Chapter 2

2

Right up until the end. Trapped in the twisted metal of the car, the air thick with the smell of blood, he rasped, "If I could do it over, Ashley, please, don’t interfere. Just leave us alone.”

So, reborn, I granted his wish. I left the letter alone. Josh read it, saw that Sarah liked him back but was scared of the distance. And he made his grand, irreversible gesture �C skipping those science questions. He scored over a hundred points lower than before. And finally, he successfully “closed the gap” with Sarah. They were together.

Back at the party, someone brought me up, their voice laced with a kind of wistful wonder. "I always thought Josh and Ashley would end up together. Childhood sweethearts, both at the top of their class…"

Josh quickly shut it down, probably worried about Sarah getting the wrong idea. His tone was distant. “Just old friends, nothing more.”

I chuckled silently, repeating those words in my head: Just old friends.

He wasn’t wrong. We were childhood friends. Same class, from kindergarten through high school graduation. Besides my parents, Josh was the person I spent the most time with. I saw him pull all-nighters to solve a single math problem; he saw me battling a 104-degree fever just to take a test. No one knew better than us the hard work behind those effortlessly high scores everyone admired.

The day we both got into high school, ranked first and second in the city, Josh pointed to the photos of previous valedictorians on the bulletin board. "Three years, Ashley," he said, "That’ll be us up there. Think you’re up for it?”

The setting sun painted the sky in vibrant hues of orange and red. Cicadas buzzed in the humid air. I hugged my books and grinned. "Josh," I replied, "You’re on."

Back then, all we saw in each other was the excitement for the future, the hunger for our dreams, and the unwavering determination to achieve them.

But soon, Sarah entered the picture. In a high school where most of us were buried in books and perpetually sleep-deprived, Sarah was effortlessly gorgeous. At the school’s cultural festival, she stood on stage in a white dress, radiant as the moon, her ethereal glow dimming everything around her. That night, her name was on everyone’s lips. She became everyone’s dream girl. Including Josh’s.