The hallway is a place where danger can be averted and where it can be met in a dozen different ways. With every step I take, I walk on thin ice, on bells ringing to get the attention I do not want. And that was when you dropped into my life. You made the memories on the fire escape real. You showed up in my life knowing you would have to accept everything that went with it.

"I'm sorry," you said. "I shouldn't have said that to you."

Guilt. It was the only emotion dripping from your voice as you stopped me in my tracks and forced me to look at you. And you were right. You were sorry when you should not be. I have my life, and entering it the way you want to would not help us. So I pretended you meant those words for me. You were better off without me, and that was the truth I would not bother hiding.

That night in the alley taught me one thing. You are not like most people, and leaving your world for mine will make you even more different. It would plunge you deeper into despair, and like me, you will not be able to get out even if you wanted to. And they will get you—the words thrown in your face as if they are the truth, the jaunts, the cheers. They will repeat it. Over and over and over again. Until those words become your truth too.

You might be a hypocrite, but you were not a miscreant in the making. And I understood that. You should never turn out to be like me or those coming up behind you. You were not like most people in a way that you should become your own person without me. Without the need to lend who you were to a soul who never wanted it.

But you did, anyway.

I should have run when I saw monsters in broad daylight. But you were there, attempting to build bridges we should have burned, and instead of fleeing, I crossed them. That was how you saw me in my own despair, being preyed upon by those who believed themselves to be superior, those who could never survive without trampling on someone they never understood. It was easier—having to drive your anger into a lesser being than to swallow it and explode from the inside. To destroy others is easier than destroying yourself.

And yet, I do not want to be your ruin.

The monsters retreated at the sight of you, and with one threat, they threw one right back. At me. They vowed to return and enact their revenge, and you would be included. It seemed to delight you as you reached for my hand and led me past the horde of prying eyes and blustering whispers. Words live on, but when they are uttered in careless judgment, they fester until they rot. They spread like wildfire, devouring the fields I plowed for myself because that was all they were capable of.

And the people who owned them will be unpunished. There is no justice. No crime in making someone's world crumble.

I knew that, and when you let me go in the fire escape to face me, I told you that. Perhaps, my memory was as faulty as the world around us, but I remember telling you to back off, to get the hell away from me.

You asked me why.

"I don't need you," I answered. It was the truth.

But the truth always had two faces—the one you say and the one you do not. At that moment, I needed you to be far, far away from me, to never admit you cared about me and what wounds and scars I heal because of life. That was what I said, but what about the one I did not?

I do not need you, because you need you. That alley and the vice we shared taught me enough. You cannot give your heart to someone else when you cannot even feel it. A broken heart is still broken, even when you present it as without cracks.

That was why I left you in the landing, with your eyes stuck on the back of my head, why I never wavered on my way forward. You do not deserve to be alone, but you deserve more than what I can give you. And I will tell you that over and over and over again. Until you believe what I say and it becomes your truth.

Until my words fester in your heart to seal up the cracks I might have caused. I will tell you those words...until they become my own.