crash - muke / cake

dominos

stargirl interlude - the weeknd

im so tired rn

"The higher you climb, the farther you have to fall." I learned this in ninth grade when my friends and I played a game we called 'knuckles' where we try to flip a water bottle and if we made it and the next person didn't, we would drop the water bottle face down onto their fingers from one hand high. The higher the number of flips in a row meant the higher the water bottle would come crashing down onto our bony fingers. It hurt something terrible but we kept doing it anyway because deep down we kind of liked the way the bruises looked, kind of thought it was cool and funny.

I met Michael that same year in choir, the only class we happened to share. Originally, I didn't think we would be anything more than casual friends. We just weren't part of the same crowd. He and his friends were the kids in all honnors classes with impeccable grades and perfect lives. My friends and I were pretty much just regular kids, with the exception of a few (not me). My friends didn't know about the trauma until a few months after I decided I would probably hang out with them for the rest of high school. So I trusted them with the astounding secret that the reason for the scars all over my body were from getting run over by a lawn mower. Growing up thinking it was normal made me think it wouldn't surprise them, but growing up with a nurse as a mother wasn't really an advantage in this kind of situation because, of course, they reacted as you'd expect: they were, well, surprised.

But none of them left me. Even after all of that.

So I stayed friends with all of them. And as Michael and I got closer and closer, the more my friends wanted us to be together. I wasn't sure why until my neighbor (and coincidentally best friend) Ashton told me on the way to school, "He totally likes you." And so the first domino of Michael and I's relationship fell.