“Hi.” A sweet voice.
 “Hi.” Almost innocently unaware, the boy answered.
She said, always so saccharine- she said:
 “Do I know you?”
The boy shook his head. The girl smiled the most heartbreaking smile.
 “Are you sure?”
The boy nodded.
 “Are you absolutely, positi-“
“Yeah. I’m sure.” He seemed confused as he looked at her. She was definitely a stranger.
 “Oh,” she said, deflating. “Okay.”
He felt bad, but being the tough eleven year-old that he was, of course he couldn’t show it. If any of his friends found out they’d never stop teasing him.
 “Um, I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”
The girl’s whole being brightened. “Really?”
 She probably didn’t notice, but the boy winced. “Um, yeah. You look...familiar.”
 But, the thing was, she could tell. He was lying. She could always try to pretend he wasn’t, but deep down she knew that her friend, her used-to-be friend, well...He wasn’t her friend anymore. Never would be again, actually.
 And she stopped beaming. The light that shined from her stopped shining, and suddenly the school parking lot seemed especially dim. The boy almost wanted to continue the lie, just to keep the girl lit, a living torch. He’d never met anyone who could glow from the inside out.
 “I, uh, I have to go.” The sweet voice, once again. 
“Sure.” He said. “Um, bye, I guess.”
 She gave him a smile; practically put that small, broken grin in her hand and offered it as a gift. A token. She’d never see him again. Nostalgia made her throat feel funny, and her eyes started to warm.
 “Are you,” he asked abashedly. “...Are you about to cry?”
“No,” the girl choked out. “Of course not.” And then she ran away, never looking back. Never looking back.
 Of course, later on, she regretted that she had never looked back. 

“I guess that’s just the way things are,” he’d told her once.  She’d asked him a question that she couldn’t even remember now. But she remembered his answer.
“I guess that’s just the way things are. Unimaginably complex and simple. And, I mean, look at us! We’re, well, I guess it makes me sound arrogant, but we’re kind of amazing. And look.” He pointed to the stars. “Proof. Proof that everything that has ever been or will ever be is freaking awesome. Just look at it, Amy.” He was such an idiot. The best idiot she’d ever known, to be honest.
 But she guessed it was easier for them to believe in the grandeur of everything, given their circumstances.
 She stopped running. She’d found a nice patch of earth, right next to a dusty, recently plowed cornfield. She laid down, her arms askew and her eyes wide open. It was getting dark. She could barely make out the stars.
 She closed her eyes then, as the sky darkened and lightened at once. The world changed around her, slowly and surely; honey-thick air filled her lungs, smoothly coursing its way through her body. She felt the nostalgia of living and leaving and knowing, and she breathed in and out and in.
“Goodbye, Jonathan.” She murmured. She could almost imagine him responding with a stupid joke. But this was real, and he was never going to tell her goodbye. Time had robbed them of each other. Stupid time.
 One more breath. The world spun. She was going somewhere else now, some other place and time. She started to chant: goodbye goodbye goodbye goodbye.
She was going home, five years away. She knew that when she got there, there’d be no Jonathan. She knew his fate. She could feel tears run down her cheek, drying in the breeze. She also knew that she couldn’t stay here.

 Goodbye.