Truth was the first thing you latched on when you decided my life was meant to be ruined.

I will not hold it against you, and even then, I never did. You were a bright soul, even brighter when you thought you could rival the sun with your lopsided smile. And I hated it, like I hated it now, but back then, it was all I had. You were all I had. And you were never meant to be hated, even there were times you believed others more than you believed me.

But I was in the same boat, heading into the wild depths aiming to swallow me until nothing was left. We might belong in different worlds, but we would end up in the same hell as we die. And the truth—the one thing that should have brought us closer to our salvation—it brought us to our inevitable doom instead.

I should have known it, then. Otherwise, I would not spend what little time we have left playing with fire. Because fire ate away at every memory. Your fire finally rivaled the sun, long after your wick snuffed out. Long after I was alone in an unclean room, smelling the cigarette smoke clinging to my walls as if you have always been there. As if you never left.

The landing has become your burning ground more than it became my sanctuary. Before, I locked myself inside the gutter because I wanted to get away from the noise. Then, I hid there because I wanted to hear yours.

And hear it, I did. Soon after I settled on the rusty stairs baked by the afternoon sun, your hesitant footsteps echoed behind me. And they continue to echo, even as I sit in my room, writing letters you will not read.

I understood the hesitation. You were always cautious around me. Was it fear? Were you afraid you would not find me in the landing whenever you looked up? Was my presence so integral to your life that you were scared of not knowing where I was, or rather, where I was going?

I will not understand the fear, though. People like you should never know fear. People like you...they have it so easy the word should have never existed in their meager vocabularies. Because people like you—

People like you have everything they wanted, when they wanted it, and how they wanted it. And if you decided you want to be found where I was, there was little I could do about it.

That was why I stayed, even as you dropped next to me as you have done for the past week. Or weeks. Maybe months? I do not know. Time is useless in the ounces of eternity passing between us every day. And I will always be here, even when you will not and you cannot.

You do not know how much I wanted to run, how much I wanted to say you should not waste what little time you have left with a wreckage half-consumed by the toxic plumes of life. You did not know—how much I wanted to snatch your flames and scald you just like you scald me.

You scald me.

You burn me.

And I did not tell you. Because, like you, I believed what others said. Even as you asked me something I have no answer for other than the truth, I listened to the blaring noise around us more than the static standstill in front of me. The static standstill that was you.

"Where are your friends?" you asked. "I never saw you hanging out with them on campus."

I remember the twinge in my gut, the breeze shuffling your hair and silencing the dull thrum of my heart, and the cloud of chatter the crowd below us thought to be meaningful. But I do not remember what your features looked like as you asked. Were you feeling empathy? Guilt? Pride? Or have you been simply curious, looking to satiate your desire to find someone more deplorable than you?

Memories told me nothing about why I decided to wring the truth—the one thing you craved from my lips—and tell you something the farthest from it. "People are boring," I remember saying. "I don't need them."

Even now, I know it is a lie. One of the greatest I have had to utter to save myself. But you cannot ever know the truth. Because once you do, you will believe them like I do. And you will hate me like I do.

And you will kill me.

Like I do.