“You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.”

- Dumbledore, Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix

It’s weird how you can have so many good days, and then one day something happens, and you are down to where you were.

Today is Sunday. Unlike any other school day, I don’t have the opportunity to annoy the boys and act like a crazy girl and spend my day without thinking much about myself.

Mom and Dad were home. But they planned a date night for themselves, so they left around 6. Now, it’s 7 pm and I’m home alone with pretty much nothing to do. For once, I finished my homework.

I think of calling Jason. He didn’t look really good after his ‘girlfriend’ ditched him. I call him and I find that his phone is turned off. Then I think of Oliver.

What will I say after calling him? What will we talk about?

I shake my head. I can’t call him. I don’t know why. So I just scroll through my Instagram mindlessly.

A post catches my eyes. It’s a photo from a party, which probably happened yesterday. The photo is kind of blurred and dark. In the photo, a girl is laughing. Around her are more people who look like they are having fun as well. I can see the drinks in their hands. It’s a typical party photo.

Then I see Claire. I tap on the post and find out she is tagged. Just to torture myself further, I go to her profile.

Claire Brown’s profile is as colourful as her personality. Crazy, extroverted, weird, and talkative—that’s Claire for you.

Sounds familiar? Yeah, I guess she rubbed off on me.

I wasn’t supposed to be friends with Claire. We were the two opposite sides of a coin. We didn’t mix. After losing my one and only best friend, Faye, I was tuned into myself. I was quiet, wondering if I really was that boring and stupid.

I was alone.

So I used to hang out with Sean, Jolene, and their whole group of nerds. For some reason, I was still up to date with my studies. So I could chat with them without any problem. It was all about progress. Nobody ever talked about how they felt, or what they were going through.

Then one day Jolene introduced me to Claire. She was Jolene’s neighbour. Claire and I didn’t click instantly. We talked sometimes, and although she sat with us, she was nowhere as nerdy as we were.

She was all about fun. Someday I’d see her all by herself, listening to songs and dancing weirdly, vibing by herself. She didn’t care about what people thought about her.

That was really weird for me. I used to think she was absolutely crazy.

Claire joked around a lot. She made people laugh. I remember one day laughing at her jokes so hard that coke came out of my nose. It was a disaster. I spilled coke everywhere. Everyone was giving me looks. They were annoyed by how clumsy I was.

But Claire, she was laughing at me. She didn’t help me. She just kept laughing, and so did I.

For the first time I didn’t care what other people thought of me. It felt good to laugh it off. It felt good being a little crazy.

So we became best friends, just like that.

Faye and I had a lot in common. But with her, everything was a little bit formal. I don’t know if that makes sense to you. She was a mannered girl, the mannered lady.

Claire was a weird character. She tripped and fell on her face, she sang her favorite songs loudly, not caring if people were listening to her tuneless horrible singing, she came to classes late and made the teacher laugh. She lit up everywhere she went.

I was having a lot of fun. Soon the freshman year ended and Sam, my big brother, left for college. I was a little bit down. Claire was the one who came to my house to fill up the emptiness. She literally crashed on our drawing room couch and ate everything that she could find. She used to steal my chocolates.

Mom knew she was a little bit crazy, and she didn’t mind.

Soon school started again, and I somehow got myself a boyfriend. Dean Hathaway wouldn’t stop following me around if I didn’t say yes to a date with him. It was weird for me. I had never been asked out before.

There she was, Gwen Bradburry, with a boyfriend and a best friend, having the best time of her life. She wasn’t alone anymore. She had a boyfriend who’d kiss her on the cheeks, and she had a best friend who’d make her trip and fall and help her stand strong as well.

Dean and I used to go out on dates. I used to try to put on makeup. Claire and I watched makeup tutorials together. Then we tried to copy that. Instead of looking glam we always ended up looking like pandas. Dean used to find us and shook his head hopelessly while we laughed our butts off.

And then, things started going downhill.

First it went down between Dean and I. We somehow grew distant as days went and our relationship... well, you know the story.

I decided not to say anything to Claire about it, and there were reasons. I had a boyfriend, then suddenly I didn’t, and my best friend didn’t even ask me about it.

Claire was there, but she really wasn’t there anymore. She didn’t talk to me like before. She didn’t crash at my house randomly. She vanished during lunch time, and some days she didn’t even come to school.

One day, I worked up the courage to ask her if everything was okay with her.

Everything wasn’t okay with me. I had a bad breakup. In my house I was lonely. Despite having a best friend, I felt alone, and I didn’t have anyone to talk to.

Claire frowned a little at my question. Then she said, “Nothing is going on.”

She didn’t ask me anything.

I started getting flashbacks of what happened between me and Faye. So I stopped trying.

I had really sad days, thinking I was alone and nobody cared about me. My parents were too busy with themselves and their work. My brother was gone. My friend was not really my friend.

There were days when I didn’t even want to wake up from sleeping. I spent all day in my bed tucked under the blankets, thinking how life sucked.

One day, I was having a terrible, terrible day. I cried for no reason, and I was having bad thoughts. I was starting to hate myself, and I just needed, really needed someone to talk to.

I called Claire. She didn’t pick up. I tried to find her online. I saw the green light beside her name. I texted her.

“I’m feeling terrible. Can you please call me?”

She didn’t. Later I saw her posting an Instagram story of memes. Yet, she didn’t check my text.

So I gave up.

It was hurtful. It was bad. It taught me a lesson too. I know that now.

But when I was at that place, with those thoughts, at that time it only made everything worse.

Claire vanished from my life, and I started floating. I started having my spiral days, days when I was not on the ground. Days when I wasn’t myself.

Soon it was the finals of sophomore year. I did really bad. All my grades ranged from C to D. It was a terrible time. I was the girl who won olympiads, who had straight A’s. And then I became the girl who got two D’s.

It was kind of surprising how I even got D’s. I should have failed, considering how I didn’t even pay attention to anything.

Then it was summer. School was over. My parents were working on a big project so they cancelled the trip to Hawaii, where we used to go almost every summer.

My brother didn’t come home, and instead he went touring with his friends.

At one glance, I was home alone 24/7, with literally nothing to do and none to talk to.

So I used to go biking. Biking aimlessly in the neighborhood when I got too tired of staying in bed and staring at the ceiling. Books didn’t make me feel anything like they used to. Songs didn’t make me dance like they used to.

One day I saw Claire in front of our local hospital. I was curious.

I followed her. I followed her all the way to the second floor. I saw her walk inside a hospital room. She went in and talked to a woman. Some time later, the woman came out.

It was her aunt, Cathy. She knew me, as I had seen her a few times when I visited Claire’s house.

“Why are you standing outside, honey?” Aunt Cathy asked. “You can come in.”

I stared at her. What did she mean?

“Did Claire tell you to wait outside?” she asked.

“I, ahm, yes,” I lied.

Her aunt gave me a tearful look. She took my hand as she looked at the door. “It’s hard for Claire. I don’t know how she will take it. But Cara may not make it this time.”

Cara was Claire’s mom. I didn’t get anything else she was saying. What did she even mean? Cara might not make it?

“I don’t understand,” I said.

Cathy looked at me and said, “Cara’s cancer is getting worse everyday.” She sniffed a little. “Thanks for being with Claire. She needs a friend now.”

I stood there speechless and not knowing what to do. Claire’s mom had cancer. She didn’t tell me. She didn’t tell me anything.

“I’ll be going home then,” Cathy said. She smiled at me sadly and left.

I stood there and watched Claire through the blurred glass door. Then I left as well.

But I knew I needed to talk to her. Once more. Just for once.

Fate helped me out a little on that. One day, I was coming back home after buying some tots when I ran into Claire on the street. She was about to pass by me acting like she didn’t even see me. But I grabbed her sleeve.

“Hi,” I said.

Claire couldn’t avoid that. She turned around with a hard face and stared at me.

“Can we talk?” I asked her. She gave me a look.

I sat down by the edge of the pavement. She sat next to me. We didn’t start talking. Instead we just sat there in silence. Then I asked her, “How are you?”

Claire didn’t reply. She stood up. I looked up at her and saw her getting angry.

“How am I? Are you shitting me right now?”

I stared at her.

“Wow. You vanish from my life for two months then come back and ask how I am?” Claire says. “Fuck off.”

“I vanished from your life?” I ask her. My emotions were getting the best of me. Again.

“Then what? You stopped talking. You stopped texting.”

“You stopped caring.” I replied.

Claire shook her head like she couldn’t believe me.

“You could have told me,” I said. “I asked you what’s wrong. You could have told me about your mom. It’s okay if you didn’t want to tell me. You could have at least called me back after I called you,” I said.

“I was-I didn’t-I didn’t want you to see me,” Claire said softly. “You would have heard my voice and known I was not okay.”

“I already know it anyway.” I look in front of me.

We stayed silent for a long time after that.

“I don’t want to bother you, Gwen. You may have helped me, but there’s already too much going on with you,” Claire said.

I shook my head, “You know nothing.”

I didn’t want to talk anymore. It wasn’t going anywhere. I wanted to be her friend. But I could tell she didn’t want me to be her friend. So I stood up.

“I guess, I’ll see you around then.”

Claire shrugged. “Maybe.”

Then she left on her way as I left on my own.

It was kind of ironic. I couldn’t blame her, but a little part of me did. At the end of the day I just wondered if she ever cared, even for a little moment.

Her mom was dying, so who was I to blame her?

I had a war with myself about how I should feel about all of this.

In the end, I blamed myself. In the end, that was the end.

But that’s a story for another day.

*****