It Ends with Us

but I haven’t slept.”
She picked up the trash can and told me to stay in bed, that she’d call the school
and let them know I wasn’t coming. After she left for work, I went and got Atlas
and told him he could stay with me at the house all day. He was still getting sick, so
I let him use my room to sleep. I’d check on him every half hour or so and finally
around lunch he stopped throwing up. He went and took a shower and then I made
him some soup.
He was too tired to even eat it. I got a blanket and we both sat down on the couch
and covered up together. I don’t know when I started feeling comfortable enough to
snuggle up to him, but it just felt right. A few minutes later, he leaned over a little
and pressed his lips against my collarbone, right between my shoulder and my neck.
It was a quick kiss and I don’t think he meant for it to be romantic. It was more like
a thank-you gesture, without using actual words. But it made me feel all kinds of
things. It’s been a few hours now and I keep touching that spot with my fingers
because I can still feel it.
I know it was probably the worst day of his life, Ellen. But it was one of my
favorites.

---

I feel really bad about that.
We watched Finding Nemo and when that part came up where Marlin was
looking for Nemo and he was feeling really defeated, Dory said to him, “When life
gets you down do you wanna know what you’ve gotta do? . . . Just keep swimming.
Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.”
Atlas grabbed my hand when Dory said that. He didn’t hold it like a boyfriend
holds his girlfriend’s hand. He squeezed it, like he was saying that was us. He was
Marlin and I was Dory, and I was helping him swim.
“Just keep swimming,” I whispered to him.
—Lily
Dear Ellen,
I’m scared. So scared.
I like him a lot. He’s all I think about when we’re together and I feel worried sick
about him when we’re not. My life is beginning to revolve around him and that’s
not good, I know. But I can’t help it and I don’t know what to do about it, and now
he might leave.
He left after we finished watching Finding Nemo yesterday and then when my
parents went to bed, he crawled in my window last night. He had slept in my bed the
night before because he was sick, and I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I put his
blankets in the washing machine right before I went to bed. He asked where his
pallet was and I told him he’d have to sleep on the bed again because I wanted to
wash his blankets and make sure they were clean so he wouldn’t get sick again.
For a minute, it looked like he was going to go back out the window. But then he
shut it and took off his shoes and crawled in the bed with me.
He wasn’t sick anymore, but when he laid down I thought maybe I had gotten
sick because my stomach felt queasy. But I wasn’t sick. I just always feel queasy
when he’s that close to me.
We were facing each other on the bed when he said, “When do you turn sixteen?”
“Two more months,” I whispered. We just kept staring at each other, and my
heart was beating faster and faster. “When do you turn nineteen?” I asked, just
trying to make conversation so he couldn’t hear how hard I was breathing.
“Not until October,” he said.
I nodded. I wondered why he was curious about my age and it made me wonder
what he thought about fifteen-year-olds. Did he look at me like I was just a little kid?