EPTOne upon a time in the land of California, there was a boy named the boy. After a terrible Hurricane which forced him far from home, he went to live with his aunt in the town of Thousand Oaks. It was a sunny, pleasant place, except for his extremely strict and rather overbearing aunt and his prodigy cousins (in retrospect, they weren’t too bad). At the end of the first semester, he left Thousand Oaks with his family, bidding farewell to his new friends.
He went across California to the Bay Area, near where his dad had a temporary assignment. The family found a house in the tiny city of Albany, slightly south of UC Berkeley which was actually bigger than the town. And the dad went off to work, the mom “cleaned the house”, and the boy went to school.
At school, the boy quickly made friends. He became part of a patchwork quilt of students from all sorts of backgrounds: rich, poor. Happy, depressed. Athletic, not athletic. Smart, not-so-smart. After a month or two, it was as if he had been there all his life. He could barely remember his real home, save for the occasional long email in a pre-facebook era.
Among the many people the boy hung out with was a boy named ____. The two sat together in Spanish class, and walked several blocks in the same direction together after school. And they were friends.
There was also a girl named The girl. She and the boy were both on the track team, and had PE, Biology and Algebra I together. After track practice, they would walk home together as well, though for some blocks more than ____. It became kind of a joke amongst the group of friends that the two hung out together so much.
Slowly as these things went, the boy and The girl spent more time together. Every morning, the boy arranged it so his route would cross The girl’s and they would walk to school together. And at lunch, they sat next to each other. And of course, they walked home together. And the jokes continued, but they took it; the jokes had some truth in them after all.
the boy liked The girl, and The girl liked him too. But since they were in seventh grade, it stayed that way for awhile. And perhaps it would have stayed that way, for the boy had little time left in Albany. Then nearing the end of the year, there was a dance at school. So the boy asked The girl to go “as friends” with the rest of their pals. And so they did. It was May 13.
For several hours, they sat in the bleachers with other friends and chatted and laughed. And they also got up and danced with their friends in a big group. And it was fun.
Finally, the dance neared its end, and the DJ put on the requisite nominal slow song.
From where they sat, the boy nudged The girl and asked for a dance. They snuck away from the mass of laughing, chatting friends to the other, darker side of the gym and began their dance. First they did the awkward shoulder arm thing, then settled into a more comfortable position.
In his mind, the boy went over many things and finally opened his mouth to say something, something that he had believed to be a fairy tale.
But, _____ suddenly popped up, waving his cell phone above the couple’s heads in an irritating, intruding manner. And he ooh’d and ahh’d and called over the other friends. And the boy and The girl stepped back from each other (the song was almost over) and smiled sheepishly and laughed too.
the boy never got to say what he wanted to say.
the boy and The girl hung out plenty for the rest of the year. A big party was thrown for him when he left. Atop Albany Rock, the highest point in the town, they said “I guess this is goodbye,” and impulsively, had their first kiss. They hugged and bid farewell to each other and promised to keep in contact. And that was it.
For several weeks into the summer, they talked often. And one day, the boy called, and no one picked up. And the calls stopped.
For three years, it was as if they had never met and never known one another. the boy began to wonder if it had actually happened, then locked his memories of California into a box and hid the key. One by one, the threads linking him to Albany fell away. He went his way through everyday life, and California faded to just a dream.
Well, there were good days and bad days. From his sole remaining contact to California, Michael, he discovered that ____ and The girl began going out on July 6. And the boy was sad. But they quickly broke up. And the boy, slightly guiltily, was less sad.
After three years, a thousand days, The girl finally called. When the boy took his cell phone from his pocket and saw the name, he thought he was dreaming. He picked up, and the box of memories opened. His phone bill went from an average of 400 minutes to 800 for January, which was noted by the parents.
After several weeks of renewed contact, The girl explained why the calls had stopped. Turned out,
____ had mentioned something to her about the boy never liking her. Obviously, it was quite devastating and he, ____, had played the sympathetic one. And thusly, they went out. But only for a short time.
For next day, they talked again and there were a lot of what-might-have-beens that whizzed through the boy’s head.
And through a series of complicated circumstances involving the economy, The girl’s dad decided to move the family back to Taiwan.
Though years passed and high school happened, they kept in touch. It was a difficult time and space difference, but they managed to keep in contact. They shared stories of their lives, and the boy skyped facebooked, interwebz’d late into the night. But, they never defined exactly what the relationship was between them. the boy left the box locked, and they were friends, siblings… something.
Outside of those emails, old-fashioned letters and video calls, life went on. They succeeded in high school, making the top of their classes, and joining many clubs and having lots of fun with new friends. They dated other people, yet for the boy, something never quite felt right. Every girl he dated, after that initial flare of passion, felt strangely distant. They were all nice, they were fairly pretty too as the boy had some standards, but something was… missing. “Is this love?” he asked himself. And in the end, that doubt led to the ruin of his relationships. And then he asked himself “Is this sadness?” At the best, he was a wet blankie for several girls (and a few guy friends as well).
And so life went on.
Finally, graduation came. the boy tossed his mortarboard, and his family went to Taiwan to visit the grandparents. the boy was delighted to visit Taiwan—he had great memories of the sights, and all his cousins and his wonderful grandmother who had made him delicious things to eat. His Chinese was not so good anymore, but that was no big deal. It was Taiwan. Taipei. The city he perhaps loved the most in the world. And this time, the stakes were higher, for The girl was there as well.
Now, I suppose its important to mention the boy was not single at this point in time. Late into senior year, he had begun to date a girl. They’d been friends for some time, but only gotten close recently (with some pushing from friends on both sides). Still, given it was time for college and she was younger than him, things were definitely getting a bit murky. Still, he went back to Taiwan with the full intention of trying. He sent emails every day about what he did, though it go hard to think of something new and interesting to write after the first couple weeks.
One day, they decided to hang out. Taipei 101, formerly the tallest building in the world and the most touristy of places, was the location. the boy told his family that he was going to take a walk through the city as he often did, and left his grandparents’ apartment. He caught a bus and went to Taipei 101, his stomach filled with butterflies.
Hanging out with an old friend. That’s all it would be.
the boy arrived several minutes early and sat down on a bench. He watched the people moving across the plaza, until he felt a tap on his shoulder. He whirled around, and there stood his friend from seventh grade.
You know when you’re feeling pretty calm before something big? You don’t feel your heart beating fast, your eyes don’t feel too dry, you’re checking all the signs and you’re good. You’re good. All the signs point to you being relaxed, and knowing you’re relaxed is reinforcing that sense of chill.
And then… oh crap.
Despite the frequent facebooking and video calls, he had not realized how much she had changed-- his mental image had, for some reason been fairly static. Indeed, despite years of calculus, biology and English, they were much the same kids they were in a place long ago called California. Except that she was heart-breakingly beautiful to him, as opposed to the “pretty cute” from seventh grade.
And so, they wandered the city together. They chatted like the old friends they were, and had much fun. They caught Pirates of the Caribbean, a terrible movie, annoying the many other people who had come to see it with their whispered criticism. They wandered through, generally acting ridiculously and going down the list of things they’d talked of doing. The box of memories was dusted off, and the key was placed in the keyhole and turned.
The sun set, its last light turned Taipei 101 into a blood-red pillar above the city. So, it was time for dinner. They found a small traditional restaurant, which had probably been there for a hundred years that neither would probably visit again even if they tried.
By the end of the meal, the two were quite tipsy. Grape juice and vodka is not particularly strong, but many Asian people apparently, including the boy and The girl, have a gene that makes alcohol processing hard for the body—they had not so good alcohol tolerance.
But seriously, the boy insisted on leaving. It was eleven PM, and he needed to get back home. He was cutting it close to the place where his parents would be wondering about his whereabouts. Plus, he had a girlfriend. Back home. Who he totally emailed everyday. So uh yeah, it was time to get going.
They paid for dinner and walked out. Well, I guess this is goodbye. A hug, a smile, and then it would be over and they would get on with their lives.
It’s never that easy. The hug lasted longer and longer until it was past acceptable hug length, and hands found one another.
It was dark, and so they headed off to the park. They procured a kite from somewhere and flew it until they managed to lose it, then zig zagged across the park before lying down side by side in the grass under a tree atop a hill.
It was a bit damp and chilly, and so they huddled close together. The girl turned her head, and the boy kissed her. They separated, and as the boy looked into her eyes, he knew that he was in love with her, and had been for seven years. That feeling, that moment when the universe and all the world will stop for you, was what had eluded him for all those years.
Look, if you want to read really shitty porn, google it or go read fifty shades of grey.
We agreed that given the distance between us, that we should willingly walk the paths before us. It might lead to each other once more, it might not. And we would walk, and not look back. Letting go of her was perhaps the most difficult thing in my life. I was crying most of the way back. Let’s say my parents weren’t happy to have me back at 3 AM, and I ended up on probation for the rest of the summer. I broke up with the girl from high school, and that was it.
I flew back home a few weeks later. We kept in touch. We went to college- me in Georgia, her in Taipei. We kept in touch—a few lines on facebook, a few minutes of Skype—small shards of a future together that might have been.
Here’s where it gets just plain out Asian drama-ish. I don’t even know why people watch those things. They’re almost an insult. Guy and girl fall in love despite impossible circumstances. One of them dies. If there’s a god up there, he better have a plan for all this.
During her track physical, some blood work came out a bit funny. It seemed to be nothing, but the benefit of an efficient universal healthcare system is that anything even slightly out of the ordinary is followed through to the end. Several more rounds of tests revealed extremely aggressive cancer—two, three years maybe.
Why?
Why?
Why?
Cancer can be caused by anything—any genetic mutation that is. A stray ultraviolet ray. Walking past some slight source of radioactivity. Eating or drinking some infinitesimal amount of carcinogen. Walking past a cloud of second-hand smoke. It could have been anything. Perhaps any small change in her life would have saved her. Maybe I could have done one thing to change things, and maybe she would have been okay.
I suppose it’s not surprising that she found a guy. In fact, it’s surprising it took so long. Dammit she was so beautiful. Last summer during a study-abroad in China, she found a guy. He took his time about it—they didn’t start dating till the school year began. He was a nice guy. But he wasn’t me. I couldn’t hate him though—he really is a great guy. Still, I couldn’t help but be jealous.
They broke up. They didn’t even make it to a month. I know why—doesn’t matter how nice, how attractive someone is, sometimes it doesn’t work out. It’s like after you eat a slice of cake—even the sweetest orange juice will be sour and bitter.
Maybe I’m going crazy. I have this recurring dream. I’m down by a fireplace trying to light a fire. There’s three kids around me. There’s a woman. I don’t see the face, but I know who it is. This is a world which I will never see. I wake up and try to hold onto it, but it’s just a dream. My only consolation is that I’ll dream again, love again, and be tortured again. I hope in some alternate universe where this is reality, that I’m really happy. It’s not like I’m sad right now, but damn, that’s one lucky guy.
tl;dr fall in love with best friend, never see each other, life sucks
