We’ve been like magnets since the day we met. We were so alike, we naturally gravitated toward one another. But it’s been five years since that day. In five years, we’ve changed, and maybe we changed each other. We’re not those kids anymore. We know who we are now. 

We’re not the people we were in high school, and I’ve stopped trying to pretend that we could be again. We couldn’t. We can’t just pretend everything’s okay, and that I didn’t hurt you and you didn’t hurt me, because we did. I messed up and I’m sorry. 

None of that should have happened. I don’t know what would have gone down if we hadn’t been interrupted, manipulated, for months; dragged along by a monster disguised as a high school student. Would we have stayed friends? Would we be mad at each other now? Would we even care? Whatever might have happened, that’s high school drama. It still hurts, it haunts me a little, and it’s still a part of our past and how we met. How we bonded, anyway. We’re different now, and whatever relationship we have needs to be different too, it’s just not the same.

There’s no reason we can’t be friends as two people in their twenties who can talk like human beings. High school was dumb, and so were we. Being separate from you has made me much more aware of my own issues, and I’m sure you’ve had your share of awareness too. What we put each other through was immature and painful. I’m so incredibly thankful for it, though. Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to grow and begin to understand what the hell I wanted out of life. Finally, everything makes sense to me. I have someone out there who likes me, and I like him, and he’s not you. I’m writing for the school paper. I’m happy most days. All without you. I can’t wait to hear what you’ve done. We’ve been like magnets since the day we met. I connected myself to you, and you to me. Eventually, we pulled apart. 

 “I vow dutifully to retain the traditions of my people, my people who have rejected the idea of a familial unit. The bonds between man, woman, and child are no longer strong enough to survive on their own. We must all band together as one in order to maintain hope and fight for our survival. There shall never again be a passive monarch in Absentia. No King nor Queen will ever allow the suffering King Autonomous allowed our mothers to endure for the last fifty years. We are no longer lost. We are united. We have overthrown the King. No war can separate us as it did our fathers. Our fathers who fought bravely for their homes, only to die leaving their wives and their children. Their children would grow into the people I see before me today. Absentia, formerly all but a word, is the only life we have ever known. The only place, the only home. We rule in peace.”

When soldiers are marked “dead in absentia”, they did not truly go missing. They died in the kingdom of Absentia, once governed by a powerful evil with the means to expel any outsider from entry. They married, and their new brides bore children the brave soldiers would never get to meet. The survivors of the once violent Absentian kingdom remain united, rejecting the idea of family and fatherhood. Previous generations mourned the loss of their fathers so deeply that the new queen vowed to protect all children from ever having to feel that sort of pain.

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