“You really think you can get rid of me that easily?” he appears next to me. I sigh and cross my arms. I don’t want to talk to him. He has a knack for showing up at all the wrong times. I hate him. He drives me insane. He is my worst enemy, and for some reason, my issues with him just won’t disappear, and neither will he.

“What do you want?” I glance at him as I walk down my long gravel street. It could very well be something out of a horror movie. The end of my road is a cemetery where I go to visit my hopes and dreams. There are few houses, and my friends describe where I live as “sketchy”. I would call it enlightening. It’s the only place where I can go to confront my fears, to just be by myself.

If only he would leave me alone.

“Well you are obviously trying to block me out of your mind,” he says and crosses his arms as well.

“You see how effective that is,” I snark back. “Go away.”

“No, you know exactly why I am here. Melissa said something about me didn’t she?” He looks at me with narrowed eyes. I narrow my own.

“Yes, about you, her, and Melena. It doesn’t matter.” I don’t want to talk about it. I want to think about anything but what she said.

“Obviously it does, or I wouldn’t be here. Go ahead, say it. Tell me that you don’t love me anymore. Mean it this time. Do anything but ignore the problem. What happened on Friday?” I glance at my shadow. He doesn’t cast one.

“I said it doesn’t matter.” But it does.




***
The crowd roars in anticipation. The crowd is angry, seething, demanding that the team wins. The band plays as frantically as they can, everyone is listening for a slip up. The team huddles in the field, planning how to satisfy the crowd. Everyone is waiting, watching, judging. The bright lights above are searching for the one who doesn’t belong, the one who holds place with neither team on the field. I stand by the police tape, a live wire, I too am waiting. I do not wait for a missed note, or unsuccessful play. I wait for an opportunity. I need to see them. I haven’t in so long. I try to ignore the field. Somewhere, face covered by helmet, identity disguised by the uniformity of his red jersey, he wasn’t watching for me. I hadn’t spoken to him in two years.

Opportunity strikes at last; the police go to investigate an abnormal noise, and I duck under the tape and run to the band. I’m not supposed to be there. It doesn’t matter. I have to talk to my friends. I see them all. Sydney cries, Jane gives me a giant hug, Gabby tells me a joke. I am ecstatic, but our reunion is tainted. Tainted by years of difference. I am no longer the same person that I was, and they are no longer how I remember them.

We talk about what we missed.

And when they have to go play, and I have to sneak back under the tape, I am left feeling empty. I made empty promises, talked about safe topics, and felt ashamed to say that I would never return to this school. I don’t know why I felt that way. There is nothing wrong with my other school. I don’t want to leave, and I feel embarrassed for that.

There was one friend that I hadn’t talked to yet. Melissa is the only nice cheerleader in the world, at least as far as I know. I’m sure there are others out there, I just haven’t met them. As the halftime show closes the cheerleaders are released to the stands.

Melissa is pretty. She has honey colored hair, brown eyes, a genuine smile that only erupts when I, or one of my other friends, say something hysterical. Any boy would be lucky to have her.

Melissa wouldn’t have just any boy though. She wanted the boy who I had been in love with for six years, never once having the feeling reciprocated. But I understood why she liked him. I had, after all, and I have great taste. Or so I thought. I could begrudge her nothing; I was gone, he wasn’t my ex-boyfriend, I had no jurisdiction over him.

We talked about him. She was caught up as the infamous “other woman”. He was going out with Melena (whom neither of us like) and was trying to see Melissa on the side. She showed me some of the texts that he sent her, because she trusted me. They made me want to throw up.

How on earth was I ever so naïve that I could love a boy that would do this to one of my best friends? How could the innocent, talkative little boy that I had met in fourth grade, that was so sweet, that was my first friend, EVER become the monster I know him to be? How had only six years changed his only concern from tetherball to sex? Was it possible? Was this place roamed by evil? Wandered by malicious poltergeists aiming to possess the good and convert them to evil? I knew now.

It was over when he stopped talking to me so much in fourth grade. It was over when we were separated in fifth. It was over when he rejected me in sixth. It was over when I stayed at a distance in seventh. It was over when he signed only his name in my yearbook in eight. It was supposed to be truly over when I didn’t bother to show up for ninth. But it wasn’t ever really gone completely, how I felt, until now.

It was like having a part of me die. I had known it was dying for a long time, but its prolonging didn’t make it hurt less.

I give a final glance at the football field as I leave near the end of fourth quarter. My sight catches one football player. It could have been him, but there was no way to know. There was no reason to care.

***
“Say it,” he chides me.

“You are lowly and I can’t believe you would do that to her. You are an indecent and reckless human being.” I snarl the words at him like a cornered canine. He just laughs at me.

“You don’t believe that though. You still think that deep down I’m the same boy you met an unrealistic number of years ago. You’re never going to change, and you know it.”

I hate him. I hate his smug, flippant attitude, his treatment of my friend, his obsession, all of him.

“You are so weak, and yet you still think lesser of me.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You are so weak. You are enslaved to your desire. You can’t focus on anything but pleasing yourself. You aren’t strong enough to live without it. I hate you. I have said it many times without meaning it, but now I know. I actually hate you.”

“You still don’t mean it. You will never hate me. I’m a part of you.”

“I do.” It startles him, and me. The determination in the way I say it defines my resolve. He looks taken aback.

“I do. I really do hate you, Jaydon. You’ve done nothing but bring me pain, and my friends pain. I think you should go. No I think you will go. I never want to see you again.”
He gives me a look of hate that reflects my own.

“Fine, I never want to see you again either,” he spits.

And just like that, his memory dissipates into the early evening air.

I am left standing on my road; alone and incomplete. A part of me is gone, the darkest, sickest, most painful part of me. And as I turn back from the cemetery, I can’t help but think that sometimes less is more.