What Came After

"Hey, Ellie. Everything okay?"

The sun was shining just like any other old day, and the grass was just the same shade of mediocre green that it always had been, and the clouds were nowhere to be seen. I was stretched out under the biggest, oldest, sickliest tree on the hill, blinking in the relentless light. She was on her stomach, with a notepad and a green pencil, her eyes closed, biting her lip gently. Maybe she was thinking. It was so hard to get her to talk.

"Hey, Ellie."

She looked up at me, her pale green eyes wide and silent. A smile curved her lips, and I knew she was listening.

"What's wrong?"

She smiled again, but said nothing and wrote nothing. I missed her voice more than anything, more than I could express. It was as hard to get her to sing as it was to get her to talk. Or write. Or share anything of her curtained mind to me.

"Come on, Ellie."

Coaxing sometimes worked. I think she was lonely, and it felt good to her to have someone actually interested in her thoughts. Sometimes I wanted to take her by her shoulders and shake her and make her understand that she was still loved, she was still cared for, and nothing was going to change that. Nothing.

"Tell me what you're thinking about."

Her eyes blinked once, and then floated serenly down to focus on her paper. My heart jumped a little, metaphorically speaking, as I wondered hopefully whether or not she would start writing. I waited, but she simply gazed at her paper and made no other movement.

"Ellie, please. Talk to me."

The smile drifted from her eyes and she looked troubled, sad. Her pencil flew to the surface of the paper, and I knew she was going to talk. I watched her write, curiously, in her tiny, perfect handwriting. Her pretty face was set in determination. She handed me the paper and I read it eagerly.

"You don't want to hear it again," the green pencil had said. "You never want to hear what's wrong. Not when it's this."

I bit my lip. She was right, of course, I knew I didn't want to hear it. But at least if she was telling me, she was talking to me, and that was a step in the right direction. I handed the paper back to her.

"Tell me, Ellie. Please tell me."

She gazed at me sadly for a moment, and I thought of taking my words back and letting us just be happy together, before she left again. But no... reading her words was better than thinking of her in seclusion. She was scribbling again on the paper, writing faster.

"It's him again, of course," she had written, and already I was regretting my decision to listen to her. "I miss him so much. Sometimes I wonder if it's alright if I miss him. Maybe he doesn't miss me, maybe he's alright with never seeing me. Sometimes I'm so afraid of losing him, all I want to do is cry. But then again, it's such a relief to trust someone for once, and to believe that they love you and care for you even when they don't say anything."

I pretended to read this speech over several times, in order to disguise my discomfort. I wanted to tell her to forget about him, that I loved her, and I cared for her, and I could tell her any number of times during the day so she'd never have to worry. But every time I told her I loved her, she would smile sadly and say no, you don't. I wondered how she was so certain.

"I'm sorry," I said aloud, for lack of something better.

She was already writing again. I sighed and watched her eyes as she wrote. She had such pretty eyes. It was a pity they always looked so sad and lonely. She handed me the paper.

"Sometimes I do believe with my whole heart that he loves me. Sometimes it's harder, and I'm afraid he doesn't feel as strongly as he used to, and he wishes that he hadn't promised me what he did, and he wants to get away from me and do something else."

I spoke without thinking much. "Ellie, he's got you and you like him a ton. He's got no reason to be unhappy. And if he is unhappy, you don't deserve him." You deserve me, I went on in my head, but my next thought was that I didn't deserve her, and then I confused myself, so I stopped and watched her write some more.

"No one who knows me is going to be completely happy all the time. I can't make people happy for long. They say I do, but then they look sad when they walk away and I feel like a liar and a joke and I feel horrible."

I frowned when I read it over. The green pencil marks almost looked sad.

"You make me happy," I said, decidedly.

She smiled sadly again and didn't write any more.

"No, no," I said hurridly. "Go on. Tell me more. Is there more?"

She shook her head, still smiling that sad little smile.

"You're lying. Go on, Ellie, please."

She closed her eyes and rested her head down on her notepad. Her hair covered half her face, and I wondered if I had lost my chance to listen to her. I always blew it, it seemed. Maybe if I could keep my mouth shut about my own feelings, she would keep speaking and I could be in love in silence...

"Please, Ellie. I'll listen to anything you want to say. I don't mind if you talk about him. Keep going. It's alright."

She opened her eyes and looked at me, looked at me with those beautiful green eyes. I wanted to cry, but of course I was more manly than that, and I wouldn't do it in front of her anyway.

"Are you sure you never liked me, Ellie?" Sometimes, when she looked at me, I hoped that maybe she really did feel something for me, that she was getting over that annoying guy of hers. Maybe she just wouldn't tell me.

She sat up and took up her pencil, and my heart sank. Of course she was going to tell me off again.

"I can't like you. I love him, and I want to love him, and I'm not going to give that up. It doesn't work that way. The best I can do is to try to be your friend, but please stop bringing it up, because it just hurts me that I can't do anything about it. I wish you'd find someone else. I love him."

"Yeah, well, you could stop rubbing it in every chance you get," I snapped, letting my temper get ahead of my head. "It doesn't help me any, either. If you think it hurts you when you have to tell me again, what do you think it's doing to me?"

She looked like she was about to cry, and I felt horrible at once.

"I'm so miserably sorry," she wrote on her paper.

I sat back and closed my eyes and tried to think. I had already blundered, it was too late to try to cover it up and pretend I  hadn't said anything. It was hard enough to keep anything from her for long, though. She got it out of me with a simple look; I was a slave to her powers.

"It's okay," I said gruffly. "I'm fine. It doesn't matter."

She still looked like she was going to cry, and I was positive she knew I was lying.

"You okay, Ellie?" I asked, suddenly afraid I had hurt her.

She smiled again, that strange, sad little smile, and shook her head.

"It's me now, isn't it? I'm sorry."

She shrugged and looked down at her paper. I waited for her to start writing, but she didn't, and I was afraid I had lost her.

"You're so beautiful," I said, in a quieter voice. "He should be happy he's got you."

"He is," she wrote.

I kind of doubted that, but I didn't say anything.

She went on writing. "You should find a better girl," the green pencil suggested. "Someone who likes you. You should give up on me, I'm not going to change my mind."

"I'm a dreamer," I said, somewhat bitterly.

She smiled. "Find someone better."

"No. There isn't anyone better."

"Yes, there is. Every girl in the world is better than the one sitting before you right now."

I gazed at her, but she wasn't looking at me. She kept writing.

"I'm better for someone else. Don't be so closed-minded. There's someone else for you."

"That's what you think," I began heatedly, but she kept writing as if I hadn't interrupted.

"You shouldn't keep chasing after me. I'm not going to stop rejecting you. If you're hoping I'll relent for pity's sake, think again. You don't want that, anyway, because it's not real. I'm just going to end up hurting you."

I didn't say anything, and she put her pencil down and looked me straight in the face. And waited. What was she waiting for?

"Everyone's going to hurt me," I insisted. "I just have to find the one worth hurting for."

She looked sad. "I'm not worth that," she wrote.

I swore. "You are so worth it."

"Don't say that," she wrote. "Don't swear at me. I'm not worth you hurting for. There's no reason behind it."

I gave up. "Whatever. I don't want to talk about it anymore."

She smiled.

"I have to go," I said, although I really didn't. I was tired of seeing her watch me and look sad and tell me about the guy she loved. The guy who wasn't me.

She just looked at me.

"Call me, okay?"

She shook her head and smiled.

"Okay. Whatever." Being tough was painful.

She smiled sadly.

"Yeah, it's fine. See you around."

"Goodbye," she said aloud. I was startled at the sound of her voice, but I always was. That was the only thing she ever said to me. It was pathetic, but I was over it.

"Bye," I said, and left her there on the hill, alone with her lovely thoughts of the guy who loved her, who was devoted to her, the guy I had never met. She wouldn't let me love her. Tomorrow we'd go through this same scene again, and the day after, and the day after. It had been going on for far too long now. Maybe it was time to move on. Just maybe.