Teenage Boy

• Bella Laverock, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2021

He’s watching the game from the sidelines. Arms folded, muddy-brown eyes tracking the ball bounce along the wet grass. Water drips off his lips, his hands clenched in response to the biting wind.

I’m sitting under my little blue umbrella, pretending to watch the abused ball like everyone else, but through the sunny blonde strands falling on my face, I watch you. The clear droplets fall from the sky staining your navy hoodie an ink, jet black and ricocheting off the umbrella onto the darkening pavement.

I take you in for the first time in months, realising I’ve forgotten so many things about you. Like how you absentmindedly scuff the ground with your shoe when you’re cold, I forgot that you ball your fists with anticipation when you’re fixated on something, I forgot you always wear your lucky socks in a home match.

But time does that, it makes you forget the little things, because in the end it’s the little things that mean the most.

If every morning I had to wake up and think about how the water makes your hair hang down in front of your eyes, how you used to trace the outline of my hand over and over – reciting every line to memory, how you buried your face in my hair when you held me, I would die a thousand deaths in those moments.

Even after everything, all of the hurt, all of the lies. All of me wants all of you
My eyes yearn only for the sight of your unkempt face
My fingers yearn only to be interlaced with yours
My body, for your embrace

I crave our stolen forbidden moments, the knowledge that in them, the world stops turning, the wind stop breathing, the rain stops falling, everything pauses when you touch me.

Burning passion consumes me, ignites me, sets my very world ablaze, whilst you sit at home oblivious to the pain you’ve caused, because you are emotionless in a sorrowful wake.

It kills me, when I know we aren’t finished
When I know there is more to our chapter
When I know that I was the one who closed our book too early

It crushes me that I have to be ok.
That I have to be angry because You weren’t enough for me.
Because you are a teenage boy.