Page 9 of Never Forget You
I nod and express my gratitude for her help before she finally goes and leaves me alone to unpack and settle in to this hell. Ionly need to stare out the window to know that I’m in the middle of nowhere with no hope of escape. This might as well be one of those Russian prisons in the snowy mountains where the worst people go.
“How am I going to get back to Harry?” I mutter to myself. He has my phone number. I don’t have his. I left him that letter thinking that it would be sweet and romantic, and now… well, now I’m fucked. Even if I could somehow sneak a cell phone in here, I wouldn’t have any way of contacting him. And even if I could use the Internet for anything other than school work, I don’t even know his surname to look him up. God, we were so dumb.
We shared the best holiday romance, one that I wanted to last for the rest of my life, but I was too stupid to get enough information to make it work. I want to go back in time to kick my own ass for being so dumb.
“You lost him.” I kick the bed frame of my tiny single bed that I’ll now have to try and sleep in with another girl in the room with me. “You lost him, Georgia, and you might never be able to get him back again.”
It’s terrifying to think that he might be my one true love and I lost him already. At seventeen years old, I already found and lost the love of my life, and I might never get him back. I may well end up as one of those lonely women who lost their one true love and now have to spend the rest of their days alone… and the reason I lost Harry is all my own fault. I could have done so many things differently and I would still have him.
“Maybe you can.” I lie back on the bed to think, rather than immediately unpacking all of my belongings. “Maybe there’s a way that you can end up with him after all. There is one thing.You know where he lives. You might not know the exact address to mail a letter—another stupid mistake, Georgia—but you know what the house looks like. You won’t be in Switzerland forever, so you can go and find him. Declare your love for him then.”
Yes, that idea is nice. It comforts me. It gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling because I can’t give up on a love like Harry and I have. It’s the sort of thing that would normally be featured in a movie because it’s just so perfect. And Iwillget it back one day. I have to. I can’t live the rest of my life without him, not a chance…
“Shesohas a make-believe boyfriend, don’t you think?” My heart sinks as I press my ear to the door to listen to Sienna laughing nastily about me with her bitchy best friend, Jennie. “Some Harry idiot that she talks aboutallthe time but never seems to get any letters from or anything. She’s clearly absolutely deluded.”
Oh, God, I feel sick. This is horrible. Yes, I’ve been telling everyone here that I have a boyfriend because that’s how I feel. Knowing that we will be together forever is the only thing keeping me going.
“It’s sad,” Jennie replies knowingly. “But she’s obviously one of those weird compulsive liar types. I clocked that about her the first moment I saw her. She’s one of those sad people who doesn’t have anything going in her life so she has to make stuff up. That nonsense about her father making her come here because she was so wild or whatever… what a crock of shit. Have you seen a wild side to her at all? No, because there isn’t one.”
Oh, God, is that what people really think of me here? I always knew that it wasn’t going to be the easiest to make friends here, but I didn’t expect to be quite as hated as this. I thought that I was doing okay.
“Yeah, she’s pretty boring,” Sienna agrees with her. “She probably had to come here because everyone at her last school hated her and her parents got sick of her. They couldn’t even stand to send her to a boarding school in America. It had to be half the way around the world just to escape her delusions. Although, she is good to copy work from, I will give her that. She’s one of those freakish genius people, so I can use that advantage.”
I don’t even notice that tears have started streaming down my face until it’s absolutely soaking. Sienna and Jennie are the only people who have shown me any kind of niceness at all and they despise me, which breaks me. I was only just holding it together as it was, so this is a real kick to the stomach. I can hardly handle it.
“She might even get you through this school.” Jennie laughs nastily. “Then we can go to university in England together. Oh, you just have to come with me. British boys are the best and I want to meet one with you.”
“How do you know I don’t already have an imaginary English boyfriend called Henry?” Sienna teases. “I might only just be eighteen years old, but I may already know that I’m going to marry him and live happily ever after in La-La Land. You know, because everyone marries the guy they meet when they were a teenager, don’t they?”
I can’t listen any longer. The sobs are too much. They need to explode free. I run down the hallway to the bathroom where Ican cry and fall apart in peace. I need to be alone as I crack at the seams and completely cave to this unhappiness. I’ve been trying so hard to hold it together, so hard to keep my chin jutted out and my head held high, but I don’t know if I can any longer. I’m not sure I have the strength to keep on going.
Am I deluded?I ask myself as I cower in one of the cubicles.Have I gone crazy with this Harry stuff?
Sure, we said a lot of things to one another, but was he just replying in the heat of the moment? Did he really mean it? From what I’ve seen of teenage boys, they don’t exactly fall in love, do they? They are a slave to their hormones and following the next pretty girl into the bedroom. I mean, he might even have another girlfriend now, when I didn’t immediately reply to his text messages. If he even sent any. He might be in love with the next girl to come his way. I could just be a distant memory, and I’m just the idiot who is still pining for him.
I feel sick. I really might throw up. Never have I ever felt as foolish as I do right now. I’ve been planning on chasing him down for some big, romantic reunion, and he might not even want it. It might humiliate him. Oh, God, the shame is already washing over me and I haven’t even experienced it in reality yet. I don’t know if I can do it…
Now I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I should still be thinking about love at all or if it would be better for me to try and move on. Not with another guy, of course—that just feels impossible—but just by myself. Just find a way to be okay if I don’t have this wonderfully magical future that I keep picturing in my mind. Honestly, it’s an idea that makes me want to weep for the rest of my life, but that nastiness coming from those girls might be right in a way. It might shake me to the core and makeme realize that I need to make some changes… however much I don’t want to.
You need to be strong,I try to remind myself, even if I feel weaker than I’ve ever felt before.You need to be powerful. You don’t have anyone else to rely on but yourself. You need to keep going somehow.
One step at a time, that’s the only way. One step in the right direction until somehow, I’m okay again. Even if it feels impossible right now, one day, I will be okay again. One day, everything will be fine.
One day… I just don’t know when.
8
HARRY
Ten Years Later…
“Goodbye, Mr. Jones,” one of the sweeter kids in this year’s kindergarten class says to me as he waves and leaves the classroom. I have a good class this year. It’s one where I am very happy doing this job.
“See ya on Monday morning, Tom. Have a nice weekend,” I call back after him as he wanders off clinging to his mother’s hand. I find a smile creeping up on my face as I realize that it’s been another satisfying week. I always knew that I wanted to do something to help people, but I didn’t think of teaching. Not until I hit college and it just kinda seemed like the obvious choice for me. Now that I’m here, I can’t believe I didn’t always know it.
Teaching has made my life complete, to be honest, and managing to land a job at my old school has made it even better. I know that a lot of people couldn’t wait to escape this town as soon as they were old enough, but not me. I love it here and I always have. It’s the perfect place for a future, for having love and raising a family…
Not that I have a love in my life, not that I’m close to having a family, but the idea is nice.