Go after her. If you’re faithful and loyal and you’ve been with her and now she’s moving on then get after her. You need this girl, trust me on this because I don’t have her and I need her, everyone needs her, she is what everyone needs. She is that pure white light


“What does ‘Cameron’ mean,” she asks me on the bus. She’s leaning against the window, resting on our uniforms hanging from the window’s latch. We are going to a marching band competition. The forest slides by outside.

“I’m not telling,” I say and she giggles because we laughed a lot back then. I smile too because she is the sunshine.

“Please tell me! I won’t laugh, promise.” I know she will laugh. That’s who she is. What she means to say is that she won’t mock me, she will laugh because she loves me and I make her happy and my name makes her happy. But she won’t mock me so she should have been more specific and said that instead.

I don’t tell her for a while because I like the way she begs, clasping my wrists with her hands. She’s playing and I’m playing. I’m so happy. I tell her eventually “It means ‘bent or crooked nose’.”

She laughs, I did know that’s what she would do. I hide my face and she tells me that it’s a lovely name especially because of my bent and crooked nose. In Spanish, camaron means ‘shrimp’ so my name is embarrassing. “You know what my name means?” she asks, and I shake my head even though I do know because I Googled it.

“My first name means light, my middle name means pure, and my last name is White, of course. So together, I am Pure White Light. Isn’t that cool?”


She shines against everything but I just couldn’t keep her. She never knew about what I did and I call it cheating now and at the time it was all so lonely. I didn’t mean it at first but things kept building up and soon I was in the car and Ashley was taking my belt off and Ashley was not my girlfriend was not that light and it made me feel like scum.

Let me tell you, scum is what I am. I am dirty. I am not clean. I am a terrible person. She knows that now. She left me, she left me, she was so calm and so kind about it until I wouldn’t let her go. Then we were on the phone and she raged


“I have to get out before I’m stuck here with you forever.”

“I don’t know what you mean” I said and I would have given her anything

“I don’t want to be with you anymore.”

I cried. “You don’t?”

She didn’t. “No, this is not working, you can’t do this and think it’s okay.”
“Don’t you blame this all on me. It’s not all my fault.”

Here is where she raged “It is entirely your fault, you don’t call, you don’t text, you’re going off to KANSAS over Christmas break to see another girl? I have tried so hard for you. I wrote you a book that you never bothered to read.”

I never read it because I read the first two pages and I cried so of course I couldn’t read the rest, the pages I read weren’t even about me they were about playing the saxophone and they made me cry. How could I have read the rest. “Don’t go”

“Don’t do this to me, Cameron. Stop begging me when all you had to do was say ‘I want to be with you’ and I would have stayed. You can’t even say that, can you?”


I didn’t, I didn’t, she left me and she never never looked back, shows you how important I was to her. After Christmas break I saw her in the hallways at school and she was always so friendly. We would talk and laugh and be friends.
One day she didn’t meet up with me. One day she vanished and when she came into class there was so much purple under her eyes that her concealer didn’t cover it up and her nose was pink and so was the skin above her eyelids. I never saw her cry before and she didn’t in front of me but I know her nose and eyes were pink. That day she didn’t talk to me and it was the first day she didn’t sit by me. Not so much as a glance my way, later in the library I saw her and called her over to show her my PowerPoint animation. I laughed as it zoomed around the screen but she didn’t even smile. “Cool, right” I said and she did not respond but she said “Cool” in a flat voice and that was when I knew that she knew what I had done. In the car with Ashley once, twice, every time we could, when Ashley snuck out at night to see me, when we talked about sex and when we did it with each other. When we felt each other in the night because it is so, so hard to say ‘no’. She knew about all that. I killed the sunshine in her. Eight months and she was kind to me, eight months and she never went too far with me physically because she was innocent and didn’t want anything to do with that. I went with Ashley on the same day I went with her sometimes, because I was lonely and if I gave me to Ashley it would just be sex and mindless. If I did it with her, she would have known me, seen inside to the monster that I am. She would have caught me and the worst thing that can happen is if someone knows who I am. She got so close, that pure white light just illuminates everything inside of you and some things cringe when the light hits them but she would have loved me for it anyway. So scared so I didn’t let her so I went with Ashley.
I love her, I love her, she saw inside of me and she embraced it and I was in the car but I never meant that. Every time it was nothing to me but I hurt her so bad. You are faithful so you go get her. Take care of that sunshine, don’t you put it out because you love her and I love her


“I love you,” she said to me and her voice was breaking but I told you I never saw her cry not even once.

“I don’t see why you feel like you need to say things you don’t mean”

“When do I ever lie? I have loved you and you have given me nothing in return.”

“Stop it.”

“You can’t even say you love me back. You can’t even do that.” Why did she make me cry so much, it was the things that she said and the things that I did were so messed up that maybe I was only crying for myself, but something in her is so pure I couldn’t say I love her because I was worse than a worm

Listen, you go after her, don’t wait another second. You are not me, you were never unfaithful and you still have a chance to hold her bitten-nails hand and comfort her. Chase her. For me, please, if I was you and it was just a breakup and I was faithful but she didn’t want me I would follow her until the end of time. These are the things you must do when you’re in love and if you meet me watch out. Eight months of ugliness and I will never change. The best thing to do is to be with her instead because she will love you and not leave you she is the good.

Go after her.