You asked and I delivered! Most of the voters said they wanted a Bonus chapter in Heath's point of view. But don't worry, I know a LOT of you also voted for Luke but half this story has been in Luke's POV and I don't see the point of it BUT there will be another one I'll be uploading this summer! I know, love me, I'm the best. This took a lot of tears to write so I hope you're prepared and ahh don't forget to check out the sequel (Story of Another Us) if you haven't yet and PLEASE let me know your thoughts at the end! 

Heath's POV

The biology teacher paces, back and forth, back and forth and his painstakingly gruff voice rings through the silent classroom of students I've known since first grade but knew nothing about, not really. This teacher failed me every chance he got and he's an ache in the back of my head and the literal back of me, as in my ass. Oh, how I wish I didn't have to sit through this and pretend like any of this fucking matters. But see, the thing is, I don't have to pretend like any of this matters since it's not like anyone is watching me but I'm doing it anyway so they all have something to wonder about when I'm not here.

They'll say"Oh, but he was normal? and wasn't he happy?" I stare at the gutted frog in front of me, dead, smelly, and plain fucking disgusting. I feel the strange need to lay on the floor dead like the Frog is laying in the container amidst its remains but then that would be another hour of self-inflicted hell if I get detention. I keep the position in mind because it looks comfortable.

I turn away from the rotting flesh and look at the sky outside through the large windows, it's a bright blue and it hurts my eyes. Add that to the list of the things I hate, it was always so bright and loud, kind of like my chubby Aunt Mae at every Thanksgiving. And God, did I hate her.

Maybe I should do it today—looks like a bright enough day to kill oneself. Nothing compares to the feeling of exhilaration I get when I think about finally being free and my head spins a little with how sodding happy it makes me.

There's a tap on my arm, almost on cue. I turn my head slightly from my slumped position over the wooden desk that's rotting its way into its next life. The tap on the arm comes from the only thing I don't despise other than that feeling of exhilaration—it's a person, and her name is Sierra.

Her eyes are narrowed at me, telling me to pay attention. There's a little smile plastered on her face and the sleeves of her white uniform shirt are rolled to her elbows. Sierra was the comfortable brightness in my life, she has been a saviour more times than I can count and that is the only thing I hated about her. She loved me and she will love me until the earth freezes—there were no boundaries nor expectations. Just me, a coward and her, the entire universe.

The first day I saw her it was a couple of years ago, her brown hair was almost golden silk under the sun and her eyes the kind of emerald that put all other kinds of beauty to shame. She had her nose buried in a book and she was quiet while her friends giggled around her. She was lost to them but she was never lost to me. My eyes followed her everywhere she went after that first day, perplexed by her profound groundedness and her ability to carry herself with an air of...importance.

Heads turned when she walked by and being a jock turned out to have its perks because I soon found out that not one person in school envied her, at least, not publicly. She wasn't the popular mean girl, she was the popular nice girl that everyone loved and respected and sucked up to.

Love turned out to be something I despised, though. No matter how brilliant she made it for me. You must think I'm delusional with all this hate, but mind you I actually have quite the explanation for all this, I just don't think anyone would care enough to hear it.

"Heath." Sierra's hand clasps mine under the table and I look away from her face and down at our hands. I doubt anything in the world fits as perfectly as her limbs do with my own. She was perfect, in every meaning of the word and the very first time she ever let me hold her my life-long hiraeth disappeared.

Hiraeth—a homesickness for a home you can't return to, or that never was. I had found my home with her.

I heave another sigh and push the board with the dead frog away from us and clasp her hand back, glad that I can feel the sensation of her hand in mine because most days I can't feel anything. It comes in waves, and it numbs everything. I don't feel any form of sensation, not even hate. It arrives and sticks around for days, weeks and even months on end. I used to feel electrified when she touched me but then I started to feel nothing. And losing the sense of her touch was what finally killed me and I am ashamed to know, to think, that if it worked--I would kill someone else just to feel her lips on mine during those waves of numbness.

Sierra knows but she doesn't know. To her, it's me being mysterious, it's me having my bad days just like she does, because oh no, whoever is in charge of fucking us over didn't just fuck me over and think that it was enough. They fucked her over too and she loves me too much to see or accept what is really draining our time left together like an hourglass.

The bell rings loud, shrilling through the hallways like a dying feline. I shut my eyes and swipe the one notebook I have with me and high five the Frog before throwing it in the trash can on our way out. "See you on the flip side, mate."

Sierra is saying something to me and I try to tune in, to shield myself from a brightness that doesn't ever seem to fade so I can hear what the only person I want to hear has to say to me.

We come to a halt in front of her locker, "What is it?" She stuffs her books inside the locker without giving them a second glance and wraps her arms around my torso and my mind stops running circles around itself. "Just tired." She reaches up and pushes my mess of hair away from my face with her delicate fingers. Her hands were always moving, always doing something, drawing, writing, sketching, fidgeting, touching.

It's the only part of her that showed how unsettled she was inside. I cup her face and a passerby croons at our embrace. "I have practice, I'll see you later."

"I love you." She's searching my face for something as she says this, but she can't find it. The brightness of my death inside doesn't let her see it either. "I love you," I say and it's the only thing I've never lied about. Her eyes shine exquisitely because we are two people who have so many other words amid those three words and no one else knows them but us.

The feeling in my chest is wholesomely devastating and I hold onto it with a smile, kissing her forehead and making my way towards the school's football field. Even the feeling of devastation is better than being numb. It's something and it's better than nothing.

We don't have practice today so I climb up the bleachers and jump down into the tiny space between the wall and the iron bars. I've wished countless times that they would impale me but my footing has always been precise. The lies I tell Sierra are stuck in my throat like a skin disease but I keep doing it anyway because it is what is best for her.

Can you love someone and lie to them too? Is it called love then?

I open the notebook in my hand and it's falling away at the seams with how much I put it through but for now, it's enough to write down what I want to before the limited amount of time I have runs out.

I begin my last letter to the girl I love but lie to. I haven't written the rest, but I start with last because my sister once told me things get easier towards the end--like a storm gets easier to bear towards the end, and the pain in your body starts to subside and it's easier and much clearer.

I sit in the cramped space with my legs folded against my chest and my head inches above the notebook, thinking, thinking about what I want to say. The last thing I will ever say to her. Will she love me the same after? I don't doubt that she will.

The world was too loud for me. I write down and for an entire hour, it's all I have.

It's an excuse, but it's also an apology wrapped in all the things I'll never be able to write down for her in time. It has to be enough, it will be enough.

I turn the page and think of the next letter. I want to leave her with all the good things I want to tell her when she gets to where she's going because I know she will get there. Her little body with her delicate hands have so much courage in them. I wish I had a quarter of that courage but I don't, so I write down that. About how much I want her to keep going, to be the greatest human there ever was because she is already half way there.

I tell her that I wanted to get better, that for a long time I believed I could get better. But then I go home and my mother smiles and my father pats me on the back and tells me he is so proud and it remains a secret that's pushing me into the ground a bit more every day. I fought to stay for her, I really did. I climbed off every ledge I ever climbed on top of because it felt worth it to be here for her when I wasn't numb.

I wanted to stay. I write down like a list of apologies that'll have to do. That'll have to ease her pain someday.

I let her know that I no longer have the nightmares she was worried about because I am breathing in one. Imagine losing control over your mind, can you feel how scary that is? And now imagine you've lost control completely. Are you dying with the fear? I certainly hope not.

Sierra remained the only person who really looked, but she could not find me in here either. I tell her that too, and that she doesn't have to be sorry for any of this, not ever. I tell her why she is the only one I left explanations for because no one else gave a shit. They can all rot in hell for all I care and I tell her to never raise her kids the way mine raised me. To love them enough so they are brave enough to tell her if they are ever dying inside.

I tell her about all the doctors. Psychiatrist after psychiatrist and all they said was that I had clinical depression. The most recent one said I might be schizophrenic and then I threw the photo of his smiling family at the wall and apologised on behalf of the supposed voices in my head, of course.

It sickened me to see them name this feeling of numbness like they've felt it too—as if they knew what its like to be dead and alive at the same time. Dying but breathing, like an itch you can't scratch.

They told me it will fade with time, with medication, with therapy but it's been three years and every time it comes and goes I can't tell the difference, not anymore.

The school day ends and the bells shriek so I leave without seeing Sierra and when I get home I burn all the four pages I just wrote except my last letter to her. I watch the scribbled words on both sides burn into black powder and then clean it up before I go to bed.

---

Two weeks after burning my letters to her, the impending numbness starts to come back. I stare at the ceiling for an hour and I'm late for one of the very few last days of high school. Mother boasts about all the ivy leagues drooling all over me to her friend over the phone during breakfast and I leave without eating.

In school, I don't see Sierra until lunch on Wednesday's so I make my way to wood shop. There's a smile on my face and my feet don't drag. There's a bounce in my step and a teacher gives me a detention slip for being late and I tell her to have a good day. Nothing can hurt me, look at me! Can you see that I'm going numb!

During lunch, I spot Sierra in the lunch line and the kid behind her lets me cut in. I wrap my arms around her waist and she presses back into me but that familiar squeeze in my heart, whenever she's close, doesn't happen this time.

We have a silent language that is solely based on touch. Her fingers glide up my forearms and her head moves back to rest on my shoulder. It is hard to describe, but it's like walking into a bubble full of everything you've ever desired, like going home to your silent house and finding your best friend there waiting for you. Usually, there's a sigh of relief from both of us but today I have to strain and beg to feel that relief just once more but it does not come.

She moves away from me when it's her turn in the line and ties her hair up, taking a tray from the stack. I want to tell her its the first day of the numbness, that tomorrow I won't feel her presence at all. "I have practice today." I try and I can see the change in her expression. Maybe I will feel it if she's angry at me.

"Again? You've had practice all week. I rarely get to see you." Her lips form a little sad pout.

"I know. But it's essential if I want this scholarship." Being away from you is essential if I want to leave something behind for you.

She doesn't reply and the numbness is like a darkness that clouds her and I want to hear her voice for the rest of my life. I beg. "Say something."

"What do you want me to say?" She has bags under her eyes and the bright emerald of her pupils have dimmed.

"That you're okay with it?"

I think our trays are loaded because she starts to move and I can see the clear disappointment on her face and all I have at the edge of my lips is that I love her. But I know it's not what I must have said because her eyes dim a little more and I can't hear anything but how loud everything is. It rings and rings in my ears and I can see her lips moving but the words are lost.

I don't want to hurt her because I can't feel anything, I don't want to be that coward and so I walk away from her and I walk all the way out the doors of the school and all the way home.

The house is empty when I get there and I walk up to my room. The wave has overtaken me now and all I can pray for is that I never forget the relief of touching her.

I take out the stack of letters I have been writing for her in the last two weeks. These don't tell her anything about the numbness or the cravings to just feel her when I was numb or how there was nothing she or all the doctors who deemed me useless in all the ways that mattered could have done.

These tell her to live, to gather the remains of my love and get to where she is going and when she is there to know that she was loved and that I'm proud of her.

My final letter is the only explanation I leave her with. There's no need for more.

I walk back out of my parent's house and walk to her house. I walk and walk and walk for what feels like an eternity. I go around the city, looking at all the places I grew up in and all the places that I left chips of my happiness in. By the time I get to the tree outside her window, all I know is that it's dark, both inside and out.

I don't see where I'm going but I know these steps by heart. I know where to put my feet on the tree and how to swing myself onto her balcony. Her room is dark and I can see her sleeping on the bed. I walk towards it and look at her face in the light from the little bed light on her nightstand. She is surrounded by school books and the only feeling I seem to have is that I love her.

"I love you." The words feel foreign in my mouth.

I place the stack by her arm and wonder if I climb into bed next to her will the numbness reside? But I know enough to know it won't. Who am I kidding? I'm not strong enough this time around.

I turn away from her and for the first time in my life, love is destructive. It's no longer constructive, there's no superposition—no high point. It's just a flat line of...numb. Turning away from her is chaos and the wave crushes me under its feet completely until there is nothing more left of who I was.

I leave her, the absolute and complete love of my life, the only reason I stayed around so long. I leave her with everything I was before I ceased to exist and all I can hope is that the numbness does not follow me or her wherever we go next.

I love you.

A/N:
I hope this wasn't disappointing because then I would die.