After that day, absolutely everything changed. It was as if Marie was the one thing we all revolved around and now that she was gone, everything totally shifted. I missed her, much more than I ever thought I would. Her presence left a massive, gaping hole in my life, and I didn’t think anything could fill it. She might not have been a big part of my life when she was here, but after her death she became truly woven into my existence.
But what I was going through was nothing compared to Joe. He was absolutely torn apart, and I became an unfortunate casualty of that. I guess I assumed that once the dust settled, Joe would totally get over his crazy blame of me, but that never quite seemed to happen. If anything, that was an idea he’d settled on, and nothing could shake it.
“Bitch,” he’d mutter at me under his breath as he passed me in the hallways at school. Or sometimes it was ‘slut,’ but I got the distinct impression that was more about Mum than me. That was still a huge issue, one I had no idea how to deal with.
The fact that my mum and his dad had been carrying on under everyone’s noses for all those years was utterly shocking. How did we not see it happening? How were we all so blind? And how could Mum have kept that from me? I thought she trusted me, I assumed we had a close relationship…well, ish. I mean, sure, I didn’t tell her anything about me, but wasn’t that my right as a teenager? Wasn’t I supposed to be the secretive one?
I hadn’t spoken to her about it, I hadn’t yet confronted her with what I knew. I just couldn’t work out how to even begin that conversation. She probably assumed my mood was down to grief, which was fine by me. I couldn’t look at her at the moment anyway. I didn’t want to be forced into a conversation I was nowhere near ready for.
I took the abuse from Joe, I didn’t even respond to it because I assumed he needed a punching bag, someone to take his stress out on. Even when he took things up a notch and other people were brought into the mix, I didn’t react. I squeezed my eyes shut, blocked the tears out, and convinced myself it’d all be worth it. I naïvely assumed that one day he’d just come around, that he’d revert back to the person he once was, and everything would return back to normal. I took it, thinking he’d respect me more at the end. Also I guess I felt like any attention from him was better than none.
Of course, it dented me, however much I tried to act like it didn’t. It took chunks out of my confidence like there was no tomorrow. Having Joe and his idiot friends calling me stupid and ugly, hearing them constantly laughing behind my back, hurt my fragile ego more than I cared to admit. I hadn’t fully built myself up into a strong enough person by that point anyway, my hormones and insecurities ran rife through me every single day. The words those boys spoke only confirmed the horrible things that I already thought about myself.
It hurt, I was crushed, I cried myself to sleep every single night, but I held onto the one dream that me and Joe would get our engagement back on track before long. When things got too hard, I’d twist the ring on the fourth finger on my left hand and picture what our big day would be like. I’d ignore the hot pain in my heart by mentally writing out my vows. I’d dial down the nausea in my stomach by thinking about my wedding dress…I acted a little crazy, but it was the only way I could survive.
Well, I did, until he took that from me too…
I’d just suffered a particularly horrible English class, where I could hear one of Joe’s friends making snide little comments about me. I held it together by balling up my fists with every single word, my blood boiled up, but I took in sharp, deep breaths to get past it. I tried to convince myself I was growing stronger, that this would only build up my character, but it didn’t make me feel much better at the time.
Then I had to walk past Joe loudly flirting with a group of the more popular girls right outside my classroom, almost as if he’d done it purposely just to torment me. I kept my head down as I moved forwards, I focused my gaze on my feet, acted like it wasn’t happening, but there was no chance of me getting away that easily.
“Hey!” he yelled above the crowd, using that sharp tone of voice I’d become very familiar with recently. My heart flapped, my tummy churned, I wanted to throw up. I knew his words were being directed at me, but I couldn’t face him just yet. I hoped that if I just ploughed on, he’d forget all about me…but of course he wouldn’t. “Hey, Charlotte.”
I cringed visibly. Charlotte…the only other time he’d used my full name was when he proposed to me, but this was nothing like that. This was bad, really bad. I span on my feet, ice cold nerves darting and dancing around in my body. I didn’t want to look at him, not now, not after that, but my eyes were drawn to him regardless. The magnetism was there, however much I didn’t want it to be.
Maybe I thought that despite everything I was going to find some niceness, maybe I assumed he was finally coming back around, but what I actually found myself staring at was spite and anger like no other. My feet actually staggered back a little under the weight of it. I felt truly detested, and that was awful. I hadn’t ever done anything to deserve hate. Even if I had taken Joe’s focus off of his sister, even if that part was my fault, it was never intentional. He knew that, didn’t he? He didn’t honestly think I wanted any of this to happen?
“What do you want?” I rasped, hating how scared my voice sounded. The bitchy girls giggled cattily at me, but the sound didn’t filter into my brain. I was only focused on him. They were nothing to me, I had no intention of keeping them in my life for much longer, but Joe I did. Joe mattered.
“That,” he pointed down at my finger, smirking as he saw me playing with my ring. “I want that back. I don’t think you need it anymore, do you?”
His words were loaded, he was ending everything with me, taking away my last element of hope. And the way he was doing it was as if I was totally worthless, as if I meant nothing to him at all. My mouth hung open, a guttural groan threatened to escape, and it took all that I had to keep it inside. Was he really doing this in front of everyone? If we’d been alone I’d have stepped closer to him, I’d have begged him to open up to me, I’d have told him that no matter what we could get things back to where they were. But we weren’t, we were in the worst place in the world; the school hallway. I barely had any dignity left as it was, I didn’t want to make that worse by begging him to still love me. Especially when he was making it perfectly clear that he had no intention of doing so. My eyes were brimming up with tears already, so I rapidly stepped forwards and slammed the ring into his palm, before they could fall.
For a second, we shared something. All our past flooded through us both, and I distinctly felt the future we’d built up in our minds evaporate. Whether he regretted it or not, I wasn’t sure, but the damage was done. He’d made his feelings perfectly clear.
We were over.
I stalked off, their twittering far behind me, hoping that I, at least, still had some pride. I suffered the worst thing that could’ve ever happened to me and I didn’t fall apart. I had to be proud of that, right? Maybe I was stronger than I first assumed.
Of course that wasn’t the case when I got home later that night. I truly lost it then. I fell apart, I sobbed, I lay on the couch and cried until I felt like there was nothing left inside. It was done now, we really were over, and there was no going back on that. The realization punched me in the face that Joe wasn’t just taking out his stress on me, that he simply didn’t want me anymore.
“Oh my God, what’s wrong?” Mum came rushing through the door as she heard me weeping. “What can I do?”
As she rubbed my back I wanted to flip out, to take my temper out on her, to continue the vicious cycle, but I really needed her comfort. I wanted to tell her that this was partly her fault too, that she should’ve just kept it in her pants and everything might have been all right, but instead I wailed loudly and turned around to cling to her.
“Joe…doesn’t love me…” I sobbed into her shoulder. “He doesn’t want to be with me anymore.”
Mum held me close and rocked me back and forth for a few moments. “Joe’s hurting,” she tried her best to rationalize. “He’s in a lot of pain, he’s feeling things we can’t even begin to understand…” Her words hung thickly in the air, I almost felt like she was testing me, waiting for me to ask about her and Joe’s dad. I almost took it, for a second I nearly went there, but I needed her advice more than I needed to know the truth. “You just need to give him time. He might be acting unlike himself at the moment, but soon enough he’ll come back around. Grief manifests itself in the weirdest of ways.”
Was she right? Was I being too irrational? I did decide to stick by Joe no matter what, I had been doing okay ignoring his shitty comments up until now, maybe I just needed to stick it out a little while longer.
“You guys will be done with school soon enough, then life will really change. Maybe once you’ve moved on to college you’ll start to see things very differently.”
I nodded slowly, deciding to agree with her. She might’ve done wrong, but she’d still lived longer than me. She knew much more about life than I did. I just had to find some positivity to get me through the last few months of school. It was going to be fine…
***
But it wasn’t. In fact, things just went from bad to worse. It became so awful that I couldn’t concentrate on my education at all. I ended up missing some of my exams, and failing hard at the ones I did take. I didn’t need to wait for the results to know that, I hadn’t even tried. I just couldn’t focus on anything but Joe. Nothing seemed as important.
Because of that failure I spent the majority of my summer in school, studying to retake the exams at the first opportunity. I still wanted to attend the same college as Joe, to do my photography course. That part of my plan hadn’t changed, even if everything else had. I figured that Mum was right, as soon as we left the claustrophobic atmosphere of school, and once Joe had been given the space he so clearly needed, we’d have something to work on.
But I was wrong, so very wrong.
I’d just finished my last retake, I was feeling positive for the future. I felt like everything was finally coming together when I walked through the door to see my mum with a tear-stained face. My heart sunk into my shoes, I just knew this was going to be bad. The last time I’d seen Mum looking so sad was the night Marie died.
“Joe’s gone,” she gasped loudly before I even had a chance to ask. “His parents didn’t even know, he just upped and left with his passport. They’ve just lost one child and he’s run off leaving a note. An ‘around the world trip to find himself’ apparently. How selfish could he be? Doesn’t he think about anyone else at all?”
“But…college?” My brain wasn’t totally getting it yet. “That’s soon.”
“He isn’t going to college, sweetie, he’s gone.”
Gone…
In that moment, there was no more hope, things really were done. Joe could’ve been anywhere else in the whole world, he’d run off, he was gone forever, this really was over for good. My life as I knew it had ended.