
Dare didn’t move again. He didn’t come to help. Didn’t say a word. He sat back down.
And he laughed.
My knees wanted to buckle under the weight of my shame and humiliation. I swallowed hard and turned, and I didn’t stop to grab my tray or my bag. I just ran out of the cafeteria, down the hallway, and through the nearest door.
The cold hit me like a slap to the face, but I kept going. I didn’t stop until I was behind the gym, hands braced on my knees, my heart pounding so hard I thought it might rupture.
The tears came then, quiet and angry. I wiped them away with the sleeve of my hoodie, cursing myself for letting him still matter.
Why does he still matter?
Because some part of me still believed he would’ve helped me. Some stupid, na?ve part that hadn’t gotten the message.
He chose them. Again.
Just like everyone else. Just like my dad. People don’t stay. They don’t choose me, they choose someone easier to love.
I didn’t go home after school. I rode until my legs burned, until my lungs felt raw and the wind turned my face numb. The burn in my calves was better than the one in my chest.
The old construction field was mostly overgrown now, nature reclaiming the half-built promise of a neighborhood that never got finished. The grass was tall enough to brush my knees.
I dropped my bike in the grass and ducked beneath the ramp. My fingers traced over the names scrawled in red Sharpie on the wooden post.
Tru + Dare
Forever
The blue heart around it had faded, the ink bleeding into the grain like it didn’t want to hold on anymore.
Neither did I.
I pulled a Sharpie from my hoodie pocket. The same kind I kept in my sketchbook case. Same kind I used to use when we spent entire afternoons hiding out here, drawing monsters and robots and worlds where no one ever left you behind.
I uncapped it and drew a line. Right through the heart. Right through us. A slow, black scar that split it in half. My throat burned, but no sound came. My fingers shook, then locked tight, refusing to let go. I just stared at what I’d done. Proof of the end, etched in ink.
The wind outside made the ramp creak. Somewhere far off, a dog barked. I stayed under there until the light started to change, until the shadows grew long and golden and the hurt inside me quieted enough to breathe through.
When I finally climbed back on my bike, I didn’t look back. But I left the Sharpie behind.