Chapter 7

As the school year went on, there were so many things that I wondered about. Since it was my junior year, I would be going off to college in two years. The thought filled me with dread, yet at the same time, it didn't. I knew that because of where I was going, Eastwood High, I would be able to get into a lot of colleges very easily, and with a lot of scholarships so that my mom wouldn't have to suffer that much when paying for my tuition. Then there was the end of school. It was approaching rather quickly, and I wondered if the finals this year were going to be as hard as last year's. There were Dick and Abigail, who were still as love-birdy as ever, but something seemed to be off recently. It seems as if they aren't talking to each other that much anymore, and it's kind of weird.

And then there's Ashley.

She was constantly on my mind, and I kept wondering about her. Just wondering about who she was, and why she was like the way that she was. I would always talk to her at school, over the phone, through text, and the occasional video call, and the one thing that she kept avoiding as a topic of conversation was her parents.

And the wounds…they seemed to be getting worse and worse, with there being bruises everywhere on my arms, and even cuts, some so deep that I had to wrap them at least three times with some bandages after applying some disinfectant to ensure that the wounds wouldn't be infected. Every day, it became increasingly clearer that I had a connection with Ashley, and that we shared each other's pain. But why? And how could I talk to her about this?

I decided one day, about two weeks later, to search this up on my laptop. The results didn't exactly help me out that much, so I kept scrolling through, to see if anyone had gone through the same things as me. And then I found something.

I clicked on it, and it took me to a website, where there were articles on soulmates. All were written by one person, anonymous, who seemed to have a lot of knowledge of them. I clicked on one and started to read through it. In the first few paragraphs, I wanted to click off, because it just sounded like a nutcase ranting about how soulmates exist, but as I skimmed through the whole article, a certain line caught my attention. I scrolled back up to it and read it aloud to myself. "One sign of two people being soulmates is that they can share the pain of the other. Like, for example, if you got a bruise on your arm, your soulmate would too. Or if you got shot, then your soulmate would probably get the exact same wound, in almost the exact same place. Of course, this depends: if you're a guy and your mate is also a guy, then it'll probably be in the exact same place. Same thing with women. But if your soulmate is of the opposite sex, then the wounds will be approximately in the same place, due to the difference in body type. The list goes on. But the one thing that I have seen between soulmates is that they are able to show a deeper understanding of each other on an emotional level. It's almost as if they can read each other's emotions. This is something extremely rare, as it only happens when the relationship between the two is deeper than the one that they currently have. I've only seen this a couple of times, which goes to show the rarity of it."

I stared at it, rereading through everything again to see if I had understood what I had seen. "Soulmates," I said, and I closed the tab out, closing my laptop and putting a forehead to my head. "That can't be possible…"

Yet the more I thought about it, the more that it made sense. Everything that had happened to us: when our relationship deepened, that's when the bruises and cuts started appearing. Our relationship as friends…well, it never really went beyond the surface level, so maybe that's why the pain is still physical. Or maybe feeling emotional pain comes with…a romantic relationship?

I immediately blushed at the idea and shook my head. "No," I said aloud. "I don't think that'll happen." Then my mind went back to the thought of feeling pain, and I wondered about it again. "I wonder if she's thinking about these things right now…"

I wondered how I would bring this up as a topic of conversation, and I kept thinking about how I could word it, all throughout my classes the next day. "So, Ashley," I muttered to myself. "What do you think about soulmates? No…Hey, Ashley, do you think soulmates exist? That's not good at all…" I sighed. "This is hard…why is it so hard to talk to other people?"

At lunch, I grabbed my food and walked over to our table. Dick and Abigail weren't even sitting next to each other, and this signified that something was up. They seemed to be arguing with each other, and Ashley was sitting away from them, trying her best to not pay attention to what was going on. I decided that what she was doing was best and that I shouldn't interfere with what they were going through. Maybe they had disagreed about something, and it would get solved soon. I sat down next to Ashley. "Hey," I said.

"Hi," she said softly, and she looked at me and smiled. There weren't any wounds on her face, but I knew that she had a bunch of wounds that she was hiding underneath of her clothes, because they were also on my body. She noticed that I kept looking at her, and she turned away, as if she were hiding a blush. "Is something wrong, Chris?"

"No, no," I said, turning away, blushing a little bit. "Nothing's wrong." Then I turned back to look at her. "Actually, I have a question that I want to ask you."

She turned back to me, looking me in the eyes. "What is it?"

"Do you…do you believe in soulmates?"

There it was. I blurted it out, and I immediately regretted it. I didn't like the way that I had said it, and I felt embarrassed about it. But then she said, "Oh. Well…I do, actually."

I turned to her, my thinking a bit sluggish. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that again, please?"

She giggled a little bit, and she said, "I do. I believe that people have soulmates and that one day, they'll find them and fall in love with one another. And I believe that my soulmate is somewhere out there."

If only you knew, I thought to myself. And also...wow. I thought that would have gone in a different direction altogether. "Well…I do too. Have you heard the theories about soulmates finding each other?" I asked her.

She shook her head. "I don't listen to those theories," she said softly. "I don't think they know what they're talking about." She looked at me. "Why do you ask about this stuff?"

I responded, "I was just wondering, that's all."

"Okay," she said, a little bit cheerfully, and she went back to her food. I felt really, really bad about not telling her about what I had searched up, and I felt bad for lying to her. Then I heard Dick calling me. "Chris!"

I turned to look at him, and he gestured to me. "Can I…talk to you about something?"

I got up, saying, "I'll be right back." Then I walked over to Dick. "What's up, dude?"

His eyes seemed blank. "Abigail's not the one."

I looked at him. "What?"

"She's just like everyone else," he said, looking down at his food. "She just wants to use me, is only with me for my looks."

I turned to look at Abigail, but she had disappeared. I turned back to him. "But Dick, you guys had it!" I said, sitting down next to him. "What happened, how did it change?"

He took in a deep breath, as if he were deciding whether or not to tell me something. Then he said, "Look, Chris, you're going to call me crazy. I don't know if I should tell you or not."

"Tell me," I said, and I meant it. "I'm your friend, you can tell me anything."

He looked at me a bit uncertainly, then he said, "I…I know what other people's intentions are. Like, I know exactly why people come to talk to me, why they want to hook up with me. And it allows me to figure out who to be friends with, or who to hook up with. I'm careful with who I make friends with for that reason. Well...that's the reason."

I was silent for a bit. It made sense now, like when he had intervened between me and Abigail to stop the conversation. He did read my mind…and Abigail's as well. Well…sort of. "Is that what happened with Abigail?" I asked him.

He looked at me, surprise evident on his face. "You…you believe me?"

"Yeah," I said. "I mean, I'm not surprised. There seemed to be a reason why you avoided a lot of the popular people and just other people who would flirt with you. And it seemed like you knew what their intentions were, so...it all makes sense."

He gave me a relieved smile, and he said, "Yeah..." He relaxed, and the tensions went out of his shoulders. "Well...something in Abigail changed. It...it felt like she was only with me because of the social standing that it gave her. It was different from before...is she able to hide her intentions from me?"

"I don't know, Dick," I said, and I sat down next to him. "But hey: I'll always be there for you, okay?"

He chuckled. "Good job trying to cheer me up," he said. "I believe you, Chris." He put out a hand, then we shook hands. "You were the only friend who's really stayed with me, whose intentions are pure. So...thanks."

"Of course," I said, smiling at him. "Same with you: you're my first friend. You were the first one to talk to me, and you started the change in me. I'll always be there for you."

I noticed that Ashley had stopped eating altogether, and she was getting up to throw her away the rest of her leftover food. "Speaking of which, I might as well tell you about what I'm going through."

He looked at me. "You're like me?"

"...sort of," I said. "It's hard to explain." I started to talk about what was going on with me, and how I thought that Ashley and I were soulmates. After I was done talking, he looked at me, then he said, "Dang. And I thought that I had it hard."

"You definitely have it harder, Dick," I said, my face deadpan. "I mean, you're not getting bruises and cuts so deep that you could have died. And there's the fact that the girl you share a connection with is your soulmate, the person you could be living with for the rest of your life."

He stared at me, and he sighed. "Alright," he said, and he raised his hands in surrender. "You most definitely have it harder. Are you going to tell Ashley about this?"

I turned to look at her, and I saw that she had disappeared. I looked around the cafeteria to see if I could find her, but she had just disappeared. I turned back to him. "I will," I said. "I'm just…I'm not sure how I'm supposed to talk to her about this."

He nodded. "That's fair. To be honest, I wasn't really sure if I should have talked to Abigail about it or not. Now, I'm glad I didn't."

I grinned. "So…you gonna take a break from love?"

He nodded, a weary look on his face (and there's my vocabulary knowledge at work). "Probably, yeah. I don't know if I'm ever going to find somebody that will love me for who I am and just that…speaking of that, I'm probably going to have to tell the person that I end up with that I can tell intentions."

"How'd you get this power, anyway? Is it from your mom? Your dad?" I asked. Immediately, I regretted asking about that, because his expression darkened, and he said, "I don't know. All I know is that I have it, and I'm stuck with it for the rest of my life."

"Got it," I said. I won't ask him about his parents, then, I thought to myself. Noted. "So…want to hang out later?"

He grinned. "Hell yeah," he said. "What do you want to do?"

"You know, I was thinking of going to the movies," I said. "I wonder what they're showing right now."