I shove my headphones on and walk out the house, waving goodbye to my parents. Noah's meeting me a few blocks from school, as usual, so I have nothing to do right now except listen to music. Picking a track at random, I bob my head to the rhythm and pretend like I'm in a movie, only stopping when I see a flock of Year Nines walking past giving me dirty looks. I smirk. Ah, Year Nines. They all look the same with their French plaits and Nike hoodies, it's honestly hard to tell them apart. See, in a crappy teen movie I so despise, this would be the part where I say, "It's a good thing I'm not like other girls, right!" Haha, cringe.
Right now my hair is in two Dutch braids. I'm wearing skinny jeans and a red crop hoodie, and I'm planning on going to Starbucks tomorrow. I am the embodiment of basic, and it's great.
Also, it's practical. Why waste time trying to look Different™️ when I could be sleeping? I don't get near enough sleep as it is - I doubt I fell asleep until around 2am last night, which means five hours of sleep. Yikes. That's not great.
I have no time to ponder what my lack of rest means as Noah comes bounding up to me with a, "Hey babe!"
The Year Nines scatter, and I feel my mouth twitch slightly - it's hard to be annoyed with him when he just looks so damn cute. Noah has the personality of a mouse in cartoons, always somehow getting into mischief but never knowing quite what's going on. His hair bounces slightly when he walks, and he seems to have limitless energy, which then always gives him the impression of a rather bedraggled nine year old, and he's not exactly tall, either, which doesn't help with his overall vibe of a Latino Santa Elf.
"Hi Noah", I answer, sighing, and he pouts, mock offended.
"So rude! Really!"
"Not rude, just tired."
"Of me?" He fakes indignation. "You know you love me."
"I'm not too sure of that," I mutter, "but anyway, I'm not tired of you."
He grins, a bright, lively grin that transforms his whole face, and opens his mouth, presumably to crack a joke about how I could never get tired of him.
"I-"
"Yet," I warn, and promptly burst out laughing. "Anyway, if you could let me get back on topic, I was going to say that I'm tired because I didn't fall asleep until like 2am."
"Friends again?" He asks, half seriously, but there's a flicker of a smile there that never really goes away. "Not real ones, obviously, we all know you don't have any except me or Jessi-" I swat at his arm, but he continues, "but the show, because it's so much more important."
I laugh. "You got that one right."
"You know what I'm not getting right?" He asks, straight-faced.
"What?"
"Any of the questions on our maths test which, wait, I can now see by the look on your face that you did not know and you have not revised and hahahahaha-"
"Shit," I scream, and trip over a branch I did not see coming. We're almost at school now, I note detachedly as I fall to the floor, but at the moment I can't concentrate on anything other than that there's blood running down my knee, and oh god, what if it's broken, then what will happen, i won't be able to do the test properly and that's very important and fuck i need to calm down, and why am i overreacting, and-" I come back to reality with a start, and realise I'm sitting in the middle of the path.
"Hey, are you okay?" Noah says gently, brushing my hair out of my eyes. It's a simple gesture, but one that stings so much of love and affection that my eyes water.
He reaches out a hand to help me up, and I gratefully take it.
"I'm fine, don't worry. Just overreacting." I smile and scramble for my phone - it fell out of my pocket when I did - and gather the rest of my stuff together hastily.
***
We walk the rest of the way in silence, so it's a relief when we finally reach the school gates. There's a crowd waiting there, and I'm not sure why, until I hear a girl shriek that she's "so excited" and that she "can't wait to visit the Eiffel."
I curse - today was the day for booking our cabins on the French trip. How could I have forgotten? I turn to Noah beside me, and we exchange glances, before he starts to pull me across the road, running as well as we can with my hurt leg.
I'm laughing, almost giddy, and am barely going straight ahead, never mind looking both ways, so it's a shock.
"Look out," I hear a scream, and it takes a minute to register before I throw myself to the side, begging my body weight to fall onto the pavement, not under the truck. But I hear a crack, of bones, and there's pain, so much pain, and I am struggling to stay afloat, to stay awake.
"Is she dying!?" I hear Steffi scream, and I lock my eyes with Noah's, who's right next to me, for his eyes are the anchor in the stormy sea.
And everything from before this seems so clear now, so simple and easy in retrospect, that it's obvious what I should do next.
I love Noah. Noah doesn't love me. It's just one of those facts in the universe, something irrefutable and indisputable, something I can cling to, something Noah deserves to know.
"I love you." I say, calm at the end. "I love you and always have, since we were seven and on the swings together, since we were twelve and playing hide and seek. I have loved you since i was born, and I was born to love you. I love you."
The normal Noah would've cracked a joke, said "isn't that a little (very) overdramatic for eighteen?", but this Noah is silent, his normally vibrant golden skin pale, his eyes lacklustre.
"I-"
I never know what he is going to say. Tiredness pulls me, like a current pushing me down, and i fight to stay up, but in the end, it doesn't matter. i embrace the dark swell, and let its hunger take me down to the shadowy depths of unconsciousness below.
//
A/N:
I'm sorry, I know it was cliche.
Well, this was a much longer chapter than before - over a thousand words, dear lord. And it all came out in one sitting. (And only took an hour and a half.) So anyway, did you like it?
Please vote and comment, and thank you so much if you already have! It means so much to me <3

- note as of 2/7/19 - this book is back! the next chapter should be out by the end of the week <3