The field lay in front of me, only a mere drop of thirty feet down from my level. The dried out thicket of undesired tan grass shone with the glossy texture of the most recent rainfall -- one that left my black Converses sad and sopping wet. They were in a degraded condition; holes around every bend. Some would say these wouldn't dare be named 'shoes' after such vile torture had been wrought upon them, but a human who is abused is still a human, so I felt that it was my duty to make these rags worth something. The chill that ran through the air called out to winter, crying for it to come faster. This shrieking did nothing to warm my aching legs, which had been numbed within the first second of walking outside. Inside my chest, a drum was beating ferociously fast; hesitating for only a brief second when I gulped another mouthful of the thinly cooled atmosphere.
This sight was too precious for me to turn away and run back to the comforting blankets of my 'friends'. Here, lying before me, was the span of the entire dry, desert landscape. The peaks of the mountains far away in the distance were level to me and resembled the points of a king's crown. The tips were slicing through the clouds and poking upwards, a blade blindly clawing around in search of a victim. It was hardly morning - the pinkish hues were beginning to race with the pastel blues for their place in the sky. Sometimes I wondered what that light pink would feel like against one's skin. I imagined the smooth surface of the color grazing my arm, a silky cloth surrounding me. It was enticing no matter how much I despised the color pink.
The clouds above me were long and grey, stretching past my eyes' distance into an ever-changing world in every direction. Every turn there was another crease or indent in the soft padding of the grey surface, and I traced the outline until I could almost feel my gaze digging a hole into the sky around the clouds. I was alone, watching the fiery reddish tints graze the underside of the previously monotonous clouds.
A silent thudding of footsteps came slowly towards me as I felt the presence of someone near me, behind me, and turned briskly. Immediately I realized why my heart was beating like a drum.
"Jonathan." It was more of an intake of a breath than a word; a whisper of sorts, that kind of whisper where you hope no one heard because it was something that shouldn't grace the ears of those who were undeserving to hear it. For me, I was just too embarrassed to let any kind of emotional connotation reach my sentences, so I really really hoped no one heard it, including him.
But he heard it. He always did. Him and that stupid smirk that I would do anything for; the kind of smirk that drove me crazy in trying to figure out what he was thinking. I wanted to know why he was smirking, why he had to make me feel so stupid.
"Hello." His response was slow, hesitant, as if he didn't want to interrupt something. There was a way he stared at me that brought me back to when we first met, when he was hunched over me in the pouring rain, finally finding out that he wasn't alone in this world. I scraped my mind from this feeling, because God knows I hated the thought of being alone as well. My eyes softened as I looked up at him and then instantly turned in another direction to avoid his gaze.
"Why so serious?" He asked, after I failed to respond. I figured out a while ago that sometimes he stared at me just to see what I was thinking. Sometimes I could convince myself that he had mind-reading powers, because he always had the words that I couldn't seem to get out.
"I dunno." Ever since I'd met him, my IQ had gone down a full 10 points. Or he made it seem like it had, considering every time I tried to speak my tongue turned to Jell-O -- the strawberry kind, too. Yum.
"Are you ready, then?" He responded to my shoulder shrug. He could always tell when I was out of it, when I was so focused that I couldn't focus at all. Jonathan put his hand out and waited for me to take it. I closed my eyes for a second, clearing my thoughts -- I couldn't think of emotions, I couldn't think about the 'what ifs' and the negatives, I had to just . . . do. "Why are we doing this again?" I looked up at his thin face as I lightly placed my hand over his so that they were barely touching. He seemed even taller from this angle as his frail frame towered above me.
There was a sullenness to his face which made me draw my hand back and gaze intently into the dark sunglasses he wore. There was this silence that made the chilling breath of the slow wind attack the nerve endings across my arms and up my neck. The feeling that something was off continued to linger where my words had been, which created the atmosphere of anxiety. The eerie peace was cold and dark; which I must admit made sense, considering Jonathan was attracted to darkness.
"Because."
Oh, right, I had forgotten that reason, the one that tread so closely between trust and deceit: 'Because'. I was so used to this reply that it didn't faze me, in fact, I took the entire conversation as a balloon and poked it with a metaphorical needle to make it pop and disappear, leaving only a few random words and useless thoughts. That didn't mean I was done thinking, however, about why we were going to dance in this freezing weather.
"Don't worry about it." He smirked again. Again with that smirk! I felt like grabbing his lips and ripping them off just to see what was behind those cursed words and that annoyingly intriguing smile. However, that would mean I wouldn't be able to see his smile again, so I kept these ferocious and absurd ideas to myself.
He took one of the buds out from his pocket, leading to an iPod shuffle that had a soft tone buzzing from it. I took it with caution, placing the earpiece in my chilly ear. Time dispersed, and illusion started to mix with reality as the beat began creating its own masterpiece of a world inside this rather small one we had stood on. I held back a smile, but little trickles of joy were radiating from my eyes as the song "You and Me" by Lifehouse started to play. The acoustic guitar rang slowly throughout the melody, creating a mellifluous hymn that caressed my spirit.
Jonathan placed his right arm around my waist as my left hand reached up to his shoulder. Without another word my right hand and his left grabbed hold of each other and guided the two of us through the chorus of the song, stepping lightly to the slow and hardly noticeable beat of the drums in the background. I could feel my face flush, no matter how cold the air was surrounding us. The chilly morning didn't exist in this other world.
This pressure was crushing my chest, as I tried to breathe without choking on the tears. I couldn't let him see this, this stupid feeling that arose in my heart, so I looked from place to place as we stepped further, pretending there was something more interesting than his face (which I couldn't help but look back at every once in a while). I played pretend, trying to convince at least one of us that I didn't care about the fact that we were dancing; I rolled my eyes for that extra effort as the song silently finished its last chord. To make the act more convincing, I stepped away from Jonathan as soon as the next song started to play and gave the earphone back, shoving a hand in his face.
"So, why was this necessary?" I asked, swallowing back the pure and innocent joy and replacing it with annoyance. Reality had crash landed at our feet. It bugged me that I couldn't see his eyes, mainly because I couldn't tell if he believed this game of pretend or not. Instead of responding, he grabbed my hand and pulled me back to where the stairs were leading down to the field. He sat down slowly, looking up at me expectantly.
I sat with him, curious and anxious at the same time. What was the reason, why was he messing with me? His response left me without words.
"I'm leaving." There was a pause as he looked at me, carefully picking his next words. "I wanted to know if you would care that I was gone."
Author's Note: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, and *cough cough* THANK YOU so much to Sims2girl for editing this. Without you, I would've been so lost and confused. Also, thank you to the wonderful Whyvillians who gave helpful critiques on my writing after I introduced my prologue, you greatly influence the outcome of this piece. Don't be afraid to give me some more advice and tell me what you think in the BBS! I appreciate everything!
