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Prologue.

I have over time become weightless.

The rain is somewhere behind me; I can feel it steadily closing in. The rain has always been bad news.

But it's okay if it rains, now. The rain can come in its own time. I won't mind. I'm in no hurry to go anywhere.

Only onward.

[It used to scare me to have to move onward. So many unknown things, so many people I'd yet to know and yet to lose.

I always seemed to lose a lot.

I'm not scared, now.

I can hear the rain.]

It's quite a lovely place, where I'm at, but the flowers are dead. They're awaiting the rain, too; the rain will fill them up, make them alive, but it's going to take me away.

It will rain me down upon these flowers, the dead parts of me awakening the dead parts of them.

I'm alone, here with these passed away flowers, and I feel like maybe I should not regret being here.

There are people I used to know - I let go of them all, but one person in particular has always been in my thoughts.

He was such a strange person.

Maybe I should tell you his story - or better yet, tell you ours.

It's for the best.

Chapter one, day one.

What makes me wonder about this world is the fact that he was in it.

He was a boy, and as far as boys go, he was a fairly normal one; his hair was dark and his thoughts even more so, his head filled with teenage angst that bordered on depression - and his eyes were just eyes, nothing interesting or beautiful about the colour brown that they were - brown like the bark of an oak tree that had stood in its place for far too long.

I had never liked the colour brown.

[At that point in time, he was just air to me.

Air so filthy it made me gag.]

He seemed wrong.

The things I saw in him were gaping holes. Holes ripped open so far that they became all that he was, and even then, so long ago, I knew he would kill me.

But this isn't about what would be.

This is about what used to be.

What used to be was me and him.

"Annie, it's raining!" someone had exclaimed before the teacher had arrived, shouting the news to their friend, and if it wasn't obvious enough someone else shouted the same thing out a mere two seconds later, and the entire room full of us teenagers of the dumbshit variety gathered over at the windows.

We sat.

His hair was dark - darker than his eyes, and darker than his skin. It didn't obscure aforementioned eyes, and even if they did, I would have no desire to look into them.

I was convinced he wasn't right.

"Need."

She had arrived. She was talking. Her voice was grating and her skirt annoyingly bright - she was a typical middle-aged teacher who secretly fantasized about the handsome, dumb jocks in her grade, and her existence made my own look like heaven.

Everyone took their seats leisurely, cell phones and iPods discreetly being placed in laps as she turned around to look at everyone.

"What is need? We've recently read some classic books that revolve around it…I want to hear everyone's opinion on need. We'll start up front."

He sat up front.

No.

He used to sit up front. Later in life he would be thrown to the back of the bus.

"Jessica. How does need present itself?"

She stared up through her freshly cut bangs and it was a reminder of how I looked, myself - then that bubblegumhoneysyrup voice began talking and nails on chalkboard suddenly sounded tempting.

"Need is obvious. It's like…if a person is in love, they need the other person and think about them all the time and can't imagine being without them."

[Stupid bitch. I remember thinking it. I never liked Jessica - she was far too annoying. She broke her neck a few years after that, while skiing, so that was a relief. Died in the hospital a few states away. Lucky bitch.

I remember thinking that, too.]

Ms. O'Rourke nodded, indicating for the next student and the one after that to speak their mind - I recall the same, to me, stupid ideas and opinions being voiced, and then she nodded for him to start speaking.

He made my head fill with images of his need.

"Need isn't anything obvious. It's buried so far down nobody knows about it. Not even the person that needs. And need can't be ignored like it's a hobo asking for change - acknowledging it is the best way to work on not needing it."

[A memory comes back to me, now. He asked me my name one day, and isn't that a silly, silly thing - didn't he know that people like me didn't have names like Jacob or Andrew or Jenna or Sarah, but that we had names like outcast and social reject and odd?

I think maybe he should have fit in there with the odd ones, too.

Maybe.

But he didn't.]

Chapter fin.