Vic’s POV *September 2000*
A basketball flew against my head and I felt a stinging pain on the spot it had connected with it. Seconds later I heard a voice from right beside me. “Oh my god, I’m sorry, dude. Are you okay?” a guy said. I recognized his voice, he was a senior.
I turned around to respond, but as soon as he saw my face, his eyes trailed off like they had never even seen me. Like I had disappeared into thin air, by showing my face.
If you didn’t know my story, you would’ve thought I would’ve been some weird super hero. Disappear-guy. I sometimes acted like I was to made real life better. Because reality just sucked. What better way there is than making yourself believe that you’re special, but just no sees it?
In reality I wasn’t special at all. I definitely wasn’t ordinary, but I was different in a bad way. People ignored me for the things I had done and I was just sitting out my punishment. I had done things to people, even my little brother, that made me think I deserved to be like this.
I looked around the school halls and saw people live their lives. They were putting books in their lockers, talking to each other, laughing. They were interacting. I couldn’t even remember what it felt like to have friends. I just wanted someone to talk to. I didn’t even ask for a deep bond with someone. I just wanted to talk, about the weather for my part.
Otherwise I’d go nuts. At the other hand, I probably already was. And I did unusual things to keep myself sane. This thought made me lower the sleeves of my sweater even more. If anyone would ever see it, I’d go insane. Even though they weren’t allowed to talk to me, I just didn’t want them to know.
There was a time I desperately wanted people to notice, but I only realize now how stupid that was. It was disgusting and stupid, but I just couldn’t stop doing it. It was probably the only thing that kept me from losing my mind.
While walking down the hall, I was already at home in my thoughts. The place where I would take a blade from my drawer and draw a lot of deep lines over my arms or anywhere else on my body. The place where I could get rid of all of the pain in my head and replace it by physical pain. Because to me, the mental pain was way worse than the physical pain.
The urge to do it got a lot of worse now I was thinking about it. Maybe I could get those scissors out of my bag and go to the bathroom? Scissors were a lot duller, but it just meant I had to push a little harder.
I started walking a little faster, not really seeing where I was going anymore because my mind was clouding with urge.
I was stopped though by something in my way. I bumped up to a girl and all of the forms she had in her hands flew out of her grip and fell on the floor.
I wasn’t really paying attention to who it was until the girl spoke up. “Hey! Look out!” she said with a British accent. Her voice sounded like a lullaby even though she was shouting.
But the fact that she shouted at all made me look up at her. I quickly scanned over he appearance. She had long brown hair that flowed over her shoulder and reached until her lower back. Her skin was pale and had an ivory color. It looked soft and smooth from what I could see and she wore a pink sweater that didn’t really match with her jeans.
The thing that got me though, were her eyes. They were bright blue, the color of the ocean, with specks of green in it.
I quickly looked down before I got lost in them. I kneeled down and started gathering the papers of this insanely beautiful girl. “I-I’m s-sorry.” I stuttered, not really sure if I should be talking to her. She was definitely new and probably didn’t know about the pact, but I didn’t want to get her in trouble.
When I had all her papers, I stood up again and handed them to her. Our eyes met again and this time she locked hers with mine too. Like she was in a trance. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter.” She said and her voice was even more melodic when she spoke softer. It reminded me of the voices princesses in old Disney movies had.
I don’t know what it was, but this short conversation made me feel a little lighter inside. Like a weight had been lifted off my shoulder. I knew she was just trying to be polite, but people who were being polite to me were rare.
I felt the corners of my mouth twitch and was at the edge of smiling to her, but then realized I probably shouldn’t. I could cause this girl so much trouble, she could get beaten up or being bullied.
I tore my eyes away from her and walked away with mixed feelings. At one hand I was high of the feeling she had given me and at the other hand I knew that I could never talk to her again without causing her pain. For some reason, I already knew she was a good person and I didn’t want to do that to her.
My head clouding with new thought, I blindly walked to my math class. I stiffened when I saw the only person that was allowed to talk to me stand against the wall next to the door. He didn’t talk to me that much, but when he did, I always wished he had ignored me.
The blonde boy smirked at me as I came closer and I tried to not to look his way. Of course that just made him eager to do something. “So Vic, welcome to Junior year. Welcome to your fourth year of punishment. Your fourth year of not existing. I hope you enjoy your stay in your own mind.” He said and he wiggled his eyebrows.
His words gave me the shivers. I’m telling you, this guy is psychotic. He shouldn’t be walking around freely. I wouldn’t be surprised if he killed someone one day.
I walked passed him and walked over to my usual seat in the back. I sat down and let all the dark thoughts come to me again. Every single happy feeling I had been having that was caused by the mysterious girl in the hallway had vanished.
I looked at my desk and saw that people had carved their name in it. I traced my hand over the words and got an idea. I bended down to get my bag and got my scissors out of it. But instead of tracing them over my skin, I traced them over the wood of my desk. I carved until the stripes formed my name. I looked at it proudly but also sadly, because this would be the only evidence ever that I had existed at this school.

*2016*
The sun shone through my curtains and down on my bed as I was waking up. My eyes were still half closed as I sat up and looked around the room. When I got to the spot next to me on the bed, I saw red hairs scattered over the white pillow. It was the only thing visible from my girlfriends body, the rest was covered with the bright, white sheets.
I chuckle a little and leaned down to move the sheets away from her a little. The sleeping, freckled face of Danielle came into view and she seemed so peaceful. Damn I had missed this girl so much on tour. But missing her only made me happier when I was around her.
I leaned down a bit further and placed a soft kiss on her cheek. She stirred a little but went on sleeping. She always did that and it looked incredibly cute, so whenever I woke up and she was still asleep, I always kissed her cheek.
With a smile on my face, I threw away the sheets from my body. I stood up from the bed and whistled quietly as I walked over the bathroom. As soon as I walked in, I was met by my bed hair in the mirror. But this time it was ten thousand times worse. It literally looked like I had been electrocuted.
I snickered and took out my phone. This was definitely Instagram and snapchat worthy. I made a weird face in the mirror as I took a picture of my weird hair. I cropped the photo a little and then put it on Instagram. Within seconds my notifications turned wild with hundreds of people commenting on my picture. Some comments were funny and some were sweet. It always kind of warmed my heart to see that people were supporting me in whatever I did. It didn’t matter if it was something as stupid as this.
I quickly glanced at all my notifications and then noticed I had a few WhatsApp messages. Some were from my mom, asking if me and Danielle wanted to come over for dinner, one was from Michele, one was from Jaime who sent me a funny picture a fan had made and one was from Luna.
I got excited and immediately clicked on her message. It just felt right being in contact with her again. Like it was supposed to go like this.

Luna: Hey Vic. 1 pm at my place, right? I’m sorry, I’m kind of horrible at remembering things.

I chuckled. She always had been bad at remembering things. I can’t even count the amount of times she had forgotten we had a date or even forgotten to go to school. Back then it could be kind of annoying at times, but it was mostly just funny because Luna always just lived inside her own world. Most of the time she didn’t know what we were talking about either.
I quickly typed a message back.

Vic: Hahaha, you haven’t changed a bit! Yes, 1pm. I’ll be there.

I checked the time and saw that it was already 10 am. I even needed to hurry up if I wanted to make it to Los Angeles in time. I quickly brushed my teeth and rushed down stairs to make breakfast for myself.
To my surprise the place already smelled like bacon as I got to the kitchen. I saw Danielle clumsily trying to flip bacon in a frying pan while only wearing her pajama’s.
I tried to make no sounds as I quietly tiptoed towards her. When I was right behind her, I threw my arms around her waist.
She let out a short scream and almost dropped the frying pan. Mission succeeded.
She turned around with my arms still around her and the spatula still in her hands. “You scared me to death, Vic! Don’t ever do that again!” she said. She tried to look threatening, but in her eyes she was already laughing about all of this.
“Yes ma’am.” I said smiling and I pressed a kiss on her lips. When I pulled back I looked around her. “Are you attempting to make breakfast, babe?”
She turned a soft shade of pink. “I would’ve made for you too, but when I woke up with you not there, I figured you were already off to Luna’s.” She said as she turned around.
I let go of her waist and searched for something to quickly eat before I went out. “It’s okay. I need to hurry anyway.” I said as I took a piece of bread from the last cupboard I looked into.
The most amazing thing about Danielle was that she wasn’t jealous. I didn’t mind girls being clingy, but I hated it when girls didn’t trust me. I would never cheat on someone in my life and it hurt me that I had been accused of it a lot.
Danielle was different. When I told her that my ex was our new producer, she was absolutely cool with it. She perfectly understood that it had been thirteen years ago that Luna and I dated and that we had no feeling left for each other. Besides, she had heard about the high school time of me and the guys a lot. Luna had kind of been a legend in our group of friends, because we told a lot of stories that she appeared in. Jessica knew her of course, but a lot of other friends just knew her from stories.
I quickly ate the rest of my bread while leaning against the counter and then ran up the stairs to the bedroom. I opened the closet and once again remembered that I yet had to unpack my things from tour.
So I unzipped the suitcase I had used on tour and took out a random shirt and jeans. I put them on, took a snapback from the nightstand and I was ready to go. Sometimes I was so happy that I was a man, because I couldn’t imagine being late and having to do all the things women did when they’re getting ready.
I rushed back downstairs and saw that Danielle was now sitting at the table in our kitchen, eating her breakfast. I quickly kissed her on the cheek and then left the house.
I was already getting kind of nervous as I got into my car. It was kind of obvious that Luna didn’t really wanted to hang out with us anymore. I wasn’t the kind of person to keep pushing if they didn’t want to, but I just felt like we still had the connection we had when we were younger. Minus the whole thing where I was head over heels in love with her of course.
I would be alone with her today and maybe she would tell me why she was being so distant.

*

I rang the bell of Luna’s apartment after my two and a half hour drive and patiently waited for her to open the door. I looked up to the large building and took in the surroundings it was in. It wasn’t in an amazing neighborhood, but I had seen worse. The building had random tags of graffiti on the walls and the cars in front of it were rather old and dirty. My own silver car definitely stood out between them as it was quite new and shining.
The nice thing about this area was the park across from the building. It had a stone arch that served as entrance to the park and from here I could already see the soft pink flowers that grew all over the bright green grass. On a stone bench not far from a small lake sat an elder couple, their hands intertwined.
It was quite a contrast with the rest of the neighborhood.
I looked back up to the building when I realized there hadn’t been a reaction from the apartment at all. I rang the bell again, maybe I hadn’t pushed it properly. It wouldn’t be the first time. I had stood in front of people’s doors for ages, because I never actually rang the bell right.
But after waiting another minute, there was still no reaction of Luna. I rang the bell again, but it remained completely silent. Other inhabitants of the building passed me on their way in and looked at me with a weird look. They probably thought I was a stalker or something.
I decided to call Luna and took my phone out. I pressed the device against my ear, but the call went straight to voicemail. Her phone was turned off.
Great. What the fuck was I supposed to do now?
A voice in the back of my head told me that she did this on purpose, to make clear that we weren’t friends anymore and that she still hated me like she did thirteen years ago. But I also knew that she wouldn’t ever do that. I didn’t really know her anymore, but the Luna I knew would never hurt anyone if she didn’t have a very good reason.
Another more obvious scenario went through my head too. What if she was kidnapped, dead or passed out? I knew the chances of that happening were small too, but humans have a habit of expecting the worst to happen.
So I decided to call the only person that could possibly know where she is or what has happened to her. Danny.
I heard the familiar tones until Danny picked up the phone. “What can I help you with, Vic?” he said in his usual upbeat voice. How could a person be this happy all the time? I mean, I tried to be, but Danny was the most positive person I had ever met. And I knew that after just a week of knowing him.
“Uhm yeah. Me and Luna would meet up at her house today to work on the songs, but she won’t open the door and her phone is turned off. Should I be worried?” I asked and I felt a bit embarrassed to ask him.
I heard Danny chuckle and then let out a sigh. “No, definitely not. She probably has earphones in with very loud music and isn’t able to hear you because of it. Believe me, it has happened to me before too.” He said, he didn’t seem upset about it, though.
I let out an awkward chuckle. “Okay, but what am I supposed to do now?” I asked. I was honestly growing a bit impatient waiting here outside.
“Okay, this is how you are going to do it.” Danny said, starting to explain. “Ring the bell of her neighbor, Mrs. Smith. Tell her over the intercom that you’re her boyfriend and she’ll let you into the building. Then go up to Luna’s apartment and take the key under her doormat to get in.”
I tried to memorize everything that he had been telling me, but it seemed like quite a lot. “Oh okay. Thanks Danny.” I said. We said our goodbye’s and I hung up.
I this time rang a different bell and immediately a high, raspy voice was heard. “Hello?”
I leaned a bit closer to the intercom as I spoke. “Uhm hello, ma’am. I’m here for Luna Fall, she is my girlfriend. I was just checking up on her, but she won’t open the door. I’m worried about her, can you please let me in?” I said and I started to feel nervous that this woman would look through me.
“You sound a bit different then before…” she said and I felt incredibly stupid. Of course Danny had used this excuse before. She was used to Danny’s voice as her neighbors boyfriend’s voice.
I took a deep breath and tried to imitate Danny’s voice as well as I was able to. “Nothing to worry about, Mrs. Smith. I’m just having a bit of a cold.” I said, my voice higher and more melodic than before. She was honestly stupid if she believed it.
But within a few seconds a high beep was heard and the doors of the apartment complex swung open. Wow. She really was stupid.
I rushed through the doors and up the stairs to Luna’s apartment. I stopped in front of number 16 and looked down for the doormat that Danny described. When I lifted it, there was indeed a silver key.
I put the key in the lock and turned it around. When I opened the door, I was met with a small hallway. Shoes stood against the wall and coats hung from pegs on the wall.
I softly closed the door, having a bit of a feeling like I was breaking in. I noticed an open door to my right and entered it, noticing that it was the living room.
And just as Danny said, Luna was sitting on her desk with her back towards me and her earphones in. She was typing something at her computer and she seemed pretty concentrated. Even though I had been waiting outside for a while, I was happy to see that she was still the same girl who could get lost inside her own world. It was probably for the best that she was, because she was so fragile and innocent that she would break if she would be in the cold, hard reality all the time.
I took a deep breath and walked over her to tap her on her shoulder. She jumped at the contact and turned around to see me. Her eyes got big and she removed her earphones. “Oh my god, you scared me. How did you get in here?” she said and she brought a hand to her heart to slow down her breath.
I got even more nervous than I already was because of her shocked expression. “You didn’t open the door, so I called Danny and he told me to use the key underneath your doormat.” I said quickly, trying to explain myself.
Her shocked expression melted away and morphed into an embarrassed one. “Fucking hell. I lost track of time, I must’ve not heard the bell over the music.” She said and she held up her earphones. “I’m so sorry, Vic.” She genuinely sounded like she felt guilty about it.
I didn’t really mind, though. I actually found the whole situation kind of funny. I chuckled softly. “It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t that bad. I had to imitate Danny over the intercom so your neighbor would let me in, though.” I said grinning and a slight smile grew over her face.
I had almost forgotten what her smile looked like over the years. I used to think it was one of the most beautiful things about her. “And did it sound convincing?” she asked.
I shook my head. “God no.” I said chuckling and to my surprise she chuckled along.
“Well, she’ll probably think for the next few minutes that I have multiple boyfriends, but she’ll forget about it after. She has Alzheimer.” Luna explained.
“Well, that explains why she keeps falling for the same excuse.” I said, suddenly regretting thinking that this woman was just plain stupid.
Luna chuckled and motioned over to the couch. “Please, sit down. Do you want something to drink?” she asked as she stood up.
I let myself fall on the brown couch and smiled towards her. “A cup of coffee, please.” I said.
She nodded and walked over to the door.
I took this time for myself to look around her apartment. The room was mostly filled with simple furniture. Some looked quite old.
But it was her walls that actually got to me. She had put pictures of friends and family on the wall her desk was standing against and I recognized Casey, Danny, Allison and her dad. The rest of the space on her wall was taken up by concert tickets, some looking yellowish and some newer. She had decorated her walls with memories.
I also noticed an empty bottle of wine standing on her salon table that stood across from her couch. I suddenly remembered that she had had a lot of problems with alcohol too when she was younger. She used to drink her problems away, she never drank just for fun. But maybe she had changed? All I knew was that she probably had a hangover this morning as a bottle of aspirin was standing next to it.
I don’t think I would know for sure very soon if she kept turning us down. I didn’t know why I was even still trying to make her open up again. Maybe it was because she had done the same for me all those years ago. I still kind of felt like I owed her for saving my life when I was a lonely teenager. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be where I was now. I remembered that she had changed my life for good in a very short time. One day I was carving my name in a desk to make sure my life got remembered and a few years later my music was being listened to all over the world.

Notes

Heyeyeyyey guys!!

I'm so sorry it takes so long for me to update every time! I just get distracted too soon XD

So what do you think about this chapter. It's kind of a filler type of thing, i guess.

Btw. 148 days until the best day of my life! (I will see PTV live and I will meet a very close internet friend)

xxxx

Nicky