Chris.
I finally saw her coming down the hall. She looked shocked and confused.
“Let’s go!” She said quickly, and before I could open the door for her, she pushed open the door. I hurried behind her before the door closed.
“Uh…” I tried to follow her down the stairs. “I’m guessing it did not go well.”
Lydia stopped at the edge of the sidewalk, looked down the road, and then quickly crossed the street.
“What happened?”
We started down the sidewalk on the road that led home. I walked beside her, concerned.
“Chris, I don’t want to talk about it. But I hope he never speaks to me again.”
“Okay, well, that’s good, right?” I said, confused.
“Yeah,” Lydia mumbled.
“So you told him off and he didn’t take it well. So what? You don’t care about him anyway.” I said.
I looked at Lydia, but she still seemed distracted. Christmas decorations lined the houses. Colored lights and inflatable snowmen dotted many peoples’ front yards. There was one house next to us where every single part of the house and yard was covered in lights and displays.
Maybe Jeremy did take it well. Or maybe she didn’t tell him off like she planned to do. If that wasn’t what happened, what did?
“Lydia, uh…it’s okay. No matter what you did or Jeremy did...so what? We have all Christmas break not to worry about him. Let’s enjoy this time away from him.”
She looked away from me, then back at me, then away from me again, as if she was deciding what to say.
“Chris, do you ever wish we would get together?” She blurted.
I stared at her blankly. It was only a matter of time. I tried to ignore all the signs, I tried not to lead her on into thinking that was what I wanted…but here she was asking the question.
I should say yes. I want to say yes. Everything in me told me I should say yes. No more stalling. Stop feeling so conflicted and say yes. This “best friends should not be together” thing is getting old. You know the truth about how you feel. So say yes.
“Okay, okay…uh…look, we’re best friends, right? We’ve known each other our whole lives, pretty much. We both know a whole lot about each other. That’s very good, I think. We could make a great couple…” for the briefest second my heart jumped when I realized what I was saying, “when we’re older in college,” I quickly clarified, “It could be great.”
That’s not a no. But I knew that wasn’t what she wanted. It ate me up inside that I couldn’t bring myself to say it. What was stopping me? Why was this so hard?
“Yeah,” she said firmly, “but our parents are okay with it now, why not say yes now?”
Her direct question floored me. One moment in my life I regret more than anything else in the world was this moment. I wished I had said something definitive. But all I could say was, “Lydia…I….”
And nothing else came out.
For the longest time, she just stared at me with big hurtful eyes.
“Forget it!” she yelled.
Lydia stormed down the sidewalk, leaving me standing still. No, no, no…Lydia, don’t walk away from me.
“I’m so sorry,” I blurted.
She swung back and looked straight at me. “Chris, when I was little, I played with you. I went to all your basketball games, every single one of them. I was there for when Jeremy made you quit, there for you after the rumor about us almost made our parents split us apart. I helped you out with every single play we did together. I studied with you every day, every evening. I listened to you about all of your problems, no matter what they were. And I did it all because I was in love with you!”
I did nothing except shake my head.
“I wanted to marry you when I was six. I wanted to tell you so bad so many times that I wanted no one but you. I used to lie awake at night, dreaming of the day that I could tell you, tell you that I wanted you as more than just friends or even best friends. I wanted us to be boyfriend and girlfriend and tell each other that we love each other. I wanted us to get married when we grow up, move into a house and have kids together. I wanted all those things, more than anything else in the world. That’s what I dream about every night.”
She had just told me the biggest secret about herself. And I was saying nothing. Say something, Chris. Don’t just give her a blank stare. “Didn’t ever you feel that way too? Like you wanted to fall in love and never look back. Did you ever think about that?” She said with pleading eyes.
I started backing away. I tried to open my mouth again to speak but nothing came out. I stopped.
Then I remembered, finally, the reason. The one I couldn’t remember before about why I hesitated. Then I knew: We can never be together, because how it would damage Lydia. I can’t let that happen.
“No,” I said, burying my head. “I’m sorry.” But it felt like a lie.
“You don’t want any of it?” She begged one last time.
I slowly shook my head and turned away. “I-I don’t know. Not like you do.”
“Chris,” She nearly sobbed, “You were always the one I turned to when I was hurt. Who do I turn to if you’re the one who’s hurting me?”
Her face fell and her tears did too. I felt like no matter what I did, there was no way I could make it right. I hated myself. I wanted to push the words I said back in my mouth and push the words she said back in hers. But the words were out there. We had to deal with them, like it or not.
She started shaking all over. And I just stood there. Oh, gosh, what could I do?
It was only a second before her feet would give out under her. No matter what, she was still my best friend. Come on, Chris, you can do this.
I reached out to touch her shoulders, but my hands felt lifeless.
“Hey…” I squeaked out. “I care about you…you…you know that, right?” That’s all I could say?
For one brief second, she calmed down and looked at me.
“I, I know…I know you do,” She stammered, barely above a whisper. “But….”
Lydia pulled away and turned around and headed down the sidewalk, not looking back. She wasn’t going to stop. Not for anything.
Less than thirty minutes ago, we were best friends. Now, I don’t know what we were.
Was I right for turning her down? I felt like I had to do it, no matter how much it pained me. But why did it feel like the wrong thing?
***
2 Years Ago, Chris 12 Years, Lydia 12 years
Chris.
In that one moment, all eyes turned to us. It was lunchtime in the cafeteria, and for one second, that look of fear and disapproval overwhelmed anything else. Then, just as quickly, they turned away.
Everyone seemed to hate us, and it was only the second week of seventh grade. What was going on?
It started about a year ago when I quit basketball. Most of my close guy friends were also on the team with me. (And even then I was never that close to them compared to Lydia). But there was my friend Ricky, who didn’t care that I had quit. He seemed to understand. Try as I might, I could never convince the rest of them. But that was okay, I still had Lydia and Ricky.
Lydia had girlfriends in the theater troupe that performed regularly, like Megan and Olivia. When I started hanging out, she wanted me to be with their group. Her friends didn’t want it at first, but I understood Lydia needed girl time, so she hung out outside of the time we were doing theater stuff.
So toward the end of sixth grade, we started to sit together, just the two of us. Sometimes Megan and Olivia or Ricky would join us, sometimes they didn’t. It was all good, at first.
Summer after the sixth grade was the last time that our friendship felt safe like nothing would ever happen to it. We did everything together. Our parents were already close, but they became even closer too, thanks to us spending so much time together. That was when our joint Bar-B-Qs became a regular thing and we pushed our backyard furniture together. We didn’t really spend time with our other friends during the summer. I thought about them, and then Lydia and I would go and do something else and I didn’t think about them anymore.
When we started seventh grade, there was this little feeling in the back of my mind that something was off. While I expected everyone to leave us alone, they gave us weird stares and turned away from us almost excitedly. But they didn’t say anything to us…at first.
It was only Monday of the second week. I walked over to Ricky, holding his tray of food. “Hey, can Lydia and I sit with you today?”
He shook his head quickly and blurted, “No way, you’re disgusting.” He turned and walked away from me as if I had a disease or something. I walked back and waited like I always did for Lydia: at the wall near the cafeteria line, close to the door. Lydia came in, nearly crying.
“What’s wrong?” I asked in concern.
“Olivia called me a slut in the bathroom. Why would she do that?”
She said it loud enough that people in line turned for the briefest second toward us. Their eyes bored into us, judged us. I had a sinking feeling that something really bad was about to happen. But Lydia was still upset about being called that, so I focused back on her.
“You know that’s not true,” I said to her. “And here’s something else: Ricky called me disgusting when I asked to sit with him. What’s going on?”
She shook her head and bit her lip. I could tell she was fighting back tears.
I didn’t know what else to do. I put my arms around her. She held me tight.
I could feel feet walking toward us. “Excuse me!”
We pulled apart and saw two school officials, a man, and a woman, standing over us, glaring at us. “Chris Howard and Lydia Jamison?”
We nervously nodded. “Yes?” I said.
“You two need to come with us now.”
What was going on? They looked like they were about to grab our arms and drag us out of the cafeteria. We quickly followed them out of the cafeteria, down the hall to the principal’s office. This made no sense. We made good grades and never got into fights with other students. We never mouthed off at the teachers and treated everyone else with respect.
As the principal’s office came into view, I whispered to Lydia, “I don’t get it. What did we do?”
“I don’t know.”
We walked in the Principal Moore’s office and my mom and dad were there. Lydia’s mom and dad were there too. Oh, no. This was not good at all.
Lydia looked from her parents to the principal back to my parents.
“All right we are all here,” My dad spoke up. “Can you tell me why our children are getting an indefinite suspension?”
Principal Moore sighed. “I’m going to explain but I would appreciate that no one interrupts me until I finish. Understood?”
My hands started shaking. I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. “There is a certain word I will not be using here because it has a tendency to make people freak out. However, what I will say is, there has been a rumor going around that your children, these students, are in an intimate relationship, and engaging in that intimate relationship…at school. When we investigated the matter, there has been a student that has gone on record to have seen this behavior from these students.”
The floor just dropped out from under us. Lydia turned red and I could feel my face turning hot.
“This type of behavior is inappropriate at this school and we must take this seriously. Until we figure out the truth of this accusation, per school policy, your children are hereby suspended and are pending expulsion. Once this conversation is finished, they are no longer allowed on school grounds.”
Lydia couldn’t take it anymore. She jumped up from her seat. “No, that’s totally not true!”
“Yeah!” I yelled. “We’re best friends, not boyfriend and girlfriend. We wouldn’t do anything like that. We wouldn’t!”
Principal Moore put up his hands. “Calm down. We need to keep cool heads here. Judging by your records, I don’t believe that the rumor is true. And if we determine that to be the case, the suspension will be expunged from both your records. But it will go well for the both of you to cooperate.”
“But..but it’s not true…” I stammered.
“We would never do that,” Lydia begged him.
“Everything based on what I know about you from the teachers says this is not true. Nevertheless, I have no choice but to follow school policy. I’m sorry.”
Lydia turned to our parents, who were whispering frantically behind us. “You believe us, don’t you? You trust us, right?” Lydia begged.
They turned and looked at Principal Moore. “Thank you,” My dad said. “We’d like the room for a minute to discuss this alone with our children if you don’t mind.”
“Of course. Following that, I must ask that you leave the premises.”
“We will. Don’t worry.” my mom said.
He got up and slowly made his way to the door. I didn’t want him to leave because I was terrified of what came next.
“Well, we first want to say that we love you very much.” my dad started.
“Yes, and we’re only doing this because we think it’s best for the both of you.” Mr. Howard said. “You guys have been particularly close this past school year and especially last summer. We know you were best friends before, but this summer you two seemed to only want to do things with each other, to the exclusion of everyone else. We were worried, before we even found out about the rumor, how close you two really were.”
That did not sound good at all.
“We hope deep down inside the rumor is not true. We want to believe it is not. But until we hear from the school about whether the rumor is true,” Lydia’s dad said, “We have decided that you two should not be with each other or speak with each other.”
Lydia was the only thing keeping me going. Everyone else had deserted me. And now she was gone too.
“Is…is there no other way?” Lydia begged. “Don’t you trust us?”
“We want to.” Lydia’s mom said to her. “But this is not something to be taken lightly. That type of action has consequences, Lydia.”
“But we didn’t do it!” I said. “Why don’t you believe us?”
“It didn’t happen,” Lydia said. “We promise.”
They all looked at us, and then slowly rose to their feet. Lydia’s mom almost looked like she was about to change her mind. “Come on, it’s time to go.” My mom said to me. She put her hands on my shoulder. Lydia’s dad put his hands on her shoulder.
We slowly walked out the door. Then Lydia’s parents started leading Lydia in the opposite direction.
Suddenly Lydia had a desperate look in her eyes. She wrenched free from her dad’s shoulders, but he grabbed her arm. “It’s not true! You can’t take me away from him!”
I didn’t push away like she did, but I begged all the same, “It’s not true. Why don’t you trust us? We would never do anything like this.”
“Come on, Chris,” My mom turned me away but I wrenched around to see her.
“Chris,” She yelled, still struggling against her dad. “No, no, please.”
“Lydia!” I reached out, but my mom and my dad forcefully pulled me away.
Her dad finally picked her up and she struggled in his arms as they walked away.
My parents pulled me around a corner. She was gone.
I walked to the car and sat in the back seat in a daze. I might never see Lydia ever again. She would be gone from my life, forever.
It was in that moment that I realized that I was in love with Lydia.