I Fell in Love with Hope(88)

“That’s cute. Did you steal that from Pride and Prejudice?”

“Do the homework, Coeur,” Neo said, standing up and putting his backpack on as the bell rang. “Or I’ll stab you in the eye with my pen.”

“Which eye?”

Neo smiled, a little laugh made of mostly breath escaping his lips.

That was the day Coeur decided he would tell Neo how he felt.

“This is for a girl you like?” Coeur’s mother asked later that night, reading over her son’s shoulder as he wrote a letter, a letter he’d been writing and rewriting for hours in the dim corner of his room.

Coeur shook his head. “It’s for a boy.”

“Oh.”

“But I do like him.”

“Yes, Cherie, I gathered that,” she chuckled, bringing Coeur’s dinner to his room and kissing her son’s cheek. “I look forward to meeting him.”

Coeur finished his letter, not completely satisfied, but then he never would be. There is no perfect way to describe what finding love for the first time in your life feels like, except, maybe, to explain how comfortable you are with them and how passionate you are thinking of them.

Coeur fell asleep, hours later, staring at the ceiling, holding the letter to his chest, restlessly not thinking of loneliness, hollowness, or heart.

He thought of Neo.

But Neo wasn’t in class the next morning. Coeur waited in his seat, peaking at the door with every click of the doorknob, disappointment settling in his stomach when it was someone else.

He’d never asked for Neo’s number or anything because the one time he brought it up it made Neo tense. He said his father was a bit of a helicopter when it came to technology, so he’d rather not hand it out.

So when excruciatingly long days followed and Neo didn’t come into school for a consecutive week, Coeur walked, letter in hand, to his teacher’s desk after the bell rang and class was dismissed.

“Excuse me, sir?” Coeur cleared his throat. “Do you know where Neo’s been?”

“Neo? Oh, he’ll be out for the foreseeable future, I believe,” his teacher said. “Poor lad’s back in the hospital now.”

Coeur took a moment to process the words, thought he’d misheard. Then, if a bit brokenly, he asked, “What?”

His teacher looked up at him through his glasses, curious now. He must’ve noticed Coeur’s distress, the slight tremble in his hand, because he visibly softened, facing his student head-on and removing his lenses.

“I’m sorry, C. I assumed you two were close,” he began. “Neo’s been ill for a few years now. That’s why he’s out of school so often.”

Coeur had always just assumed Neo had prior engagements–a club he didn’t talk about, some sort of excuse to skip class half the week–not… Not something like this.

The teacher sighed. “He had an accident with some boys last week. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it. It’s been buzzing all over the school. He was hurt quite badly.”

An accident. With some boys.

Coeur thought back to the morning after detention when he walked into school. He’d just told his coach he was going to quit swimming, to which his coach yelled and flailed his arms. Coeur didn’t remember much else except agreeing to do one last tournament, and then he’d be done.

He remembered walking past Neo in the hall, past teammates who he hadn’t really spoken to outside practices. They practically surrounded him, but Coeur didn’t see it that way at the time.

He saw his old perceivers, the ones who thought him nice, athletic, a good-looking picture to decorate the scene. He saw them gathered around the picture of his happiness, of the person he perhaps didn’t look right with but felt right with.

Coeur had a choice. He could walk into the overtly suspicious scene and grab Neo by the arm. He could tear him away from the danger his classmates posed or even just ask his friends what they were doing. He could’ve done any number of things. But Coeur always had an affinity for ignoring decisions.

“Don’t let it shake you up,” his teacher said, but Coeur was already lost replaying the scene over and over again as if thinking of the past would somehow change it. “Why don’t you go visit him? I’m sure he’d appreciate seeing a friend.”

Coeur nodded and left, the guilt spreading through his body like a virus. It ate at him for the following weeks until the hollowness Neo had filled became a cave with raw, wounded walls.

Coeur cried silently the first night. He felt bad, yes, but more so, he missed Neo. Although that wasn’t entirely correct either.

In French, you do not say you miss someone. You say they are missing from you.

Tu me manques, Coeur said, inside his head, mouthing it, as if Neo could hear.

Every night Coeur wrote Neo letters till he was surrounded by thousands of them. Everynight, Coeur repeated the same line over and over again, Tu me manques tellement que même mon coeur souffre, until little by little, his heart adopted the words as its own.

Waking up in the hospital was a stroke of fate. Coeur was sure of it. His parents were up to their necks in worry not knowing what was wrong with their child.

Coeur didn’t care.

He was mildly aware that his health was in trouble, but his mind was on other things.

Was Neo in the building somewhere? Was he reading and delivering pretentious opinions with wry little insults to other sick children? Was he alright? Had he forgiven him? Coeur struggled with that question the most. He fidgeted on the bed, an anxious dog waiting to be taken off its leash.