• A blue 98’ Ford Taurus was parked between two cars in an almost empty high school parking lot, students were emerging out of the schools doors happily. He was extremely tall, he stood at about 6’4. A mass of shaggy un-managed brown hair was covering his face along with one too many pimples, sported a 5 o’clock shave and was smoking a Camel cigarette. His brown eyes glanced upward from where he was looking as I made my way towards him cautiously, expecting a frantic spasm of some sort from him but instead he stood slumped against the back bumper of his car smoking, not saying a word. I stood next to him staring straight ahead, I was afraid to even look at him until he asked casually if I wanted a cigarette, which I gratefully accepted smoking. Neither of us said anything for 15 minutes, letting the cold winter air blow against our face’s while flecks of white fell onto our hair and lips. As the smoke exhaled from my tired lungs, he asked where we were to go. I bit my lower lip. I didn’t have much time, maybe only a half hour until Mum would start calling me to come home for supper: I wished I thought this through the night before. After some thought I told him to drive us to the park on the hill. He nodded slowly, beeped his car unlocked and we both got in, him in the driver’s seat and I in shotgun. I realized that there was not going to be any conversation until we got to the destination, so I turned my head to glance outside my window. Snow was falling now, lots of it, swirling into patterns which ever way the wind would blow it. We passed the McDonald’s across the high school, under-aged smoker’s and drug dealer’s outside the front entrance either smoking cigarettes or a ghetto joint casually, bickering with each other about who did what yesterday night, and so on and so forth. I turned away as the car braked suddenly. Another car in front of us had apparently made a sharp turn and cut us off. He honked his horn and swore silently, not wanting to frighten me as this was happening. I sighed softly and looked back out my window to admire the winter scenery. After what seemed like forever we had arrived at the destination, a park on top of a snow-covered hill, the sun was behind a background of bare trees and glistened off the snow beautifully. As the car slowed to a stop he put the car in park and turned off the engine, and lay back in the drivers seat with his eyes closed. No one spoke a word for 10 minutes, we just sat there in the car shivering fiercely. I was the first to break the silence, “Well, this is a bit awkward,” I smiled, the first time I had smiled in about 2 weeks. He didn’t return the smile, well not right away. He opened his eyes and stared out through the windshield, seeming to think of something to say. Finally he said, “Yup, this is a tad awkward huh?” a smirk slowly creeping across his face now. I laughed though I still don’t understand why and turned to face him, and suddenly went stiff. Numbness crept onto my body, like a parasite latching onto its host, from my head all the way down to my legs. It felt like the air from my lungs had escaped from my chest and refused to return, I laid back in the passengers seat to redeem myself. I felt a large hand rest on my shoulder softly, and realized it was his. I couldn’t hold it in any longer: I HAD to know. Slowly the words forming from my lips were, “Why did you lie?” feeling his hand on my shoulder turn to stone, and then he pulled away. He ran his fingers through his brown hair licking his lips, then closed his eyes again as if he were in horrible pain. I waited, my arms folded gruffly and my expression expectant for an answer. Sweating now, he shakily lit another cigarette and offered me one, which I again accepted. As we smoked he coughed violently because he was inhaling too fast, but was fine after gulping down some Starbucks coffee. I began to get irritated, the silence was bothering me so I roughly said, “Can you please just tell me why? I’ve taken MY time out so we could talk, not for us to sit in awkward-turtle silence.” He looked up at me quickly, his brown eyes piercing into my soul and said, “Your right, you made time for this, I might as well explain what happened,” and he sat upright in his seat and turned his body in direction of me. When he spoke it sounded gentler than before, not aggressive, awkward or pushy, it just sounded almost honest, almost like he was telling the truth, but as the story went on it began to sound rehearsed. I wouldn’t of been surprised if he had stayed up the night before practicing the speech he was giving me right now in the mirror. The emotion in his eyes deteriorated to reveal a fine mask, and it was bothering me a lot but I let him continue speaking anyway. “You and Patrick aren’t meant to be. I tried breaking you two up so you could be happy, Mariah.” I twitched, “Happy? I WAS happy, Bryan.” Right when I said his name he turned away, his expression changed from kind to annoyed. “You don’t seem to understand, Mariah, that you aren’t meant to be with him, and you know it. Your being pathetic believing Patricks lies,” he said so coldly. A sharp pain sliced through my stomach, this conversation had just flip-flopped, and it was pushing my buttons. “You really don’t seem to understand that YOU have been the one that had lied all along: You fed me lies about Patrick. You made me question my relationship with him. Because of you, I’ve gone through many ordeals, lost friends, and almost lost Patrick,” I snarled viciously, “and if you sincerely believe that he’s the evil one here, then your wrong. The only one that’s evil here is you.” The tension in the car rose substantially, Bryan said nothing but gripped the steering wheel while gritting his teeth. “Mariah, please don’t do this …,” Bryan cooned softly, “I’ll move away next year and I will never come back.” I closed my eyes, pressed my lips together and grabbed my bag saying, “In all honesty, I think that this would be the best for us, Bryan.” Right as I said that a poem ran through my head, “You took my trust and set it on fire, and you ended up being nothing but a liar. I thought you could be trusted but its just a mighty shame, that you were the one that should have been at blame.” I unlocked my door and swung my bag over my shoulder. “Good-bye, Bryan,” and I got out of the car into the blistering cold wind. When I was 20 feet away from the park on the hill, I turned back. Bryan's car was nowhere to be seen and the sun was setting into the snowy hill’s beyond the horizon. Remembering something I fiddled around in my bag and pulled out a red notebook signed Bryan D. in sloppy handwriting on the top right corner of the cover. I flipped through until I came to a page of portrait of myself drawn by Bryan. I stared blankly, feeling the memories of the portrait of myself disappear as I lit the ends with my lighter, and watched the month of December burn to cinders.