In the end, it was actually Evelyn who succumbed first. She was oldest and we always looked up to her, but it also meant she was the first to grow up. The first to fall in love and we all know love gets to people, it makes them do funny things – it brings them down. After that, she was never the same anymore, it was as if she'd forgotten how to be young, and maybe she had. She had taken to doing "mature" things and then when she finally came to her senses she had forgotten all about the childish games we played.
Thom was next. He was quite a bit younger than Evelyn, and not by far the second oldest, but in him we had all seen it coming, unlike with his sister. He was old at heart the day we met and it was only by sheer will power that he kept the old inside and only let the young show. I suppose at some point he felt there was hardly a reason to keep it inside anymore, he didn't enjoy it so much either – being young – not nearly as much as the rest of us.
After Thom, I knew it would be Sophie. Sophie was truly young at heart, but also fickle. She did whatever she though people desired of her, she had no confidence, no dignity. As soon as she realized he had moved on, she simply set her mind to having moved on as well and so she did. There's not much to say, honestly, I never liked her very much one way or another, so to me, it was not much of a loss.
Whom I regretted seeing losing their youth most were Finn and Damien. For some reason, I believed they were more like me; they'd be young forever. Their bodies would grow, and their minds, but their true selves would always be the way they were when we met. How wrong I was to think that. How terribly wrong, and how terribly disappointed when I found out. I'm not even sure what happened to them, only that something must have set them off. There's always something for people like that, they don't just become adults by simply living, something forces them to recklessly abandon childhood and step into a world filled with sorrow, misery and disenchantment.
If I were to make an estimated guess, I'd say it was Aurelie who did it. They were both in love with her, secretly, and it made them angry. She was never going to fall for them – even I could tell that much – that was never the point, but they probably knew of the feelings they shared for her and it drove a wedge in between them and it made a tiny pinprick into their hearts, so they started leaking. Slowly but surely, the youth seeped out and left a gaping hole, commonly referred to as 'Adulthood'.
Aurelie was never even aware of what she did to them. Or of what she did to all those other boys. She only had eyes for one person in the whole world – maybe the only person in the world that didn't have eyes for her. It broke her heart. I do think it did. She gave it to him and he, in that typical brusque manner, uncaringly shoved it aside. A little to brusquely probably, it tumbled and fell, and upon touching the floor it shattered. The damage wasn't irreparable, but some of the pieces went missing and so her heart to started emptying.
All because of Evelyn again, because it was Evelyn who ended up snatching Julian away, right from under her nose. You could say it was only fair that in turn Evelyn's heart had to endure some blows. When she finally found it laying somewhere in a trashcan, it was severely scratched and dented. It was quite like a vinyl record, it had been loved harshly and thoroughly, but not enough to save it from the fate awaiting any not-particularly-special record: abandonment. So she, too, grew up.
Then there was only me. It is a solitary existence, but I hold on to it fiercely, so that hopefully I'll never grow old. I never want to let go of my hopes and dreams and innocence and most of all my ignorance, for ignorance is bliss and childhood the kingdom of ignorance and I desire nothing more than to forever be its king.