All day he’d been waiting. Literally since the moment he sent it to the moment time had taken him to now. He lifted his head from his dented pillow and looked at his alarm clock, which now shown 8:16. Now 8:17. The dark thought of abandonment pervaded his mind throughout the day. He lay in bed throughout the hours, unmotivated to move at all. He wanted to wait and he wanted an answer immediately. He had thought about the meaning of friendship in an earlier part of the day, one in which he had a much more eager and hopeful state of mind. Friendship had meant depending on one another, trusting on another. But, as the sun inched across the blue sky, throughout the day, it became obvious to him that friendship didn’t mean anything. The only person one could truly depend on was himself. A hard heart won’t get hurt as easily as a hopeful one. Hope is an empty lie told by Sunday school teachers to the manipulated brains of the preacher’s children. He looked towards a group of necklaces and rosaries hanging on his dresser and apologized for his momentary loss of faith. He lay his head back down on his pillow and continued to wait. He pondered the thought of finalizing the end of this broken friendship. Long had their bond consumed him, diluted all his thoughts with images of Red. Every action he took seemed to be influenced by the thought of him. He shook out the thought that he might be obsessed with him. Obsession was for crazy people. Not AP students. Life would move on without him. He didn’t need him in his life to find happiness or inspiration or love. Immediately, he squeezed his eyelids shut and bit down on his tongue to distract his mind. He didn’t love him. Moreover, he wanted to slit Red’s throat and watch his warm blood spurt and trickle down the curves and edges of his athletic soon-to-be corpse. No. He didn’t want Red dead either. He wasn’t crazy. He wanted Red to suffer for the emotional catastrophe he was becoming. Every day was a menstrual cycle, sans the blood flow. Oxytocin floods his endocrine system and sets his heart on fire, then drops with the slightest shift of mood, making way for cortisol to darken the world around him. Overwhelmed by thoughts too immense for his intellect, he exited out of Wikipedia and discontinued his search for labels to the hormones causing his emotions. He grabbed his phone and checked for notifications. All the screen read was the time; 8:44. He saw himself pitch the phone in his hand across the room directly at the wall farthest from him and began to feel his mood worsen as it separated into pieces of glass and plastic as it dropped to the floor. He shook the thought off and flipped his phone over, screen facing down, as he was now disgusted by the thought of humanity. An eclipse had begun over the boy’s persona, and umbrages of self-loathing and worthlessness was now cast directly over him. “I don’t need him,” he whispered aloud. He thought about the act of pushing him out of his life for good; how their final meeting would go. The thought didn’t make it past an image of them staring at one another. He found that he couldn’t even force the image to continue past that. He knew his heart was intervening. He knew he would never, could never leave him. He knew he wouldn't make it without Red. Suddenly, the image of their final departure continued, this time, the boys’ places had switched. Red’s lips moved without sound, but a feeling of anxiety crept inside his chest and quickly spread throughout his entire being, and he felt the world around him begin to crumble. Red turned to walk away. Uncontrollably, he whispered the word “Stop” aloud. The image of them faded away and he sucked up any tears that might be forming back into his ducts. He knew thinking like that any longer might lead him to an early grave led by his own hand. The mere thought of Red’s actual abandonment was far too much to bear. Life without him wouldn’t be worth living. No one on earth was like Red, at least to him. The thought of them together appeared again. His hand was on Red’s chest over his heart, and softly, their lips connected. “Stop.” he murmured even stronger. He felt vile and unclean when he thought like that. He hated that he couldn't control his mind from coming up with temptuous thought’s like that. Red was his best friend. How dare he defile Red’s image in such a disgusting way. As much as he could, he tried to put out thoughts like those, or at least stop them before he grew obsessed with them. He figured waiting idly was not the best cure for his mind, so he decided to take a walk around the house to get his mind on some other subject. He waited for his body to return to a more appropriate state, then he sat up from his bed and walked out of his room. As he stepped through the doorway to the living room, the phone on his bed vibrated, signifying a text.