Midnights on Swings

(TW: Suicide and Mental Health)

“I know we’re flying, but it feels like I’m drowning.” I told him. We were perched on a swing set, rocking back and forth as the midnight sky bathed our faces. Zayn was emitting a pale, ethereal blue glow that was uncanny, yet comforting. The creaking of the swings as we flew back and forth is the only sound that I hear at this time of night.

“You don’t know how many times you’ve told me that,” Zayn whispers. His face is one of sorrow, eyes twinkling with tears. Seeing tears in his eyes is something I never saw once in his life.

“Why?” I ask with venom in my voice. “Why did you leave me?” Now I felt tears threatening to flood behind my eyes. “Why didn’t you consider how I felt when you-” I choked. “Why did you hide?”

“…I didn’t want you to feel worse than you already do.”

I can’t help but scowl at him. First, he left for a world that promised redemption, bliss, and peace 0f mind, while I’m stuck in this world full of violent disappointment and torture, and he has the moxie to say THAT?! It’s not fair to me or him.

“I know you’re furious at me.” Zayn’s blue ethereal glow began to flicker. “And you have every right to. However, the whole reason I came back is to offer you some closure.”

Zayn attempted to take my hand in his, but his hand slipped right through mine. A crestfallen expression painted his face after his attempt.

I gaze skyward, counting all the twinkling stars and mentally naming the constellations I can see up there. As I count, I remember the times when me and Zayn used to come here to these swing sets every night as youngsters. Every night we’d count the stars, wasting valuable hours of sleep to see if we have found them all.

Yet, we never managed to find the last one.

Zayn moves closer to me, his aura sending a shiver down my spine. Observing his face, I stare into his empty turquoise eyes. Where now there is nothing but blank blues, there used to be the biggest green irises I’d ever seen, and oh how innocent those eyes were.

Before everything that happened.

“How’s my family processing this?” Zayn finally says. “I want to know how they are feeling.”

“Your dad’s shedding the first tears I’ve ever seen him shed, your mom’s stone-faced, which is either bad or good, and your dog is sleeping on your bed every single night. I hear him howling and crying from my window.” I felt tears building up behind my eyes as I explained what has happened since…

Since that day.

Zayn remains silent for a long moment, before he whispers, “I think you should keep him.”

I tilt my head in confusion.

“Blue loves you, you know that. He’d be better off if he lived at your house.” Zayn lets that sentence be processed for a minute.

“I guess he would,” I tell him.

“The thing is… You and I have both been experiencing the same thing. We were both drowning.” Zayn moves even closer to me. “And I was the one dragging you down.”

I gawk at him. “What?!”

Zayn shrugged. “There wasn’t anything left for me in this world, and the only reason I stayed was because of you.” He stares wistfully up at the stars above us. “You dragged me around like I was a burden no one should have to bear.”

“Zayn, that’s not what I thought. You’re my best friend… the only friend I had! When you started acting happier than ever, I thought you were recovering!”

Finally, the tears started flowing rapidly from my eyes. My heart beat faster and faster, and I was hyperventilating.

“What happened to ‘Every midnight, we’ll meet here, forever more?’ What happened to ‘We live and we die together?!’”

Zayn’s ethereal aura rocked back and forth on the swing set, his melancholic expression looking me up and down as I rage at him.

I think back to the first time we sneaked out of our houses to these swing sets, being only half the size we are now. The long gone innocence that we had, the wonder we shared as we flew in the middle of the night, being held back by chains and a metal seat.

Haven’t we come a long way since then.

“I lost the will to live, okay?” Zayn’s voice was being choked by tears. Only now he’s crying, when I have been sobbing waterfalls for the past two weeks.

“Chains were holding me back. I was trapped. You, of all people, know that feeling.” Zayn’s aura flickered more and more, causing him to wince. “I can’t stay here much longer. My business here is about to come to an end. So let me ask you one thing.” He stands up from the swing and walks up beside me. In his hand, he held half of a gold infinity charm, one that I’m all too familiar with.

I pull out the other half, carefully tracing it with my fingernail.

“Will you continue to visit this place when I’m gone?” he asks. It wasn’t a question, but a promise.

I nodded my head in agreement. “Forever more.”

Zayn then cracked a smile as he handed me this half of the infinity charm.

All of a sudden, his blue ethereal aura faded away, vanishing into the night. His smile has left an imprint on my mind.

I gaze up at the stars once more, counting every single one of them, squeezing the two halves of the infinity charm as I do so.

Then I realized the significance of the charm. It’s to remind me that there are infinite amount of stars in the sky, so there’s no way we can count them all.

Yet, I think Zayn wanted me to know that I can count the stars without him. That there’s more to life than him and our friendship.

One thing’s for sure though.

I’ll miss our midnights on the swings.