It started long before we realised we were supposed to hate each other, long before stupid cliques and petty teenage problems happened.

It first started when we were 8, when he was old enough to not only notice the fighting but to make connections between it and the bruises his mother tried to hide. When he realised that amongst the yelling, they couldn’t hear a thing he did, when he realised that if he stepped carefully onto his overhang, climbed down onto the side of his pool, snuck out his back door and tapped three times, rap rap rap on the window of my basement bedroom, that I would let him in. It was handy, being neighbours. He’d always crawl into my bed; snuggle up next to me underneath my covers, holding my hand. We never had an awkward, do I sleep on the floor? Do you want another blanket? We just went with it, going about life like 8 year olds do, not judging, no awkwardness, just going with our gut instinct. Sometimes he would sleep, but other times, most times, he would lie awake staring up at my ceiling. Every night I would try and lie awake with him, but I would always droop off, my head sinking into my pillow and light snores filling the silence. He was always gone when I woke up, no trace of him left in my room except the dampness you get on your hand when you’ve held onto someone’s for a long time, their sweat mixed with yours.

There was a period when he stopped coming, whether because he was ashamed of the reason he had to turn to me or because of the person he was turning to. I don’t know what he did those nights when the screams filled the air and he didn’t have a hand to grip or a shoulder to bury his face in, and I remember staying awake for hours, trying to be there with him without really being there. Every night I would stay awake for as long as I could, just in case he decided to come back, and even then I left my window open.

Than one night, just as my eyes were fluttering closed and I was ready to drift off to sleep, I heard the rustling of leaves and then, a sound so familiar and yet so hard to remember, rap rap rap, and when I lifted my head I saw him bent down at the waist, a sort of sheepish look upon his face. And I’ll always remember that day, when I looked into his eyes and he said three words. And I guess if you want to pinpoint an exact place when it all changed, that would be it, I suppose.

“Can I crash?”

And that night I didn’t hold his hand while he stared up at my ceiling; instead I let my head droop on his shoulder and my arm rest on his chest, because I had missed him.

The next day when I woke up, he was gone again, as usual, and the tiny pang of pain I felt was shrugged off as nothing.

Up until then we had never really thought about cliques and friends and popularity- why would we? We were in middle school, where everyone held hands and spilled their deepest secrets at slumber parties, not really caring who heard them. And maybe it’s a huge cliché to say that everything changes when you get to high school, but the truth is it does. It changes everything.

Suddenly I was the nerdy drama queen girl who loved the stage more than reality, the one who skipped their lunch to go recite monologues and spent her days cooped up in her room with a script, only coming out to pee, and he was the big time jock who had all the girls and brought home big trophies, the kind who didn’t associate with kinds like me.

I don’t think we ever gave each other a second glance when we passed each other in the hallways, didn’t say one word to each other or shared a meaningful glance- we were both far too different, and during the day we would keep to our specific groups and pretend nothing was out of the ordinary. Because god forbid something be out of the ordinary, god forbid something was different amongst the carefully planned structure that was my high school.

But at night we were different, at night we didn’t belong to a clique, we weren’t the drama geek and the jock, we were just us, just like when we were 8 and he would grip my hand extra hard to try and stifle the tears, when we were 8 and didn’t care about anything else, because right now we had each other, and really, what did it matter what anyone else thought? At night we were nobody, at night we were us, all in one.

But one night something happened, something happened that made me rethink everything, something that made me wonder what exactly I had gotten myself into.

It happened one night when I let him in, after the rap rap rap and the sliding through my narrow window, it happened just as he was passing me on the way to my bed, just as I was about to slide my window shut, and it happened so quickly I might have imagined it had it not been for the sparks it set off and the way my body froze up and how I couldn’t get his taste off my tongue all night when the roles were reversed, when he dozed off and I stayed awake, staring at the blank wall. It happened one night when he pressed his lips against mine for an instant, one single instant that lasted forever and yet not long enough all at the same time. And then he went to my bed and lay down as if nothing had happened, and I lay down next to him and rested my head on his chest as if a million thoughts weren’t running through my head.

And then when I woke up he was gone and his taste was gone and the pain I felt I recognized, it hurt that he was gone. And that day at school I tried so hard to meet his eye, tried to make a bit of eye contact just to try and see if he had felt it too, but he ignored me as usual and I convinced myself that it was a mistake, a trip, a stumble, anything but that, anything then what I secretly hoped it was.

I convinced myself he wouldn’t be back. I was even more elated when he did.

This time I knew it wasn’t an accident, because he came right in and pressed his lips to mine, leaving them there longer then a second as he wrapped his arms around me tight and pulled me into him, prying open my lips and kissing me, and what surprised me even more was that I liked it.

After that night, whenever he came in through my open window I would be there, waiting for his lips to once again claim mine, and I knew that I was his, forever, since that first night when he gripped my hand, I was his. I would always be his.

But at the same time, he was still a 16 year old boy. So whenever he kissed me, his hands weren’t in innocent places, they were running up and down my body, touching places where I had never been touched before, not like that. Yeah, I had had my fair share of boyfriends, but none of them had touched me like that, made me feel that way. He was different.

But I always stopped him, when I felt things going too fast, moved his hand up higher, and he always complied, instead running his hands through my hair, and I wondered how long I was going to be able to bring his hands away.

But still, through all of this, never a look. Never an acknowledgement at school, never a nod or a wave or eye contact. Nothing. I was a ghost, living through the day only so I could get to the night.

Nobody ever guessed that the star quarterback of the football team was sneaking around with the drama nerd.

I longed for a glance during the day, longed for acknowledgement, for recognition, wanted to make eye contact and know that he knew I was there, that I didn’t just exist in the night for him. I wanted to be real to him, so one night, as his hands roamed my body, as he touched me, I didn’t stop him, didn’t pull away and retreat into the safety of innocent kisses. I knew what I was doing was wrong, that I should stop, but I just couldn’t pull away. If I had wanted to stop him, then it was too late. He had pulled me under, far beneath the surface, and any chance of swimming up to the light was long gone. He was my breath, and if I tore away, I wouldn’t make it.

So I stayed, even as we passed the zone where I was comfortable, as he kissed me everywhere, and I bit my tongue, willing myself to stay quiet, because even though it felt good, so good, if I opened my mouth I knew it would be a plea for him to stop. And this time, I didn’t know if he would listen, once again, compliantly, or if he would ignore me, shushing me with his lips. I didn’t know which one scared me the most.

So instead I stayed quiet as quickly my clothes came off, one by one. I didn’t even get to think about what he would think about me, about how I felt about his eyes raking over every inch of me, before he had shoved me up on the window sill, the knowledge that now he wouldn’t stop even if I begged, and I realised then that he wouldn’t look at me, not now. Not as my hands clawed his back and I bit my lip, trying hard not to scream out in pain as he sweated and thrusted and grunted while I wondered why, why, anyone would want to do this. Not then, and not after, after when I finally let go and broke down, the tears sliding down my face as I tried to wipe them away, knowing that it was over, waiting for him to look at me, to touch me, to wipe my tears, to do anything. But he didn’t, he just pulled up his pants while I tried desperately to cover myself with my arms, even as his eyes were directed at the wall, not noticing me or my nakedness or my tears.

He never had, I realised. He never cared about me, or the fact that maybe he had hurt me, never offered me a hand of comfort, even after all those nights when I had held him, when I had pretended not to see the tears. He had never bothered to pay any attention to me, just using me as a window to climb through, a bed to sleep in, a girl to fuck. But even through all of that, I gave him all of me, even when he didn’t accept it. And now he was just going to leave, without cleaning up the mess he had made me, without bothering to put back together the girl he had broken.

I was naive, I was stupid. But what I hated most was the fact that I missed him as he climbed out my window, missed feeling his warm presence next to me in the bed, missed his breath on my head as I drooped to sleep on his chest. All those nights I though he was being sensitive, kind, letting me in close. It wasn’t until I shut the window down and climbed into bed, not bothering to get dressed, climbing under my covers, wanting nothing more then to shower, to wash off the remainder of him, his sweat, his hot breath, at the same time knowing it would be the last part of him I would ever have, not until then that I realised he had been softening me up for this, gaining my trust so the fall was that much greater when he let me go.

He didn’t come back after that. Not the next night, nor the night after that. Never again would he climb through my window, even when the yelling and the fighting climbed to an all time high.

At school a few days later, as I was passing him in the halls, I felt his eyes on me. All I had to do was raise my eyes, and I would look into his, the one thing I had wanted, I had worked so hard for. All I had to do was lift my head and look at him, and I would get the recognition I wanted.

But I knew if I did, it would start all over again. And I couldn’t, wouldn’t let him break me again.

So I lifted my head, I did. But I didn’t look into his eyes, I stared straight ahead as I did to him what he had done to me so many times over the past eight years, knowing that it wouldn’t kill him as much as it had always killed me, wouldn’t bite into his heart quite as much, but it made me feel better. It made me feel better to deny him access into my soul, to hide from him just exactly how much he had broken me.