I was being haunted.

It had been days since the sight of the hard stare that had been Gage’s chocolate eyes, was burned into my memory. The haunting look I received from him that day left me chilled to the bone, so confused due to the fact that the look alone felt ominous.

He never looked at me like that. 

Gage, after the Asher debacle, had been very quiet on the way home, he was short to answer and, a few times, didn’t answer at all. I remembered the distant look that he would get in his eyes when he wasn’t talking back to me— if you would call it that. Was his reaction an act of jealousy? Had I done something wrong by having my attention captured by Asher? Better yet, was this my answer to the status of our relationship?

My brain hurt trying to wrap my head around the realm of possibilities, his actions as he had dropped me off with a simple smile being left to open interpretation. I could do literary analysis, solve derivatives in calculus, or even tell you the steps to the Krebs Cycle, but figuring out what was going through Gage’s mind was an enigma to me. He was my best friend. But, now,  he felt like a stranger to me.

He felt like an imposter. An imposter that softly smiled at me like always, one who acted like my best friend, but it felt like an obligation. I sensed myself crumbling underneath the crippling weight of the intrusive thoughts about Gage’s intentions, yet my facade that everything was okay to the world around me still remained. Yet, it was like I was an imposter too. 

I stared in a daze into the endlessness of my computer screen, feeling myself become lost in the surrounding students and computers. Their white noise only added to the unease of my current situation, their lack of awareness to the world around them creeping under my skin. Their smiling chatter and friendly laughter caused my body to become hot, my skin feeling itchy from the feeling that they weren’t experiencing what I was feeling.  Why was I so irritated? So uncomfortable to the point that I wanted to yell out in anger or maybe even sadness at them, to the point where they understood that my facade was a lie. Show them the inner frustrations brewing inside of me, the emotions I had tried so desperately to keep under wraps until we figured everything out. 

I had never been this angry before. 

The internal urge to scream roared behind the calm demeanor of my dazed face, the want to just let everything out regarding my best friend and his confusing actions building inside of me. It was something I wasn’t used to. Not in the slightest. These feelings were foreign to me, mysteries I had yet to encounter until that moment in my life. The person drawing them out of me, my best fucking friend. 

I was doubting myself.

I was doing something I had never done before.

Show the kink in my armor that was my confidence and ambition to survive my senior year the way I had wanted to, with Gage by my side. Yet, it seemed that that possibility was left up to whatever odds were favorable. My hands clenched and my shoulders tensed up at the thought of it, my body feeling tightly wound from the stress of what I had no control over. My boiling point reached to the edge of my consciousness, threatening to spill over into the reality that was my creative writing class. 

Fear mixed in with my anger, the thought of feeling exposed and raw to the people that believed me to be well structured, a person who never showed any inclinations of anything otherwise. It made me feel like a fraud. The impending thoughts weighing heavily on my mind, all the swirling emotions becoming overwhelming within my still body. What felt like a tidal wave of water crashed inside of my unconscious mind, the feeling of my body going under water made my limbs feel heavy and my mind cloudy.

What was this feeling? 

I felt like I couldn’t breathe, yet I remained calm.

I blinked at my computer screen, not realizing I had been sitting there the whole time, the present day still happening around me. My eyes noticed the empty document on the screen, the cursor blinking like a subtle reminder that everything in my head was not the same as it was out of it. My limbs still felt heavy. I supposed that if I moved the wrong way, the tidal wave of my emotions would come spilling out to the students that surrounded me. Had so little time passed while I had been in my dazed state? 

My internal clock was out of whack, looking at the clock I had noticed that it had only been ten minutes in total. Ten agonizing minutes. My eyes rushed to the front of the classroom seeing Ms. Wilder talking to the class, her words feeling slightly muffled as I regained my awareness. 

“— This project will be at least 40% of your final grade at the end of the year. You will be working in pairs to write a brilliant short story that will be of your own creation with your partner. I expect greatness from all of you.” She finished, her bright smile filling up the room. 

The other students started to mumble amongst each other, their excitement doing nothing to penetrate the numbness that flowed throughout my body. The fear from within me, moments ago, overcoming the anger that had plagued me during my dazed state. I wanted it to all go away. Goddammit Gage. 

“Now I will be assigning the partners for your project. I want to see what you all do with something that is potentially different from your writing style or maybe even your personal genres. Allow for opposite ends of the spectrum to meet in the middle and to possibly create a masterpiece. I have taken all of them into consideration, picking ones that would be the most interesting to be put together. Here are the pairings!” She continued as she grabbed a piece of paper with our names from her desk. 

Ms. Wilder started naming off the partners, some students reveling in excitement with their partners and others in shock to see that they were paired with those whom they rarely talked to. She read the long list, students grabbing their things as they moved to sit next to their partners for the rest of the year. But there was something I slowly noticed even through my haze. She had, not once, called out my name or my partners’. 

“And lastly, I personally think this last pair will prove to be the most intriguing of them all. The last pair is going to be Tristan Matthews and Asher Samuels. I hope you all work your hardest and create greatness.” She announced, gleefully making eye contact with me. 

Time froze once more, the numbness becoming an afterthought as I produced a fake smile and returned Ms. Wilder’s eye contact. The revelation of my future partner for the project that I had caught the tail end of, had yet to sink fully into my brain’s processing. The chair behind me moved with the seating of my new project partner, my body stiffening with the anticipation of the boy I knew was now seated next to me.

“Well, hey there partner” A deep voice erupted from behind me.

The hairs on my body stood on end as I turned slowly towards the voice, slightly dreading what I knew was to come. Asher’s smoldering dark brown eyes came into my vision, a slight half smirk accentuating his full lips, the heat from his gaze penetrating the cold numbness that still enveloped me. The same gaze that had stared me down on that football field. A startling warmth pooled within my stomach, the feeling slowly seeping into the rest of my body as I became enchanted by his look once again. Why, in that moment, did he feel like the sun?

“He-hey” I said, somehow finding my voice.

Why did my body react the way it did to him? 

“So, you must be the Tristan that everyone has been talking about,” He replied, his eyes still burning into mine. 

Now I was really speechless.