||Jamilla Tate|| First Person ||

        "You can't stay here all night, Jamilla." 

        I groan in complaint, shifting awkwardly against the floor before blowing out of tired breath. With my face pressed compactly against the living room's rug, I mumble a barely coherent response to my cousin. "Just watch me, Nina." There's the sound of her glass cup landing on the coffee table before she sighs. Suddenly, she lands on the carpet next to me, her legs crossing beneath her as she reaches out to brush my hair lightly with her hand.

        "So... his name is Josh?" Nina asks, but simply hearing his name once again brings chills to my body. I squirm in discomfort, nuzzling my nose against the carpet once again. The fluffy material smells like detergent, which leads me to believe that my dear, twenty-eight year old cousin did the laundry this afternoon while I was at work. I make a mental note to thank her for helping to clean up.

        "Don't say his name," I mumble, leaning into Nina's comforting hand, which lightly brushes my curly hair. "I'm still, like, highly shook."

        "Shook?" Nina says quizzically.

        "Extremely." I add. Nina pauses for a moment, trying to think of the perfect thing to say.

        "So there's a concert tomorrow, and Zaynab is pressuring you to go?" Nina raises her eyebrows. I huff out a breath in exhaustion.

        "He's a drummer, Nina!" I suddenly roll over onto my back for emphasis of my shock, my limbs sprawling across the carpet precariously. Nina observes me with amusement. 

        "What's that supposed to mean?" Nina hums.

        "He's doing so good, Nina, and I'm still working at a f*cking bookstore!" I toss my right arm over my face, covering my eyes with my forearm. "I'm working dead end at twenty-six and he's in a touring band..."

        "Don't be so hard on yourself, Jami." Though Nina has called me Jami a countless number of times before, it makes me cringe with the memory of Joshua Dun still fresh in my mind.

        "That's like telling a two year old to not scream, Nina, it's not gonna help." I say in a snarky tone. Nina pauses for a moment, completely silent, before I start to feel guilty. "I'm sorry, Nina--" I pull my arm away from my eyes and sit up then, turning to look at Nina apologetically. "I'm just really messed up from all of this." Nina nods in understanding, forcing a small smile.

        "So, the concert." Nina reminds me, bringing my attention back to my pending invitation by none other than Tyler Joseph and his girlfriend Jenna. 

        "I can't go," I say. Nina tilts her head to the side, observing me questioningly. 

        "So you really don't want to see him, then?"

        "The last thing he told me was that he hated me, Nina." I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around my legs tightly. "Why would I put myself through that again?"

        "But you still want to go..." Nina looks at me curiously then, as if she can kind of see straight through me, and so I'm instantly uncomfortable. "Don't you?" I chew on my bottom lip thoughtfully, staring at my socks.

        "I don't know... It's just... like... when my mom made me come back, I was so ready to forget him... And here he is, in a band, and in Cleveland. What am I supposed to do?" I frown, a battle raging inside of me of conflict. The last time that Josh and I spoke was in the hallway of our dorm-- he was drunk and that girl, Melodie what's-her-name, was with him. He told me that he hated me-- he didn't want to see me ever again. And I granted his wish as one final goodbye. I was prepared to never see Josh Dun ever again, not after how vulnerable he had made me, not after how embarrassed and ridiculed I felt as he yelled at me for the entire floor to hear. 

        I remember the first week back home, I didn't cry at all. I couldn't. If my mother or father heard me, they would only be more angry with me. The house was a war-zone for months that followed my return, but rather than my parents being on the same side in their mutual hatred for me and my behaviour, it was every man for themselves. My mom was angry at my father because she blamed him for me running away, and she was pissed at me for leaving in the first place. My dad was enraged at my mother for producing an ungrateful piece of sh*t child that ran away, and he was livid with me simply because I was the ungrateful piece of sh*t that ran away. 

        I didn't cry until weeks later, when I was finally alone in the house. My mom had gone out to get groceries and my dad was at the bar with his friends. It happened after Scarlet Evans texted me. Not even a goodbye, then? Thanks for my bed sheet back. It was a knife straight through the heart, but I guess I deserved it. I deserved everyone to hate me, I deserved all of them to be mad at me. I deserved it all. Nobody else texted me. Not Becca, not Tara, not Tyler, not Garrett, and not Josh. I was back to Jamilla from Cleveland, a poor and pathetic eighteen year old with no friends once again.

        "I don't think that Tyler dude would have invited you if he hated your guts," Nina says as she pushes herself back up to her feet. She maneuvers around the couch and slips into the kitchen, the sound of the pantry door opening following.

        "But--"

        "If he's in as big of a band as you say he is,"--there's the sound of something heavy landing against the counter, plates clinking together--"I doubt that he cares enough to invite you just to spite you."

        I push myself back up to my feet, walking towards the couch. I sink into the sofa and grab the shawl hanging off of the side, wrapping it around myself. After a moment of silence, I open my mouth. "Eight years, Nina, and I still can't hate him back."

       The afternoon sun hangs brutally in the sky, casting a harsh glare over all of the eager fans lined up just outside of the Wolstein center. Nina stands beside me with a large pair of sunglasses covering her face, a small smile curling her lips upwards as she observes all the teenagers surrounding us. A group of three girls decked out in full twenty one pilots merch sing a song that I'm unfamiliar with obnoxiously loudly, but they look like they're having a fantastic time. Zaynab, who stands by us, chats with her sister Asha animatedly, the former carrying a ukulele loosely in her hands. I make a personal note to ask her why she, or any of the other ninety people, have ukuleles in hand(floral kimonos, as well).

         Zaynab finally looks over at me with excitement in her eyes, a wide smile spreading across her face. After a night of ice cream and soda, Nina finally managed me to take up Tyler's offer to see the boys in concert. Nina went searching for my old phone, and after finally finding Tyler's number somewhere in my Notes app, she shot a text in the hopes that his number remained unchanged. In a fluke of luck, it worked, and Nina told him that we were reconsidering the invite. According to Nina, Tyler put us on a list where we'd be let in without having to show a ticket.

        One girl further down the line has a neon pink poster with Tyler's face on it-- it's nerve wracking to see. I always knew that Josh was the type that drew others to him the way I had been drawn to him, but to see all of these people so desperately in love with them is slightly unsettling. Not counting the weight of words left unspoken(or rather in Josh's case, so many words said), watching the community created around their band was almost enough to make me change my mind.

        "Is it too late for me to just... run?" Nina laughs loudly when I say this, but it isn't to make fun of me. I laugh lightly along with her, a smile spreading across my face.

        "For stupid reasons? Yes. For legitimate reasons? It's never too late." Nina looks over at me for a moment, studying me, before she goes to change the topic. "Your clothes are nice." She compliments me, nodding to my simple outfit combo. It's supposed to get colder tonight, as it usually does this time of the year, so I decided to wear a pair of jeans and a cute pullover.

        "So me turning and running when they get on stage is legitimate or stupid?" I inquire. Nina pauses for a moment, stroking her chin mockingly as she pretends to think about it.

        "Equal parts, I guess. Maybe a backwards jog might even it out?" We laugh together at that, but our laughs are drowned out almost immediately with pitched screams coming from all of the people surrounding us in line. I even see Zaynab flailing her arms excitedly, her eyes wide in shock the way it had been yesterday evening. I try to look around, wanting to see what everyone is so hyped about, but I can't see anything around the flags and posters being thrown up into the air.

        "Here is me, doing a forwards sprint outta this line." I tell Nina, sighing as I lean my head against her shoulder. I almost forgot that concerts were always like this-- the yelling, the crying, and the screaming. All of it was for their idols, the people that made it easier for them to sleep at night, but it's fifty billion times stranger to see it all for Troy Bolton and the boy that told me he hates me. 

        "It's fine, Jami," Nina tells me. 

        After a few seconds, the people closest to us begin screaming incoherently again. I hear a few people shout out the name "Spooky Jim," but I have no clue what that's even about. I stand straight again, tilting my head out from the throngs of people so I can see who they're calling out towards.

        He sees me the exact same time that I see him. It's more than a little bit different than the movies, because time doesn't slow down and nobody disappears from my line of sight. The screams don't dissolve into nothingness as we stare at each other for that brief moment, and neither of us smile longingly. Instead, my heart slams straight into my rib cage with incredible force, and then I'm jumping back so quickly and falling straight onto my ass. "Jamilla!" Nina yells in shock, quickly reaching down to pull me up to my feet. I sit on the ground in a daze, staring unseeingly at the hoard of feet standing in line. Nina takes my hand in hers and yanks.

        "We have to leave, Nina, we have to go." My hands shake as I get back up to my feet, and I'm sure my face shows the pure terror coursing through my nerves. I finally look over at her, suddenly very sure that I won't be able to handle this. "Please, Nina, we need to leave right now."

        "What is it, Jamilla?" Nina asks me frantically, but I only shake my head in response. I grab my bag, which must of dropped to the ground when I fell, before I quickly step back out of the line. Nina shouts my name after me, and then Zaynab is calling after me as well, but I can't hear them properly because he's there, just a few feet away, and he sees me.

        He drops the sharpie marker that's in his hands when he sees me again. I watch him fumble for the marker again, quickly picking it up and capping it. He turns to look at me again, and for a second I don't know what to think-- it's like the words don't come to my mouth and the thoughts all escape my head. It's only when he takes a step in my direction when I find myself stumbling back again does he say something over the sound of the crowd.

        "Stay, alright?" It's two words, but coming from the boy that I lost back in college, it sounds like a marriage proposal. 

        I stare at him, unsure, before I nod my head.