W A V E L E N G T H

The distance between consecutive crests of a wave. This serves as a unit of measure of electromagnetic radiation.

T O T H E
M O O N & B A C K

IT'S THURSDAY TODAY. I've started back at work and despite my mother telling me to return to school when I'm ready, she sent a text message yesterday basically telling me I have to go back. And yes, I'm an adult, so really, I don't have to, but I know she will check and I don't feel like listening to her crying.

I'm in design and technology now. I'm late, per usual, but when I enter the classroom, Professor Warner doesn't say anything, he simply glares at me before returning to his laptop. The instructions for the lesson are written messily on the whiteboard.

There are five steps we are to follow but the first step begins with research, specifically in relation to European buildings and their ecosystems. See—I just want to learn how to do cool shit, not study fucking buildings.

I groan and the few students actually working turn around to glare at me like some fucking librarian and I glare back. They turn away quickly. I notice Solar and Pandora seated together, one of three spare seats next to her and I am making my way toward a seat not near them when Solar notices me.

"Atlas!" he calls and people shush him. I stare at him with pure irritation but I remember my best friend doesn't know me anymore. He doesn't know that after being on and off with Pandora for years upon years on end, we have finally stopped speaking. He doesn't know anything. "Come sit over here, mate."

I don't bother hiding my sour expression as I huff, sitting down next to Pandora and folding my arms across my chest. She doesn't look at me but I can tell she wants to.

"Why did you have to invite him to sit here?" Pandora whines, her tone portraying pure disgust as she turns to—what I'm assuming—glare at Solar.

Solar leans back, glancing at me as he moves his curls out of his eyes, rolling them as he laughs.

I smirk sparing her a glance and I realize how long it truly has been since I last saw her because I barely recognize her despite nothing have been changed about her appearance. She still has the same two-toned hair, the front strands and beneath silver and the rest a warm brown. Her skin is still tanned, her eyes still brown, and her smile still irritating as ever.

"Your twenty-two, sweetheart. Don't want me sitting next to you, why don't you try telling me yourself?" my words chip away at her confidence as her expression falters, her lips pressed into a thin line.

She scoffs, rolling her eyes. "Okay, fine." she huffs, crossing her arms as she turns in her seat to stare at me with a fiery gaze. "Move."

I shake my head, laughing, which just aggravates her even further. "I'm not the one with the problem, but if my being here is such a distraction, there's a spare seat right over there." I point over my shoulder, toward the back.

Pandora analyses the person near the empty space unashamed, before shaking her head. "I hate you."

"I know."

I then realize I didn't bring anything to class—purposefully, though. I didn't bring my laptop because I never use it outside of school, so it's always flat. So, by attending class without resources, then results in me usually observing someone else, that someone being Pandora, but I can't do that anymore.

I feel irritation bubbling and boiling beneath my skin and my ears begin to ring so loudly that I want to scream. Why the bloody hell did I bother coming to class in the first place? And along with that, unprepared too.

I'm searching for a way to calm down but I can't. I can't breathe, I can't think, I can't even fucking see. All of my senses—gone. Vanished.

Angrily, I stand up, my chair falling onto the ground behind me and I just know that everyone is staring at me like I'm some freak show, and maybe I am, but I don't care.

I rush out of the class, the sound of Solar and the professor calling my name fading into the distance as I rush down the stairs, only stopping when I'm in a secluded area of the building. Where the windows are letting light in and there is no noise, but not little enough to make me go insane.

I pace back and forth, hyperventilating. My mind strays away from the unnecessary fury and reminds me of Rory. Black hair, soft eyes. Her gentle hands that roamed my body just a little under two weeks ago. Her smile, her laugh. The way her teeth are too big for her face. How she is so blunt and honest. Just her.

I groan, leaning against the wall, closing my eyes as I struggle to inhale air. The air here smells like old books. Maybe that's because I'm near the library. I don't have the attention span to read but I have always enjoyed libraries and the way the worn spines show life—the pages smell like all the hands in which they have been passed through. Sometimes there will be a smudge or an accidental pen mark, signifying that someone had this story, this part of history.

As a child, whenever we would go to the library during class, I never read, just simply scanned through the pages, looking for signs that someone before me had this story. I would only ever read the title.

"Atlas?"

I open my eyes, my breathing slightly more steady now, but seeing her makes it more difficult again—and not because she takes my breath away, her presence is simply sucking any ounce of life out of me, it always has, and her being only a wavelength away is not helping.

"What?" I snap, wanting to leave, but the only exit is behind her and I don't want to be near her either. "Can't you just leave me alone? For once in your fucking miserable life, just fuck off, Pandora." I seethe through gritted teeth.

She looks hurt but I know the innocent façade will vanish soon. "Men fucking suck." she crosses her arms, huffing. "You're such an asshole, you know that?"

I avert my gaze to my shoes. "And you're a bitch," I say with the same confident and degrading tone she had. "You know that?"

Pandora nods, taking a step toward me and I want to move away but I'm already against the wall. "So. . ." she trails off. She's trying to maintain this careless expression—emotionless, but she looks irritated. "Are you and Rexie girl dating now?"

I furrow my eyebrows, frowning. "Why do you call her that?" I sound more curious than angry—because I am. She used a similar name for her the second time I ever met her, at Delilah's.

She looks at me, like really looks at me, like she's waiting for something before she begins laughing. "Wait," she continues laughing, holding her hand over her mouth before she drops it. "You really don't remember? Like your being serious?" when my serious expression doesn't waver, she continues, "Oh my God, of course! You were way too cracked out back then, you probably have no idea. I seriously thought you were pulling my leg when you started acting all who is she I've never seen her before. Fucking hilarious."

Did she seriously just fucking follow me out of class to torment me? Because I'm really not in the fucking mood for her or her shit.

"What the fuck are you on about?" I say through gritted teeth. "Remember what?"

Pandora scowls but that fucking stupid amused smile refuses to leave her face. "The girl we used to torment in year thirteen. She was in year nine and she's the same girl you're planning on fucking, except the girl back then had eighty pounds on the girl she is now."

My forehead creases as I try to think. Year thirteen was when I lost myself entirely. And I mean every part of me. Some people thought I was going insane, and I was—I am. Others thought I was abusing drugs, and by others I mean my teachers and I was. But that wasn't the problem, in fact, the drugs are what kept me around just a little longer.

For the entirety of my childhood, I was treated differently. Children noticed I was different, parents too. And for a long time, I was a victim of bullying. If I didn't have three sisters around to protect me, I think it would have been far worse. And then I transitioned to secondary school and everything changed, I could be someone different—I could change and mould and personalize how people perceived me.

In the beginning, I was nice. I became popular fast and I fucked around a lot. I aced tryouts for soccer and worked my way up to captain. People liked this false version I created of myself—this character. And eventually, like all things, it became tiring. I spent all day smiling (fucking rare, I know) and talking and pretending, and after a few years, I came to realize that I absolutely fucking despise all three of those things. So I stopped.

And then the victim became the victimizer.

I stopped pretending. I stopped caring. I forgot what it means to pretend. I forgot why I was pretending in the first place. I am different and I don't fucking care if my lack—or abundance—of emotion or my lack of motivation towards life bothers anyone.

I would rather suffer loudly, rather than in silence. That way, when the day finally comes, I won't have anyone saying he seemed so happy, I wonder what happened or he didn't even seem depressed or why did he do it?

If everyone knows, then it isn't a shock. It's expected. I die and then everyone moves on.

The fucking point is, I did shitty things in high school to people—some who deserved it and some who didn't. My friends did too. But by the end of the school year, I was barely functioning and even thinking back to it, everything is so vague, like one excruciatingly long fever dream.

"Are you even listening?"

I think back to what she had just said but I can't remember, I can feel my entire body shutting down, my hands are shaking and despite it being eight degrees, I'm sweating profusely. I need a fucking hit of something. Anything.

I shake my head, my heart picking up the pace. "What?"

Pandora groans, losing her patience quickly as she stomps her foot. "Aurora used to be fat!" she blurts out, her hands in fists on either side of her. I furrow my eyebrows because why does that matter? How is that information useful to me in any form? "You used to treat her like shit, Atlas. You. There's a reason she's so skinny now."

I freeze, my forehead creasing as I try to process her words but I can't.

I bullied her? Why didn't she ever bring it up? Why didn't Alula tell me?

Pandora's watching me intently but I don't show her how I feel. She could have told me this months ago when I first showed interest in her but she didn't because she didn't need to. I was with her then and I'm not now. She just wants to hurt me.

"You've changed." she says following a long moment of silence and when my eyes meet hers, I swear I have never seen a look of such immense disgust. "The old Atlas would laugh but you almost actually look hurt." another moment of silence. I don't have anything to say because I don't care. I don't want to speak. "Have you fucked her yet?"

I screw my face up. "What?" I spit, bewildered.

"Have you fucked her yet?" she shouts and I stare at her like she's absolutely psychotic and maybe she fucking is because we're on campus and she's asking me that at an unnecessarily high volume. "Answer me, Atlas!"

My nostrils flare as I remain still, my entire body shutting down before I can stop it. I walk over to the stairs next to me and sit down, holding my head in my hands as I try to breathe in and out in and out in and out.

I don't hear her footsteps, so I presume she hasn't moved, but nonetheless, it feels like she's knelt down behind me, breathing down my fucking neck and I just want it—her to go away and leave me alone, but then she sighs and begins to speak again.

"That's none of my business, I'm sorry." she breathes. "I know that you hate me and I've made it that way. I've always wanted to fix you—to be someone you love but, in the process, I turned into someone I wasn't before. It's just so frustrating wanting someone so bad and having them not want you back at all."

For a moment, I almost feel guilty because she has always loved me. But the guilt disappears when I remember it isn't me she loves. It's my body. My exterior. She loves that by my fucking her, I can fill the emptiness in her. I don't want her and I don't want to have sex with her, I don't want to be forced to have sex with her.

Even at some of my lowest lows, she found ways to manipulate me into having sex with her.

I should never have played that stupid game with Rion. I deserve this. This is karma. I had sex with her as some pathetic little game and now she makes me pay by obsessing over it. I said no. I said I didn't feel like it. I told her I didn't want to. But it never worked.

And so I tell her that—or I go to. But before I can, she sits down next to me on the top step. I open my mouth, keeping my fingers tightly intertwined with my strands of hair as I close my eyes tightly, but then her hand presses to my thigh and I freeze. She's done this a million times but this time is different.

Like every time, I lose my words, my voice, and she continues, her hand nearing closer and closer until I finally wind up enough courage and forcefully shove her hand off of me. "Don't fucking touch me!" I shout louder than I had anticipated.

I'm standing up now. I don't remember getting up but here I am and here she is too, standing just a step away and she looks like I have just concluded torturing her near death. Her eyebrows are tugged together, her foundation sinking into the lines near the corners of her lips as she frowns.

"What the hell, Atlas!" she throws her hands up in the air. "I never did this to you when you wanted sex but when I do, you suddenly turn into this pathetic little boy that wants so desperately to be the victim."

I shake my head, wanting her face out of my sight entirely. "I know—fuck, I know, Pandora!" my breathing picks up. "The line of consent was so blurred in our relationship but you never told me you didn't want it and if you did, I would have stopped! When I told you no, you kept going. You might say you love me but if I had taken sex out of the equation entirely, you would have practically dropped dead, just admit it."

She looks like a deer caught in headlights; brown eyes wide with fear. She knows I'm right. "You aren't perfect, Atlas. Stop making this about you."

Talking to her is like speaking to a fucking brick wall, I swear to fucking God.

"I never said I was!" I retort, my hands in the air as I let out an exasperated sigh. "I was trying to leave and you followed me and begun berating me and bringing up Rory, just—fucking hell, leave me alone!"

By the time that I'm finished speaking, I feel like a deflated balloon. All the air has left my lungs, my breathing steadies, and I feel a weight removed from my chest because I said everything, I have been dying to for so fucking long and now I never have to speak to her again.

I found my voice.

I turn my back to her and begin walking down the stairs. I hear her call for me, I hear her shout for me to wait but I keep going. I almost reach the bottom of the flight of stairs when a pair of hands press against my back and forcefully shove me forward.

A U T H O R ' S N O T E

hi everyone!

how are you all going? if you haven't yet please share this story or tell any of your friends that read about it, we're so close to 100k it's crazy!

anyways, please let me know what you thought below in the comments, also vote and follow me. and make sure you check out 'always atlas' by Gemma_Grace_ for rory's pov.

see you soon,
i love you all <3