The Lost Love Chronicles

There are some days when I truly wish for better things.  After what happened last week with that demon-faced ex-girlfriend of mine, nothing has been the same.  I can’t concentrate in class anymore, knowing that I once loved her and she enslaved our entire student body.  How she used me during all those years, and then tried to hurt someone who meant more than than anything to me.  It’s the fact that she actually made that person her enemy, wrecking hundreds of lives that day and turning some of us against one another.  So many relationships have been hampered.  Couples don’t look at each other with the same burning passion.  Friends only stare at one another.  They glare, and then they walk away.  The school is still here, but the love is gone.

Repairmen and plumbers have been working all across campus, fixing the computer systems and pipes.  The main hall is being rebuilt since Sunset Shimmer tore off the front entrance in her demon form.  Nobody feels the same since they were possessed.  Since then, the girl responsible is still on campus - she was the person they voted Princess of the Fall Formal every year.  Snips and Snails even transformed into gargoyles of some sort alongside her, and have now become every bully’s favorite victim.  Occasionally, I’ll walk by them in the halls as they’re thrown against their lockers by a group of bigger guys, crying out for help, and I won’t say anything.  They deserved it, those fucking traitors.  They worked with an evil girl to stalk a new student all over the school.  I can’t rationalize those two boys’ behaviors, and I tense up, ready to join in on the assaults myself.  However, I know better.  The attackers are always caught by a teacher and escorted to Principal Celestia or Luna’s office.  Without any restraint, I could be suspended or expelled like them.

Elsewhere, everyone just stares at Sunset Shimmer with scorn, furrowing their eyebrows as they pass by her.  Girls gossip about her in front of her face, laughing before remembering what she did.  They lift their chins and strut away in their cliques.  They exclude her whenever she asks to join them, whispering comments I can never quite hear.  Then she looks at me, right into my blue irises.  Flash Sentry, he is my ex-boyfriend.  Doesn’t he still have some feelings for me?  I’m a changed girl living a changed life.  Why does he only glance at me with no words?

And sometimes, this is what I ask myself, even as I’m looking out of the window.  I focus on the empty quad area, watching the leaves as they hover in the wind, following the students who are late or ditching class.  I see a few couples smiling and kissing and wonder if things would change if I ever said something to that fiery red-head.  Maybe all the teasing would stop, and everything would go back to normal.  Heck, her narcissism is gone, and everything would be a thousand times better.  But the idea of getting close to her again disturbs me.  Would I be bullied alongside her?  Would things actually turn out to be worse?  It’s at these times I reluctantly realize I should let things just slowly calm down on their own.

Wait, calm down?  If that’s the case, then...what’s this voice yelling my name?

I try pushing these discomforting thoughts away as I feel my head drifting further to the window. My awareness of the world fades, my eyelids close.  The voice calls again.  Thrice, the shouting thrusting me back into full consciousness, jumping in my seat.  My instincts shove my face up and forward before I groggily search around for the source of the noise, seeing all of my classmates giggling in their seats.  I glance past a dark pink-skinned woman with pink hair, and then my eyes fall back to her and focus.  I recognize her, before I recall where I am:  a classroom, where one hundred and ten percent attention is required.  Ms. Cheerilee stares down at me with glasses on the tip of her nose.  Her finger points meaningfully at the book open on her desk. As the tittering in the back of my head continues, I groan (inwardly) and pull my own book out.  I know that Ms. Cherilee isn’t going to take anyone’s attitude today.

“Flash Sentry, can you please read us the question at the top of page thirty-four?” she orders, drumming her fingers on the desk.

“Uhhh… Yes ma’am.”  I flip it open to that page.  To my right, a distinctly chipper laugh stands out.  I look to my side, and there, sitting with her hand on her chin and smirking, possessing the fluffiest cotton-candy hair I’ve ever seen in my life, is Pinkie Pie.  She’s looking at me, then shifting back forward, probably hoping I wouldn’t notice.  Sly girl.  She was always attentive to somebody when they were least expecting it.

I hear my name ring throughout the room a fourth time.  I have been spacing out, my mind still thinking about Pinkie Pie.  God, it might be great to get to know her.  I’m thinking too many things.

“Oh, sorry,” I respond.  Pinkie laughs again.  “It says…”

Putting my finger down below the text, I traced the words while reading them out loud.  They don’t make sense to me.  I can’t concentrate if my life depended on it.  My brain is still running at a thousand thoughts per second, none of which pertain to the understanding the book.  At this point, the words are just black ink slapped onto a page.  Have I ever truly been in class?  I mean, my body was here.  That’s about it.

I finish the paragraph, and I have no idea what I just said.  I look up, and oh, goddamnit, Ms. Cheerilee’s still staring at me.  She wants an answer.  Just great.

“Well, Flash?  Can you explain to the class?”

“Uh…”

Something vibrates in my pocket.  I look down without shifting my arms to see a white square of light glowing in my pants.  Reaching my hand in to grab the plastic device inside,  I make out the blurry name ‘Rarity.’  Jeez, there’s five minutes before the bell, and she has to call me now.  I guess she got out early, but couldn’t she wait?

I tap the ‘Reject’ button, moving my elbow only enough so that it would take some stalker with Pinkie’s level of craziness to notice.  And guess who I sense watching me?

“Flash?” Cherilee asks, stealing my attention again.

“Oh, uh, sorry again,” I said, looking up at her for only half a second.  “Well, I think-”

Another vibration.  Fuck.

I stand straight up, knocking my desk forward with my knees as they strike it.  I watch the table tip forward in slow-motion, and catches in some girl’s hair.  She winces as I whisper an apology in her ear.  Everybody turned around to me in shock.  I shoot Ms. Cherilee a glance as her face literally turns red with rage.  Amazing what a pink face can do.

“Sorry, teach,” I say, standing up again and clutching the phone in my pocket.  “I have an emergency phone call to make.”

“You can wait until after class, Mr. Sent-”

“See ya!”

Twisting around, I dash off towards the back of the classroom and turn to my left towards the door, ignoring the outcries from any kids I brushed up against.  Shoving it open, I run down the hallway, looking around at the lockers and classes alongside me.  A few other students are walking up and down the halls, holding their cell phones and tapping their screens.  They watch me as I brush by them, some of them asking me what my problem was.  I ignore them, concentrating on sprinting.  Everyone always somehow knew what Flash Sentry did, especially if it involved a girl.

Especially if it involved Rarity.

I know where the restroom is.  I seek out the turn I need to make.  My phone’s no longer buzzing.  I make a sharp right, skidding along the tiles to face a dark corridor where the lights at the end are burnt out.  Underneath them’s a brown door with a white male stick figure engraved in it.  I dash again, perking my ears to ensure Ms. Cherilee didn’t send anyone after me.  The halls were soundless, besides my footsteps.

I grab the door’s handle and push it down, leaning against the door as I walk inside.  The buzzing of the bathroom lights greets me, flicking on one-by-one.  Trudging ahead, I can see the stall at the end wide open while I listen for the closing of the bathroom door behind me.  It came a few seconds later with a creaking.  Jeez, I hope that’s the only loud sound I’ll get to hear for a while.

I reach into my pocket and yank out my phone.  The screen lights up, and there are two missed calls from Rarity.  Did she take eating lunch out with me just once that seriously?

“What the hell,” I curse, pressing the button to return her call.  Grabbing the stall’s door, I shut it as I bring the phone up to my ear with my other hand, listening to the dialing.  It rings and rings and rings until sweat drips down my face.  Then a rustling, and a quiet feminine voice speaks crazily.  It tells her friend to wait and a dog to shutup.  She will help them again in a second after answering a phone call.

“Hello?” the voice asks.

“You called?”

“Huh?  Oh, yes...Flash.”  Jeez, I didn’t know someone could talk with such sternness, other than a teacher.  The people at this place, and what the destruction has done to their minds.

“Yeah, it’s me.  You…” I trail off, noticing the scraped wooden walls around me, “...kinda called me at a bad time.  Ms. Cherilee really doesn’t like me now.”

“I’m sure.  Wait a second…”  She falls silent as long as I had.  I guess she realizes I was speaking out loud with no other voices around me.  “...don’t tell me you left class just to return my call?”

“Yeah…  I didn’t know what else to do.  Usually, you have something urgent to tell me, and with things the way they have been over the past week, I thought it might be serious.”

“You just wanted to get out of class!”

“Lately, I haven’t been able to get along with that teacher, and you called before the bell rang.  So, what’s up?”

“Urgh…”  She pauses.  No sound.  “You’re a rebel, you know that?  Well, anyway, it was something pretty important.  At least, I think it was.  You see, I happened to see that girl, Twilight, as I was walking to class, and…”

My eyes go wide.  I lose my train of thought, entering a new one as Rarity’s voice moves further and further away.  It doesn’t matter that the phone is still in the same place.  I can’t hear it.  The remembrance of that beautiful lavender girl when she played with her hair, always sticking her knee out when her eyes flicked towards me, meeting mine, and then dashing away takes over my brain.  It was magic.  Pure, unadulterated magic.  The full image of her in her purple dress during that last night, wearing that magnificent crown and unlocking Sunset Shimmer’s chains on my mind, summoning back the euphoria I once felt and taking me to another world of the deepest, most intrinsic emotions.  Knowing there’s nothing she can’t conquer, that we saved each other’s lives twice.  Knowing that evil could never defeat us, no matter how hard it tried.  I know we shared the same nervous feelings each time we met in the halls or nearby stores.  The passion that was always missing in my life was finally there.  I could sense it, as rarely as I ever feel something so captivating. There were three words we wanted to speak the last time we met, but after that night of the Fall Formal, she was gone, returning to her world of ‘Equestria.’

But now Rarity claims the girl of my dreams is back.

“...and then I told Fluttershy about how rude Applejack can be, but I don’t think she listened.  She probably thought I was full of it!”

“Huh, wait, what?” I ask, bringing my full attention back to the bathroom and hearing Rarity’s words again.  It is the hardest thing ever to shake off those sacred feelings.

“You don’t pay attention to me either?”  She’s gasping, with disparaging comments from other people seeping through the phone.  Seems like I spaced out through her rambling as well.  “My, some people and their nerves!”  That damn irony.

“Sorry, but mentioning Twilight...I lost myself a bit.”  I chuckle as quietly as I can, blushing as I smile.

“Just like so many other boys and their simple minds.  All it takes is the mention of a sweet girl.”

“Oh, trust me, Rare, if you saw everything that goes on in my mind when I think about someone I like, you’d think it’s quite intricate.”

“What?”  There’s a sudden elevation in her breathing.  I cough to restrain myself from bursting laughing.  “Ew, ew, ewwwwwww!  Guh-ross!”

“Hey, some of your exes are my friends.  The stories they’ve told!”

“Keep it to yourself!”

“Oh, suuuure,” I say.  Then I cough again, returning to the present.  “But anyway, you saw her again?  I thought she returned to her…you know.”

“Yes, maybe...but I’m not completely sure.  All I know is she’s here.  Then again, that portal is still there, you know.”

“That’s...true.”  I’d almost forgotten about it.  Why hadn’t our school done anything with it?  Isn’t it classified as potentially dangerous?

“Yeah, so, uhhh…” she paused again.  So typical of her when she’s talking to a guy, especially if it’s me.  Very strange, come to think of it.  “...since you didn’t pay any attention, I also said she and I spoke with each other for a bit.  Weird enough, she didn’t remember anything about last week at all.  She claimed to be a new student, but I told her I already knew that.  She was even more confused.”

“Really, now?”  And so my crush needs my guided assistance.

“Her expression when I told her about Sunset Shimmer…  Ugh!  It was like this was the first time we met!  I know you and her had a had something special, so I figured you’d be able to help.  The poor girl just seems so...so lost!  Maybe seeing you could fix some things.”

“Sounds fine to me.”  This time, my voice echoes, almost resonating with excitement.  I’m sure Rarity was taken aback by my audibility.  “Where should I meet her, though?”

“Well, luckily, I think we’ve been ‘rebuilding’ our friendship, so to speak.  She asked to hang out with me tomorrow.  She was a little awkward about that, though, as she usually is.”  She put more emphasis into those last words.  Another typical trait of hers when the going gets tough.  “I’ll text you when and where later.  We still have no idea what we’re going to do, but I wanted to make sure you would be in on this.”

“Oh, definitely.  Just don’t make me run out of class again.”

“How about you just don’t be so hasty?”

“Ha.  Right.”

I pull the phone back down and listen to its quiet and brief beep sound. ‘Call Ended’ flashes under her name.  The screen transitions back to the menu, and I stuff the phone back in my pocket.  Looking up, I swear I can actually feel the radiance of the bathroom’s light on my face.  Twilight, the girl I so longed for, is back.  Clueless as she was (the very thing that made her so cute), she is actually back.  The very same person who opened my eyes to what I know is most attractive, most beautiful in a girl.  If she had never appeared, I might still be stuck with that bitch.  It is by far one of the scariest thoughts I could ever imagine.  The type of person I would have become puts me on the verge of insanity the more I think about it, especially as I compare her to Twilight.  If we had remained a couple, I might still be lost, less emotional and giving than I am now.  I’d be trapped in that vortex, as I had run back to her so many times before, abused so often without realizing it.  Despite how much people like me, I would have absolutely nothing.  I’d be the sheltered kid at the bottom of the barrel, below the ground, where no one bothers to look in and see what’s wrong.

But that’s all past me.  Tomorrow, Twilight Sparkle awaits.  It’s my job to set things right for her and to guide her throughout the school year, as a true man and welcoming student should.  I’ll open the doors of opportunities for her.  She’ll live the best life possible here as long as I make things work.  And you know what that means?  Romance, drama, a pissed off Sunset Shimmer, and the rest of hell, here I fucking come.  All of the troubles in our lives will be the dance floor, and my chronicles of a lost love, of the girl who once saved us all, will begin.

Where you left off.