Jeremy Rivers had been the center of my universe once. He wasn’t unknown cosmic energy, or anything dark and mysterious. He was the sun, and all essence of life revolved around him.
I was an awestruck sixteen-year-old who fell madly in love with him from the moment our eyes met over the flames. He was sitting across from me at a beach bonfire, the glow of the roaring blaze illuminating him against the dark backdrop of night sky.
He smiled at me, with a flirtatious pop of dimples and those baby-blue eyes squinted in mischief, and that’s all it took.
Lanie Masters fell in love with that beautiful boy instantly.
His first words to me: “You’re beautiful. I have to know your name.”
We wandered off from the group to walk along the shore. We talked about our favorite music, and how we wished our town wasn’t so lame. When I got cold, he wrapped his arms around me and just held me close, the ocean lapping over our feet, sinking us down into the sand together.
“This is crazy,” Jeremy had said. “But I think I’m falling in love with you, Lanie.”
And I believed him. It was madness, to think he could fall for me so suddenly…but I only knew the feelings overtaking me. I believed we were experiencing the same strong, visceral emotions together.
And when he led me behind the sand dunes and kissed me with a fervor no other boy had ever kissed me, I released any reservation about giving myself to him fully. I gave him all of me that night. My love, my pain. My soul. I bared my heart to him.
After we made love, he still held onto me. I never wanted him to let go.
I was safe with Jeremy Rivers.
The next day, the unsettling feeling that something was wrong creeped over me after he initially ignored me at school. It was just nerves, I told myself. He’s shy now, is all.
I can still smell the stale scent of the school hallway, that smell of linoleum wax and old metal lockers in the air. My heart thundered in my chest as I spotted Jeremy, as I held my books close to my chest and forced my feet to travel the distance to him—and when our eyes met…
The beautiful smile that held me captive never graced his mouth.
His words to me: “What the fuck do you want?”
I could only stare, mute and in shock.
“Chick is seriously psycho,” one of the others teased.
Laughter rose up, the deep vibration of it a razor over my skin.
My heart plummeted. The boy I had spent the most intense night with had vanished, and in his place was a cruel imposter.
The jokes started then. The slut shaming. The mocking from his teammates. The attempts to get me alone so they each could have a turn.
Despite it all, I tried so many times just to talk to Jeremy…to understand, for him to make me understand, what I did, or what changed.
Over time, I became desperate to get his attention. Whether it was good or bad. I just refused to be ignored.
I followed him. I watched him. I left him handwritten notes in his locker, on his car. I texted him pictures of me, to remind him of how beautiful he once thought I was.
Then I discovered a horrible truth.
Jeremy had a girlfriend.
Irina was everything that I wasn’t. She had his attention, his devotion. They rubbed it in my face. I watched them kiss in the hallway. Laugh with each other. Be happy together.
Something snapped inside me. Certain details become unfocused when I think back—but I remember the pure vitriol in Jeremy’s eyes when he held my wrists pinned to his locker and said: “I don’t want you. We’re nothing. It’s all in your fucked up brain—”
I remember the violent tear that ripped through my universe.
He stole something sacred from me in that moment. Although it would be years before I could put a name to it with the help of Dr. Leighton, it was my dignity that had been stripped away.
I had made a connection with Jeremy; a very real, very deep connection. My self-worth was linked to his esteem for me, and when that was torn away, all that was left was a consuming hollowness.