Always.

I’ve never really purposely ignored someone before. I mean, I guess I tried with Harry but it didn’t really work before and it didn’t feel like this. It didn’t hurt to look at him every day in class. To sit right next to him and feel his eyes burning into the side of my face every single morning and to resist looking back at him. All his attempts to talk to me, to write in my notebook, to come over after school ignore. Granted it’s been a total of two weeks, but it feels like so much longer when you stop talking to your best friend of about 9 years.

Every day is hard, but every night is even harder. Like now, as I lie in bed clutching the stuffed dog I got from my mom when I was a little girl. The darkness consumes my bed room, not even the moon peaks through my curtain covered window. My eyes are closed and every knock I hear is like a knife to the hard.

“Kel, please . . . please let me in. I need to talk to you.” He knocks again.

I can’t help but to turn from my back and onto my side so I face opposite of the window. Every other night for the past two weeks he’s come knocking on my window. He’s never come this many times. I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t talked to him or if something is really wrong. I want to find out, God, I really want to find out. But that would ruin the progress I have made in the past two weeks. Not sure I would necessarily label it as progress but it’s a start.

The more he knocks, the tighter my grip becomes on my doggy. “Just leave, please.” I whisper into the head of my stuffed animal, but it doesn’t work.

“Kelly! Please, please!” I couldn’t help the tears that I was trying to hold back. I could hear it, the pain in his voice. It caused me pain, not just now, but many times before.

He knocked again, and I hoped once more that this was the last because I don’t think I could emotionally handle any more of this, of him.

When I think he is done, my phone goes off on my dresser. I inhale a quick breath and squeeze my eyes tighter until I feel as though I can’t anymore and wait for the phone to stop. It doesn’t though. It doesn’t stop so I yank it from my dresser and press the ignore button.

I hear his sigh and he speaks up once more. “I know you’re up you ignored my call!”
Outside POV:

The window finally opens slowly and reveals an unhealthy looking Kelly. The one who was always bright and vibrant, and let other people only see the happiness that was radiating off of her. She looked weak, worn out, and destroyed.

“Oh God, thanks Kel.” Harry says as he begins to step into her room. Just as he does she steps in front of him, holding her hand up to stop him and hanging her head down.

“Stop, Harry.” How he heard her is a mystery, never had anyone heard her speak so quietly, so full of sadness besides one time before. That time though, Harry had been there to comfort her. He was there to hold her close to him until her tears drenched his shirt, and even after that he was still there. This time she couldn’t be there, she couldn’t be there because it was him. It was Harry who had caused this and he couldn’t fix it. At least not at this point in time whilst the wounds were still fresh in her body, heart, and mind.

“What?” he was confused as to why she was shutting him out. Why couldn’t she let him talk to her? His eyes also were filled with sadness now.

“I just...” Kelly stutters in attempt to get her sentence out. “I just came to tell you to leave.” She was debating, you could see it as she tried to move her head up to him multiple times. She finally did, she lifted her head up and met his direct gaze for the first time in what seemed life forever, like an infinity ago. “Please,” she looks at him with her hand on the window. “Please don’t knock on my window anymore.” And with that she shuts the window in Harry’s face.

He’s confused, so beyond confuse and reaches to grab the window before she shuts it but he’s too late. “Kelly!” he calls out but she ignores him and locks the window. “Don’t do this!” he tries again once she’s shut the curtain. “Kelly.” He whispers to himself, because he knows that even if she was right in front of the window on the other side she wouldn’t be able to hear him say it.

His hand raised up again to try and knock on the window of his best friend, to get her to listen to him, to let him talk. The pain in his face was enough to know that. The way he looked into the window, through his reflection. Little did he know that she was indeed standing on the other side, facing Harry. She stood with her arms crossed as she took shaky breaths. They couldn’t tell, but they were looking directly at each other. Well, they would have been without the curtain. The stood there, in the same spot, staring for ten minutes and Harry finally decided that he would lower his hand.

He crouched down in his spot, putting his head into his hands, and as if they were connected on some other level, she walked away and went back to her bed to try to get a good night’s sleep before her band competition tomorrow. Although she wouldn’t get a good night’s sleep, and when Harry sighed and ran his hands through his hair as he walked back to his house, he had a feeling he wouldn’t be getting any sleep either.

Notes