Sebastian – POV35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡIFXd0x0S2l
Luau – Year Two
The music was louder this year.
Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just that last year, I had someone sitting next to me who made everything feel quieter. Softer. Like I wasn’t just a shadow leaning against driftwood while everyone else danced around the fire pretending they were whole.
Now I was back to being the shadow. No buffer. Just me and the noise.
I stood near the edge of the sand, arms crossed, watching the crowd blur together—Mayor Lewis with his over-enthusiastic claps, Sam doing something that looked vaguely like a cartwheel, Abigail stuffing her face with pineapple skewers while pretending not to be watching me from across the crowd.
I didn’t want to be here. I hadn’t wanted to come at all. But Mom had guilted me into it, said I couldn’t hole myself up another festival or people would “start to talk.”
Let them talk. At least they’d be saying something.
The sky was golden with sunset, bleeding into the horizon in a way that should’ve been beautiful. It was last year. When she was here.
Hannah.
She sat next to me last year. Right here on this same patch of beach, digging her fingers into the sand while she confessed something about Alex that didn’t really matter in the end. She chose to sit with me. And we talked. Just us. Quiet and calm. For once, I wasn’t trying to run away from my own thoughts. She made them easier to sit with.
Now the space beside me was just wind and silence.
I couldn’t do this.
I turned and walked away from the party. No one stopped me. They were all too caught up in music and drinks and sunburnt joy. I passed Willy half-asleep on a log and ignored the confused look Marnie gave me as I slipped past the firelight and disappeared up the hill toward home.
The walk back was slow. Deliberate. Like my body didn’t want to get there but had no other place to go. By the time I reached the house, the sky had faded to lavender. Fireflies blinked lazily in the tall grass. Summer smells clung to everything.
I slipped into the house without a word and took the stairs straight down.
My room felt colder than usual. Maybe it was just in my head.
I sat on the bed. Then laid down. Stared at the wall.
I didn’t move.
There wasn’t anything to do. Nothing to distract me. I’d already replayed the memory of last year a hundred times in my head. The way she looked in the firelight. The way she laughed under her breath when I made some offhand comment about how ridiculous the Luau was. The way she leaned her shoulder against mine without saying anything and made it mean everything.
I missed her like a ghost misses being alive.
She was still out there—somewhere. Not dead. Not lost. Just... gone. Gone in a way that made me question whether she ever really belonged here at all, or if we were just the chapter she had to write to move forward.
I hope she doesn't think I'm not trying. I hope she doesn't think I don't care, but I can't lie, I'm selfishly angry, that she isn't just a replaceable person, nobody exists to me the way she does.
I've never loved anyone the way I love her, and I keep thinking it'll get easier, but it hasn't not one day have I woken up thinking I could move on.
I'm angry.
The worst part? No one said her name anymore.
Not even Abigail.
We acted like Hannah never existed. Like pretending helped.
But not me. I couldn't forget. I couldn’t not see her in everything.
Every time I walked past the mountain path, I remembered how she used to wander up there and talk about stars and prismatic shards and weird desert legends like they were real. Every time I passed the bus stop, I remembered the first time I saw her arrive, duffel bag in one hand, that quiet fire in her eyes.
And now... nothing. No notes. No calls. No word.
Just a memory where a person used to be.
A girl like her is impossible to find, and I didn't even find her, she found me, and for what? This?
I didn’t hear the door open. Not right away.
“Sebastian?” Mom’s voice floated in, hesitant. “Do you... need anything?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I just kept looking at the wall.
She stepped in quietly, maybe expecting something else—maybe a sullen nod or one of my usual half-grunts. But I gave her nothing. Not out of cruelty. Just... emptiness.
After a beat, I heard her sigh. The soft, sad kind. Then the door clicked shut again.
I was alone again. Just me and the blank wall and the weight in my chest that never really went away.
I'm tired of missing you, but missing you is all I've got left.
I closed my eyes.
And the beach came back to me.
And the girl beside me who made everything feel a little less heavy.
----------------------------------------------
I woke up at 8 P.M., my stomach twisting with that familiar, nervous sickness. The kind that doesn’t have a name—just a weight. I glanced across the room at my keyboard, untouched and collecting dust in the corner like some relic of a version of me I’m not sure still exists.
My eyes dropped to the notebook on my nightstand.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNl23Dr1cl9
Writing—35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHXMEYN4au6
something I haven’t done in a long time.
Maybe if I can’t talk to anyone, I can still bleed onto a page.
I grabbed my smokes, slipped the pencil out from the spiral binding, and headed for the front door. The notebook tucked under my arm felt heavier than it should have. Like it already knew what I needed to say.
Outside, the cicadas droned their usual nighttime song, restless and rhythmic.
I lit a cigarette, opened the notebook, and let the night know I was ready to write mine
35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnUrJ0x06UF
You take the breath straight out of me
You left and I find it hard to breathe
You left an emptiness inside of me
What was left of my self-esteem is no longer a part of me
You cared for me when no one else was there for me
you provided air for me, when I couldn't breathe
Now life feels much like suffocating
Now I am left bleeding, from the words you said
Find it hard to reason, with my heart detached.
I couldn't love you because I feared you'd leave
But Now we know I was right
Do you remember when you were mine
When we would lay there and visualize
You took the breath straight out of me
My pillow is empty where your head should be.
I laid my head against the tree. Was everything worth feeling this way?
35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1vSIYq3xOu
