Dad had been obsessed with Christmas and this time of year I felt his absence everywhere I went. As we approached the one-year anniversary, things felt just as raw as the day at the hospital, December 27th, when we said goodbye to the man who had been our everything. He’d been our center, our gravity. Keeping us close, secure, and safe. Now, we were just floating through space, hoping we’d soon find something tangible to grasp onto. Either that or I’d collide on some unknown planet and shatter into a million pieces.

Liv, of course, was the strongest. She was intense in everything she did. I always envied that in her, she got her passion and drive from Dad. From day one, she knew who she was and what she wanted. More importantly, she went after it. I could never be like that.

I just dropped Liv off at her school, and afterward, I stayed sitting there in the lot, remembering better times. I recalled my own days at the school well. Liv and I were polar opposites in terms of personality. When she walked onto the quad, every head turned to look. In comparison when I was in school, a girl who I’d had classes with for three years asked me if I was new. I’d walked like a shadow around those halls, my nose always stuck in a book, with barely anyone noticing me.

Liv walked towards a large group of students. They looked her way when she arrived, immediately parting and welcoming her. One of them said something and I saw her bend back, her body shaking with laughter. I wondered how she could turn off the sadness. I feigned cheerfulness a lot for the people around me, but I hadn’t managed a smile that big or a laugh like that in almost a year. But I was glad for her, happy that she didn’t dwell on the things that managed to catch me so unguarded.

I envied her smile not because I craved her happiness. I was only jealous of her ability to fake it. I had known Liv all her life, and I had seen all sorts of smiles—happy ones, and shy ones, and mischievous ones. And I knew that smile too, that big, beaming smile. I only ever saw that one on my little sister’s face when she needed to convince others, and herself, that every other part of her wasn’t breaking.

Liv disappeared inside the school. I’d taken to dropping Liv off at school in the mornings. I said it was for her, but, really, I think it was for me. Yet I always got an odd feeling being back there, looking at those entrance doors and musing on my memories of my high school years. It gave me a lot of mixed emotions. I’d enjoyed my classes, but I had always got along better with my teachers than I did other students. All four years went by without incident, bad or good.

Except, of course, for Tommy.

I first saw him on a brisk autumn day at the start of my sophomore year. He was tall and classically handsome, with a hard jaw and piercing eyes. Most of the other boys his age were still growing into themselves, their bodies lanky and disproportionate. But, already, he had stubble decorating his jaw and a matured athleticism that made him stand out in a crowd of boys still recovering from puberty. I asked my friend, Nicole, about him and she’d said he was new to the school, a junior, but he’d already found his place among the jocks. Immediately accepted. This was evident when he’d jumped on the back of one the footballers standing near him. He then mimed whipping him like a horse. I, of course, watched from the shadows by my locker.

The jocks in the circle were in a fit of laughter. Tommy galloped his new friend in my direction, and the group was lost in hysterics. As they got closer, I could make out his voice, lower and huskier than the rest of the boys. His laughter was so infectious I couldn’t help but smile as I watched. I wanted immediately to know him, to be the reason he smiled. I felt my heart in my throat every time I saw him. Every time he passed me. My skin tingled whenever he was near. I devoted the remainder of my high school years to pining after him.

He, of course, never noticed me once. We went about our parallel lives. He stuck to the jocks and popular cliques while I spent most of my time hidden away like a mouse in the library with my best friend, Nicole.

Most afternoons he’d be there too, and he’d always sit at the same table every day—two down from ours. Even though I saw him almost every day, he remained a mystery. Of course, there’d been rumors around the school, and I managed to get some information about him without being too obvious about it. He and his dad moved around a lot, though it wasn’t clear the reason. I presumed perhaps his dad was in the military or his job caused the moves. I couldn’t be sure, though it must’ve been on hard on Tommy. Especially so when I heard that his mom had left them when he was little, and I guess his father had never been the same afterward. Looking back, I now know the kind of toll that has on someone.

Sometimes, in the library, for a second my heart rate would spike as I thought I’d catch him looking at me but then, of course, it would plummet because, in reality, he was only looking at my best friend. Nicole had never been without male attention in high school. I’d known her since elementary, and her body looked like a woman’s long before anyone else’s. I kept the body of a twelve-year-old boy well into high school. Being a flat chested book nerd was never well received by my immature peers. The most attractive thing about me was my best friend.

Nicole was friendly enough, but mostly I spent time with her because I knew her so well and because of our close proximity. We lived two houses away from one another, and it never dawned on me that I had a choice in liking my best friend. When she told her other, much cooler, friends from English class that he stared at her in the library, they teased her about it, but I supposed she took it the wrong way because she lashed out. Prompting her to say, “Like I’d ever go out with him. I’m not at all surprised his mom left.”

At times like this, I hated her. Nicole had sharp edges. If you got on her wrong side, she was likely to cut you.

Still, I clung to the hope that one day Tommy would notice me. A foolish teenagers dream, I supposed.

I could see him looking at us out of the corner of my eye, and I would imagine he was looking at me rather than her. I would sit at my table, sometimes alone if Nicole left for an after club school meeting, not even wanting to move because just being near him was intoxicating. I could feel his presence so acutely that I felt almost nauseous when I thought of him there—less than ten feet away from me. If I’d only had the courage to strike up a conversation, to say hello. To get to know him. Maybe things would’ve been different.

But then one day, as suddenly as he’d appeared, he was gone.

I asked around, but I never got a clear answer as to why.

I was heartbroken.

When I thought of high school, I thought of him. Of his intoxicating presence two tables over—of my irredeemable awkwardness and all the what ifs and past regrets.

I half-laughed at the bittersweet memory. I felt a pain knowing that Liv had had the innocence of moments like those ripped from her. When I was her age, all I had to worry about was some silly boy two tables over. She’d been forced to grow up long before she needed to. Her worries were about her mother’s mental health, and bills, and her broken, barely keeping it together, older sister. It wasn’t fair. I looked at the school with a mix of nostalgia and sadness. I could have never guessed all the changes that would take place; all the twists life had in store. As I sat there in my rumbling car, aching for simpler times, the bell rang out across the quad. The wind whistled across the now lifeless lot. I sighed resolutely, adjusted my hat, and headed for work.