“At first I was crept out!” she exclaims and my eyes widen. “I mean, people just started singing and they went straight up to me.” Oh hell, I didn’t think it could scare her. “But I was also fascinated, H. I love musicals and it was so spontaneous it was great. I couldn’t believe it was happening.”

I heave a relieved sigh after that, glad that she seems to have liked it.

“How did you think of that?” she asks and I smile, taking the picture to see a somehow awkward looking Maca surrounded by extremely smiley people, yet she still looks happy, surprised even.

“When you told me how much you liked books I thought you’d love As You Like It. It’s the perfect place for someone who loves reading and the food is amazing,” I explain and she nods in agreement.

“I can see that. I loved that café! I’ll go there and take Mila, Moni and Havi with me when they are in town!” she exclaims, her eyes sparkling with excitement and delight. “They’ll love it, too! All the books, the sofas, the smell, the people and we’ll put on some kilos because yes, the food is amazing.”

“Are they your friends?” I ask her, hearing for the first time of those three people.

She smiles radiantly, her eyes turning softer. “My best friends. I met them in Uni at different times, but we are all close,” she tells me and I’m fascinated. I want to hear everything about her friends.

“How did you all meet? How are they? Why aren’t they in town?” I shoot question after question and she chuckles.

“I met Moni first. We got into the major the same year, except from Havi, she was already in, but we never talked to each other. Moni and I failed a course and had to take it again, in a special little remedial thing our faculty pulled off to help us finish in our due time. We were a smaller group so we started talking there. In a way, she introduced me to Doctor Who because by that time she got obsessed with it and couldn’t stop tweeting about it so I grew curious. We bonded over that,” she retells with that warm smile that shows off her dimple. “When I think of those times I always remember how she got so excited when she noticed my dimples and couldn’t stop poking them. If you ask her why we are friends, she’ll tell you it’s because I have dimples.” She laughs and I do the same, wondering what Moni would do to me. My dimples are deeper than Maca’s. Would Moni attack me?

“Moni and Mila were best friends from the first day they met, inseparable and Moni introduced us. With time I grew even closer to Mila and the three of us created a special bonding. We are all very different, in some aspects I’m so similar to Mila, in others I share more things in common with Moni and I guess that’s why we all can be such good friends,” she continues and I would love to meet her friends and see their friendship.

“How does Havi get in the picture if she’s a year ahead?” I question, assuming Havi is just one year ahead because that would increase the probabilities of them becoming friends.

“Mila and Havi were classmates during secondary school and sixth form,” Maca explains and I blink confused. “Mila is a year older than I am, Moni two years older. Mila first studied Law one semester but dropped out. Moni studied Geology for two years before getting into Literature. That’s how we met. Havi didn’t drop out, she immediately got into Literature, that’s why she was a year ahead, so Mila introduced us to Havi. We didn’t click at first, it took quite a while until we could actually call her a friend. I think she felt threatened by us, afraid we were taking Mila way from her, until she realised we could all be friends.”

“That’s a very great outcome,” I comment, glad that she has not just one best friend but three. “And why aren’t they in town then? I get Havi finished before, but what about Moni and Mila?”

She loses her smile and fidgets next to me. I furrow my eyebrows, confused by her reaction. It seems like she’s wary to tell me or even ashamed. Did I touch a difficult topic?

“I had to take a medical leave,” she says in a whisper, not meeting my eyes. “I lost a year for that so I stayed behind. And because of that everything in my curriculum got messed up with my subjects.”

I guess that staying behind would probably make her feel ashamed, especially if she’s failed a course as she told me before and she’s not finishing in the due time, but I honestly don’t care about that. She can graduate in a year or ten for what matters, but I’m concerned about the first aspect.

“Medical leave?” I echo her words. “What happened? Are you okay?”

She chuckles but it’s not a humorous laugh, it’s a dry and almost ironic one. “I’ll ask you something first,” she says instead and I tilt my head as she finally meets my eyes. She looks a bit scared but also defeated, which is a very curious look. “Why did you plan this whole day for me and decided to meet me at the end? Why not joining me and guiding me throughout the whole day?”

I’m about to explain to her the whole things I’ve said in the letters, how I wanted her to remember this day so we could talk about it, so she could never forget me, to make it all special but something tells me that’s not exactly what she wants me to say out loud. She knows I have suspicious about her dealing with darkness, I even told her about that in one letter.

I feel suddenly cold. Is she confirming my fears and suspicious? Will she tell me exactly what’s wrong with her?

“I wanted to make you happy because I think you need that. I have my suspicious that you don’t have an easy life and if I had joined you I would’ve been a distraction. You had to experience it all on your own,” I admit and she looks down, a sad smile on her lips.

I hear her taking a deep breath and without looking up again, she says, “I’ve been clinically diagnosed with endogenous depression, H.” Even if I’ve never heard about it, it doesn’t sound like your typical depression, the one everyone knows of. “That basically means I’m always depressed. My brain doesn’t release the same amount and type of hormones to keep me, well, stable, as yours do. Depression for me is not a phase or something I can overcome, it’s something I must always live with it.”

Maca looks up and when our eyes meet I can see tears have welled up in hers and she presses her lips tightly together. I feel my heart aching for her, understanding the weight of what she’s told me but at the same time, incapable of understanding what it feels like. I’ve always been a positive person, a happy-go-lucky type of lad and even if I’ve feel extremely sad and unstable at times, I’ve never even have felt depressed, even less being depressed. I’m aware it’s a very common thing during adolescence, just like with Maca’s brain, when we are growing up our brains release hormones at a different level, which makes us feel depressed constantly and like it’s the end of the world when it’s basically nothing. When we are teens everything seems so big not because we are drama queens but because our brain is developing and in the process it’s not working how it should be to keep us, as Maca said, stable.

I guess Maca’s brain is kind of still like that, and it’ll always be like that. Like a person with any other kind of clinical condition, like diabetes or hypertension.

“I’m so sorry,” I say putting the picture back on her lap and then taking her hands, squeezing them tightly and taking them to my lips. Hers are cold and they keep shivering, so I blow hot breath into them in a hopeless effort to warm them up.

“I was even told I had bipolar disorder, but you know that’s extremely hard to diagnose and it takes actually years… after a while they confirmed it wasn’t the case. So it’s not as bad as it could be,” she smiles weakly but even if she tries to say it as if were nothing, it hurts her, it scares her. I kiss her hands because I don’t know what else to do. I knew something was bad, I felt it, but I didn’t think it was this… serious and complicated. How can I help her? What else can I do? She can’t overcome it, as she said, she has to live with it. “I’m very sensitive regarding the term bipolar, you know? I hate it so much when people use it for people with mood swings. It’s so offensive because they have no idea what being bipolar really means. Not in the psychiatric scene, at least. They just think: oh, two poles; bipolar then,” she starts ranting and I let her. “It’s not that! It’s very connected to being depressed and it takes actually long periods of time, not minutes. It’s doing well, really well for some months, then suddenly hitting rock bottom for some other few months and then back to well again. It doesn’t happen in the blink of an eye! Why do people use such a delicate term so carelessly?”

She’s angry now but I prefer that as seeing her so sad and defeated.

“People are ignorant and they don’t usually care about using the wrong terminology until someone tells them how by doing so they are actually offending or hurting people. It’s not their fault exactly,” I try to say but she shakes her head.

“It’s their fault because they choose to be ignorant!” she refutes. “They should be careful. Words can’t be just thrown at as if they were nothing. They have weight, after all. Why do people forget that?”

I shake my head, my thumbs rubbing the skin on the back of her hands, soothing her. “I don’t know. I can only say sorry in behalf of them for all the people who offended you and the ones that will keep doing so. And I’m so sorry you have to deal with this, it’s really not fair,” I say wearing my heart on my sleeve so she can see how much I mean this. Her expression softens, her breathing evens. “Is this why you were always grateful for my post-its?” I ask next and she nods.

“They had a way to come exactly when I needed them the most. I found the first when I was having such a difficult day and it lifted my mood entirely. They helped me even to leave my bed every morning,” she confesses and I can’t help feeling so triumphant when she says that. “I looked forward to them every day and they helped me a lot. You’ve helped me so much, H. I can’t even begin to express how grateful I am.”

“Knowing I really helped you is enough for me, Maca,” I reply, the words coming from the bottom of my heart.

“I’m also glad you let me have this day on my own, even if at first I couldn’t understand and was confused by it, even a bit disappointed. It allowed me to experience it without distraction and without further introductions. You guided me, let me live it and then explained why. That was the best way for me.” Her words make my heart soar because it’s a confirmation I did the right thing. I had to talk to a lot of people, offer organs—even if no one agreed to—to convince them, wrote many letters, and even humiliated myself just to pull this day off for her. And it was worth it, she enjoyed it and it helped her.  “It changed me, you know?” I look at her puzzled. “All those experiences changed me, showed me things I never imagined and made me think things that never crossed my mind before. I’m not the same girl that left home this morning and I do think I’m a better version of myself now.”

I don’t know what to say, I just close my eyes and focus on the feeling of her small and slender hands in mine, how these start to warm up. I’m not willing to let her go just yet.

“Knowing that a place like As You Like It exists make me so happy because it’s the kind of sanctuary I’ve always wanted but never imagined was so close. And the fact that I was introduced to it with a musical is so extraordinary. Who else can say that? It’s like I lived my own musical, although I didn’t joined them in the singing and dancing. I was more like that character in Enchanted when she bursts into singing.”

“How does she know that you love her?” I sing and she laughs. “I bet everyone else was like that. It’s how people should react to a sudden musical. It’s not normal that you know the lyrics and dance moves of a song you’ve never heard before and that’s supposed to be spontaneous,” I continue in all secrecy, even leaning closer and she keeps laughing. She’s so cute and I can’t help the smile on my lips when I see her looking so happy.

It’s so wonderful to see such a diverse range of emotions cross her face, changing her expression and showing me different sides of her. These are things I couldn’t see through post-its and why I needed to meet her.

“It was amazing. You made that place even more amazing.” I bow my head to her. “How do you know them and convinced them to do that?”

“I was their senior, but I already graduated whilst they’ll do it this year. Convincing them of doing the musical wasn’t a problem, it was convincing them of why I wanted them to do this for you.”

“I really appreciate all the effort you put into this, H. It’s like you’re too great to be real.”

I kiss her knuckles again, taking my time so she can feel me and make sure I’m real. “I’m not that great, I just work hard for the things I want. Making you happy is one, so I did all I could for that. And I’m so happy it turned out how I expected it.” Her cheeks are blushed and I feel her hands trembling even more. “Now, why don’t you show me the next picture and tell me all about the street fair?” I question next to ease the tension that has built between us. She takes a sharp breath before escaping my grip and grabbing the picture with Mr McDean. I smile, ready to hear about this.

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I hope you liked it :D I'm having fun in the wilderness, writing a lot. Have fun you all! Comment and vote if you enjoyed this. Share with your friends, too :)

Bel, xx