Worthless

         “If we’re all going to die,” she said, her eyes wide, “why are we even living?”

         “Why?” I asked. “Why bother doing anything then?”

         “My point exactly.” She turned then, so I could only see her profile: her long eyelashes, her straight nose, her stubborn set jaw. “There is no point.” And she laughed, a low, dark, humourless laugh that made me shiver. But still, I laughed along with her.

         We were so young then, swept up in our notions of what beginnings, endings, and in-betweens really meant, blinded by our ideas that life was a pointless journey that only prolonged the wait to get to where we were meant to be.

         I haven’t seen her for years now. Had she found some sort of meaning, some sort of purpose, to life? I’ll never know. I’m not sure if I want to know.

         “It’s all so meaningless.” She was staring out at the water, a blanket wrapped around her.

         “What is?” I asked, eager to meet her approval. Too eager.

         “Life,” She answered. “We’re all going to wither away eventually.”

         “So why not make the best of it while we’re still here?” I suggested, a hopeful tone in my voice, betraying how I really felt. “Why not try to be remembered?”

         She whipped around to glare at me. “Because eventually, there’s going to be no one around to remember us. And all we’ll do is try to be remembered, instead of living our lives the way they should be lived: by not living at all.”

         “And what about the celebrities?” I pressed on. “The famous people?”

         “Oh, their works will be remembered.” She gave me a grim smile. “Their movies and songs and paintings and books, they’ll all be remembered. But them, as people? They’ll be forgotten the moment the last relative who knew them dies.”

         I had given up, after that. I didn’t want to give her any more reason to be mad at me.

         And what does she think now? Does she still think it’s not worth being remembered? Or does she think that it’s better not to be forgotten?

         “You’re wrong,” I told her one night, when I was feeling brave.
         
         “Sorry?” She said, silently daring me to say it again. “I didn’t hear you.”

         “You’re wrong,” I repeated.

         “How so?” She asked, a smirk gracing her features.

         “Life isn’t pointless,” I replied. “We should be living.”

         “So you want to lie on your deathbed–”

         “I want to lie on my deathbed and know that I actually did something with my life, instead of sitting around each day until there was nothing left for me!” I yelled, finally saying the words that needed to be said. “You asked me why bother living if we’re all going to die, but why bother dying if you never lived? We only have one life. I’m not going to waste mine sitting around doing nothing! Maybe your life is worthless, and pointless, and meaningless. Maybe that’s your choice. But it’s not mine.”

         “If that’s the way you feel–”

         “It’s the way you made me feel,” I interrupted, my voice hollow.

         “Then why don’t you just leave?” She continued, ignoring my jab.

         “Fine,” I said, getting up, and then, maybe because I was still feeling brave, or maybe because I hadn’t given up on her yet, added, “Do something stupid.”

         “What?” She asked, the confusion obvious on her face, the first true emotion she’d shown in a long time.

         “Do something stupid,” I said again. “Go to a rock concert. Go on a safari. Go skydiving, bungee jumping, zip lining, I don’t care. Because if you’re going to die anyway, you might as well help to speed up the process. I don’t want you to die having done nothing.” I turned around to leave.

         “Do me a favour, too, then,” She said, and I turned back around to see her standing there, a small smile on her face. “Do something with your life. Go to school. Get a good job. Have a family. I want to be assured that one of us will turn out okay.”

         “Okay,” I said.

         “Promise me,” She begged, and I could see the desperation on her face, and realized that this was her trying to make amends for how she had made me feel. Worthless.

         “I promise,” I told her. And finally, I left.

         “I’m sorry.”

         To this day, I’m still not sure whether she actually apologized, or whether I just imagined it. But I like to think that it was actually her who spoke the words.          

         I haven’t seen her since then. She’s just a distant memory now, an old infatuation that constantly lingers, always on the edge of my mind, never seeming to want to slip away. But I’m happy now. I’m really, truly, happy. I hope she is too.

         There’s one part of me, the grown-up, mature, part, that wonders what became of her, wonders if she followed my advice or hers. I wonder if she’s okay. I wonder whether she’s still alive, and if she is, whether she’s actually living. But there’s another part of me, the teenager that never stopped loving her, that already knows. She’s doing just fine.

         “Danny?”

         I turned around to see a woman standing there, her eyes wide, evident surprise etched onto her face. “Remy?” I questioned.

         “Yes,” she replied, her whole figure tense. “How are you? I mean, how have you been?”

         “I’ve been good,” I answered, a smile on my face, and she visibly relaxed. “I–”

         “Danny!” My wife came rushing towards me, a worried expression on her face. “Have you seen Lewis? I can’ t find him anywhere!”

         My nine-year-old son popped up beside her. “I’m right here, Mom,” he said, rolling his eyes.

         “Where have you been? I was looking all over- Hello,” my wife, Amanda, said suddenly, finally noticing Remy standing there.

         “Remy, this is my wife Amanda and my son Lewis,” I introduced them. “Amanda, Lewis, this is Remy. She’s…” I trailed off, not exactly sure how to finish that sentence.

         “An old friend,” Remy supplied.

         “Right.” I nodded.

         “Mom,can we go to the daycare now?” Lewis asked, obviously bored if it meant he wanted to go pick his sister up.

         “Of course, sweetie,” Amanda replied. She sent me a look that I took to mean, “Are you coming?” I replied with a subtle shake of my head. “We’ll catch up with you later,” Amanda said to me, before hurrying after Lewis.

         Remy watched her go, an amazed look on her face. “You actually listened to me.”

         “I did promise you,” I reminded her.

         “I know.” She shook her head. “It’s just…. You were right, you know?”

         I looked at her in shock. “Sorry? I didn’t hear you.”

         She laughed, a tinkling sound that I hadn’t heard since I had first met her when we were twelve. “You were.”

         “How so?” I asked.

         “Life isn’t pointless,” she replied. “And we shouldn’t be sitting around, wasting our days doing nothing. We have to get out there, and do something with our lives. Because otherwise, how are we going to be remembered?”

         I smiled at her. “I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

         “I’m not going to apologize though,” she added, looking straight at me. “Because I had done what I felt was right, and it turning out that I was wrong isn’t going to change the fact that I don’t regret it. You needed the push, Danny. You needed someone to tell you how to think, so you could oppose them. Otherwise, you’d still be stuck in that small town, with nothing to show for it.”

         “And I’m not going to thank you,” I said. “Because I don’t think you deserve it.”

         She shrugged. “Fair enough.”

         “I have a daughter, too,” I told her. “Her name’s Remy.”

         “I…. Thank you,” she said, but she wasn’t looking at me. In fact, she was looking everywhere but me.

         “I don’t regret it either,” I said, after a few moments of silence. “You were my first love.”

         “But not your last.” It wasn’t a question. I opened my mouth to answer.

         “Daddy!” A little girl squealed, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw her rushing towards me. I leant down to pick up my four-year-old daughter, still keeping my eyes on the Remy in front of me.

         “No,” I replied. “You’re not. But you’re always going to be my biggest ‘what if’.”

         “Danny…” In one word, I knew that it hadn’t been the same for her. That she hadn’t thought about me since I left, that I wasn’t on her mind every day, that her only recollection of me had been a name. And I knew that she was regretting that now. She was regretting letting me go. I clutched my daughter tighter.

         “Meaningless. Pointless. Worthless.” I ticked them off in my head. “Your three favourite words. Which one was I, Remy?” My daughter giggled at hearing her name. “Which one was I?” I pressed a kiss to my Remy’s head. And then I left, finally getting the closure I needed.

         “I’m sorry.”

         Like the first time, I’m still not sure whether I imagined her saying the words, or if she actually said them. And, like the first time, I like to thing it really was her speaking.

         And so I never found out whether she followed my advice or hers. I never found out if she was happy. I never found out what she had done with her life. But I knew that she was okay. I knew that she was living. And that was good enough for me.

         The thing is though, no matter how happy, how successful, how memorable, I become, I’m always going to be the worthless boy who fell into a meaningless love with the pointless girl.