Chapter Two
It was the next morning, and I was making breakfast.
My favorite breakfast–Two Frosted Chocolate-Chip Pop-Tarts, sandwiched together with a slab of peanut butter between them. Sometimes I put sprinkles on the peanut butter if I’m feeling luxurious–not even the chocolate ones, but the rainbow ones–heinous, I know. My entire family hates me for it–they hate watching it being constructed, they hate watching me eat it, they hate everything about how I eat, but they at least enjoy that I’m eating something.
It was one of those normal days where I was adding onto my risk of diabetes like always, when my older sister came into the kitchen. I was late to school, and I knew I was late to school–I was very much aware–but Angela came in anyway and reported to me, loud and clear, that it was 8:25 and I probably missed homeroom.
I was preparing my breakfast on the kitchen island. I use that term loosely. It wasn’t a sleek, granite kitchen island that you see on HGTV, it was just a table we had in the middle of our kitchen for no discernible reason, besides allowing me to make my sugar sandwiches. I think I was listening to a song in my head at the time and wasn’t paying attention to her talking. I never really pay attention to anyone, especially not her.
Angela was tall–a staggering 5’11 with a thin frame and long blonde hair that reached the back of her upper legs–and carried an impending dread upon anyone in her presence. She was like a Michelangelo statue brought to life, including how she dressed, in that she barely wore anything at all. I had a mental tally going of how many times my mom called her a whore.
“You’ve been absent for, what, three days now? How many absences do you have left?” She was nagging and ranting and rambling, and I was just making my sandwich. “And you know mom won’t make you if she’s never home, and I’ve been covering your ass for a while. She’s gonna know eventually that you stopped going.”
“No, she won’t.” I pressed the two Pop-Tarts together, completing the sandwich, and brought it to my mouth for a bite.
“You always wake up late.” She grabbed a bowl out from under the microwave, probably for cereal. “Like, always. And you’re like a fucking zombie in the morning. I don’t even know if you’re here when I’m talking to you.”
I was still high from the night before. “I’m not,” I said with my mouth full. A few crumbs of Pop-Tart flaked out of my mouth onto the table.
She didn’t say anything for a few minutes, just pouring her cereal and grabbing a spoon, until she turned to me finally.
“Where were you last night? I thought you were with Skinny downstairs.”
“We went out.”
“You came home at, like, five.”
“We were hanging out with some people.” At that point, I barely had any memory of the previous night’s activities. I remembered smoking with Skinny, then going to the party, smoking a joint with Lowell, and having a few drinks. Somehow, I woke up in my bed the next morning.
That’s when I remembered what happened, in vivid detail.
His eyes. His fur. His towering stature. I couldn’t have made it up if I tried. It was real. It had to be real. I wasn’t unfamiliar with how weed can affect my reasoning, but I’d never, in my life, ever had a hallucination happen that vividly. The only explanation would be that it was laced, but I felt fine yesterday, and everything else was normal. It had to be real, whatever it was.
“Collin.”
“Hm?” I glanced up from my Pop-Tarts. Angela said something to me, but I completely forgot what it was.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No, not a ghost…” I stared down at my meal, and all of a sudden I didn’t want any more. There was this deep pit in my stomach, and suddenly I felt off-balance. “I just gotta get to class. Skinny’s waiting for me.”
“We’re gonna have to remove you two surgically one day.”
I chuckled, but it was a half-hearted one, like when you laugh at something your teacher says so you can get extra credit. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”
By the time I actually got to school, it was third period–Chemistry. I fucking hate Chemistry. I hate sitting through an hour-long lecture of shit some guy made up a hundred years ago. I don’t care if it makes up everything around us. Who’s to say those scientist guys were even right? Half of them didn’t even wash their own ass more than five times in their entire life. Why is my entire education based on gay nerds from the 1600s?
When I finally got there, half the class had already gone by. I got looks, I got stares when I walked in, which I never understood. If nobody really wanted to be there, truly, why would they care if someone came late? I understand my teacher yelling at me, because that’s his job–to educate my stupid ass–but nobody else has any business with me. I don’t think anybody in that class knew my first name.
I went to sit down at my seat. Chemistry classes usually have those big tables with sinks in the middle, all covered in doodles of dicks and swastikas, and mine was way in the back.
Mr. Clemens made a big show of stopping his lecture when I came in. He stood there, with his arms folded, staring me down, and don’t get me wrong–Mr. Clemens wasn’t some skinny, scrawny, little nerd like the people he was teaching about. He was a six-foot-tall stack of pure, unfiltered meat. He was red, sweaty, and his skin seemed to pulse when he talked. He honestly looked more like a gym teacher than some chemistry buff, but I don't know. Maybe he failed out of his sports science degree. That didn’t matter at that point, because when I finally sat down, he locked eyes with me and grimaced.
“O’Connor.”
I grunted in response–it caught me off guard. The classroom was packed with other people, all staring at me and either giggling or staying deadly silent. I had two other girls at my station, and they were smiling at each other.
“Did you forget my policy on lateness to my class?”
I stared at him, not responding. My breath was caught in my throat, like I wasn’t even there. “No.”
“So you would remember that, if you’re just gonna stroll in here twenty minutes late and interrupt my class, you might as well not come at all.” His thick, bushy mustache was bouncing around his lips every time he spoke. “Do you remember that?”
“Yes.”
“But you chose to come here anyway,” he said, and then he turned back to the whiteboard and continued lecturing–lecturing about something related to neutrons or protons or whatever. The class had finally turned their eyes away from me, but one of the girls at my table didn’t. She didn’t dare look away. After all, it was her job–her job as the most annoying attention whore in my entire grade.
Claudia Crawford, a self-proclaimed Pagan, born from the Crawford family. The Crawfords were a patriarchal family unit system tracing back to probably the inception of America as a whole. They were an entire line of stockbrokers, oil tycoons, and shampoo salesmen who accumulated so much wealth that the cycle would be never ending. That’s why Claudia dressing up in Spirit Halloween and renaissance fair outfits was so funny to me, because if she wanted to, she could just take her money and live out the most comfortable life imaginable, but instead she was wearing an outfit that would make Elvira blush.
She had a purple, button-up blouse with the lowest neckline they’d allow outside of porn, with a tight leather belt wrapped around her plump waist. There was a darker purple skirt hiked up to be tied snuggly underneath the belt, with leather Mary Jane shoes and tight, white stockings trailing up her chubby legs. She had circular, John-Lennon-style glasses on with pink-tinted glass between the frames. She looked cartoonish.
She was dumb as bricks, too. I’m pretty sure she failed out of every math class she ever attended, and there were several rumors about her fiddling around with some of the teaching staff. She had a light, airy voice, fixed with a nerdy, nasally lisp and a suck-up attitude. I never saw her be mean to any male in class–she would talk to them like she was their mom. She’d asked hairbrained questions in every class I saw her in, restating what the teacher already said in a vague attempt to seem intelligent.
She was dense as lead, but for some reason, she was an absolute genius when it came to chemistry, and of course she flaunted it in every class, answering every question, and for some reason I cannot fathom, she loved talking to me.
Claudia whispered under her breath, leaning forward in a way that displayed her dramatic cleavage, her glasses hanging crooked off her nose. Whenever she was about to speak, I was prepared for the dumbest shit I’d hear all day. Usually something like, “Why were you late?” or “What was your name again?” or a soft, airhead giggle. She’d be doodling smiley faces and hearts all through class, twirling a curly strand of hair between her fingers.
That’s why I almost tore my hair out when she asked, “Did you study for the quiz today?”
I muttered back, “Didn’t know we had one.”
“That’s okay,” she said low, smiling. “I’m sure you’ll do fine. I didn’t study, either.”
Of course she didn’t.
“It just kinda, like,” her eyes went blank, then returned to focusing on me, “Comes to me, or something.”
“Mm-hm.” I pulled out my notebook in a futile attempt to look busy. Our classes were usually formatted with a heavy lecture, then a quiz from the material from the start of the week. I only knew that because Mr. Clemens reiterated it nearly every class, seemingly to remind us to not be lazy fucks.
She was still whispering, despite the fact I didn’t care and wanted her dead. “Do you play World of Witchcraft?”
“Uh, no,” I said quietly, diverting my eyes from her. My annoyance was turning to a pit in my stomach. The last thing I wanted was for anybody else to hear her, and then look at me.
“You look like the type of guy that would play it,” she said softly, like that wasn’t the biggest insult to my dignity that I’ve ever heard. “You know, like, skinny. And your hair and stuff.”
“My hair?”
“Like all long, and, like, greasy.” Her eyes widened. “Not in a bad way, but, like, in a noticeable way.” Oh, good. “Like, you look like you’d be good at the game.”
“That’s cool.”
“But, anyway, about the game,” she said, setting her hands down on the table. “I played it for, like, ten hours yesterday. I’m, like, addicted to it. I’ve been playing for years, but they just released a new update with so much content. You should honestly play it. It’s only, like, $20 a month, or something like that. It’s not bad at all.” She spun a tangle of hair around her bedazzled pen, her plump lips perpetually parted like she was about to speak at any given moment. “If you ever do get it, though, my username’s xXHauntedClaudiaXx.” She pronounced the X’s at the beginning and end of the name with such a strong lisp, she sprayed spit all over the table.
“Oh, cool.” I stared at her boobs, but that’s the thing with staring at boobs–you can only do it in quick bursts.
After that, Mr. Clemens stopped talking and the quiz started. I’m not going to go into what was on that quiz because it might as well have been in Spanish. I had half a mind just to leave it blank, so I listened to that part of my brain and did it.
As the class poured out into the hallway, Claudia was stuck to me like glue. Her eyes never left mine, and for a strange moment, I felt this weird vulnerability, like I was prey being stalked. By the time I got down the hallway, she was following after me.
“Hey, Collin, I was wondering something.”
When we walked side by side, I towered over her. I had to be at least half a foot taller than her, maybe more. I was also probably half her weight. Her question couldn’t warrant a response from me, at least a response greater than a single grunt.
“I heard Thomas threw a party yesterday, for Homecoming.”
“Mmm.”
“You got invited, didn’t you?”
I finally glanced at her. “How’d you know that?”
“Well, everyone’s talking about it. About Brandon, I mean. Haven’t you heard?”
The memories from the night came flooding back in. Brandon Foley. Lowell. The fur. “Heard what?”
“They found Brandon on the floor of Thomas’ bathroom and they had to call an ambulance. The word is, he almost died. He was bleeding a lot, and he has to get surgery on his ear, but they don’t know what happened.” She sighed. “I’m glad he’s okay, though. He was kinda cute.”
It was weird, because a part of me felt like I was responsible for it, but I was just an observer. I also couldn’t really feel bad, because for all extensive purposes, Brandon deserved what came to him. He honestly probably deserved worse. When she called him cute, I had half a mind to tell her what Lowell told me, but that would definitely be incriminating.
“So how’d you know I was there?”
“Oh, I didn’t. I was just guessing, but now you confirmed it,” she laughed, her voice bubbly and alive. She was way too awake in the morning, I realized. “I was just wondering, umm… If you were, like, close with him.”
“No, not really. His friend invited me.”
“Which one?”
“Uh, Lowell. What’s with all the questions?”
“Ew.”
“Ew?” We were near the top of the staircase, beginning to descend.
She rolled her eyes. “Lowell is, eh… I don’t know. I get a negative aura from him.”
I chuckled at that, and she seemed to notice, as she met my eyes almost immediately. My expression dissolved back into boredom–its default. “What aura do you get from me then?”
“A neutral one. A blue one.”
“Oh? They have colors now?”
“Everybody has a color–a color that represents them. Only a few people can see it, though.” She shook her head before I could bring up how crazy she sounded. “But like I was saying, I was just wondering, um…” She brought her hands together, looking askance. “I was just wondering if you could, like, I don’t know… Give Thomas my number, or something.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You like him like that?”
“Like him?” She was completely red at that point, her pale face lighting up with embarrassment. “Well, I… I do want to get to know him better, I guess. Just as a person.”
“‘As a person?’”
“Well,” she shook her head, exasperated, but then her voice lowered to just above a dull whisper, “Well, just look at him, Collin! You have eyes, don’t you? He’s, like, the hottest guy in school to me. I can’t resist. It’s like he’s put a spell on me.” She shook her head again, as if she was trying to calm down her brain. “I need to find a way in. I barely have any classes with him, none of his friends are mine… We have a thousand degrees of separation between us, but with you… With you, we’d only have one.”
“What you want is a connection.”
“Yes, and a good word in.”
We were approaching the bottom of the stairs. “He just doesn’t seem like your type.”
“Oh, but he is.”
There was a pause between us.
She grew a few inches closer to me. “Please, Collin? I’ll do anything.” She put heavy emphasis on the ‘anything.’ Way too much emphasis.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Yay! Thank you, thank you, thank you–!” Claudia tried coming in for a hug, and due to the fact she weighed probably twenty pounds more than me, she succeeded.
The last period of the day was gym, which I would rather drag my nutsack through a soccer field of glass shards than go to. This is why I was walking down the main hallway, just so I could get to the main entrance and go outside to smoke. It was somewhat crowded, with little tumors of cliques and friend groups clogging up the flow, but I pushed through them regardless, because when nicotine calls, I answer.
That’s when I saw him. Thomas Ralphina.
When he moved, it seemed like the world waited patiently for his next step, as if everything was within his command. He smiled, and those around him laughed and hollered, slapping their knees and throwing their heads back in amusement. He frowned, and those around him struggled to stifle tears from rolling down their cheeks, their faces red with despair. Come to think of it, I’d never seen Thomas frown, nor had I ever heard him badmouth anyone specifically. He just seemed so… glad, all the time.
As I was walking through, trying to avoid touching as many people as possible, I was fixated on his face, his jacket, everything, and somehow I’d knocked against his shoulder, sending my bookbag to the floor.
His friends kept walking, one of them being Lowell–who simply only glanced back at me–but Thomas stopped and picked up the bag, showing off his bulging biceps as he lifted the swollen bag from the floor. He handed it to me, smiling. “Sorry, man. Didn’t see you there.”
I mumbled under my breath, “It’s alright,” and took it back, swinging it over my shoulder. He joined his friends again and I froze on the floor over my bag, staring as he walked away.
I really wish Thomas Ralphina was one of those dumb, mean, testosterone-fueled, meathead jocks, but he wasn’t. Some of his friends were, but from everything I heard, he was sweet to everyone. Even on the football field, if he hit someone on the opposite team particularly hard, he’d extend them an arm and ask if they were good. He was a little dumb and cocky, but more in the confident way than the asshole way. He also wasn’t very promiscuous, or at least, I don’t think he’d had a girl around his arm since Freshman year.
Maybe that’s why it was infuriating to hate him, because everyone loved him. Fuck, even a part of me loved him, and I never spoke to him. Everyone was his greatest fan, everyone invited him to their parties, and everyone laughed at all his jokes. He’d never done anything wrong, and for some reason that pissed me off.
“Done brooding yet?”
My eyes darted upward, to see Lowell standing in front of me, leaning with his back against the lockers.
“Shouldn’t you be going to class?”
He smirked. “I’m meeting Skinny outside.”
“Shit. Me, too.”
“Well, you’re there to hang out. I’m there for business.” He was staring at one of his hands, checking out his nails like a middle-aged woman with a new set of acrylics. Lowell glanced up at me as I rose. “That’s what you guys do, right? Hang out? You’re not making out with each other in the parking lot, right?”
“If we were, why would I tell you?”
“So witty.”
I didn’t know what to say to him. Honestly, I didn’t even know what to think of him. His fluffy spiked hair, his cold eyes, his deep smirk–there were so many moving parts. “Do you… need something?”
“Can’t I just antagonize you? Ruin your day? Make every second of your life terrible for my own amusement?”
I ignored him. “You heard about Brandon?”
“Brandon?” He clicked his tongue. “Brandon, Brandon, Brandon…”
“Brandon Foley.”
His smirk quickly faded, his face turning gaunt. “Yeah. Who told you?”
“Claudia Crawford.”
“Who the fuck is Claudia Crawford?” He crossed his arms and looked askance. “Everyday, dude… Man, why is everyone always on my dick? The kid’s fine. Had a surgery or some shit on his ear canal and he’ll be fine by Wednesday. It’s just the drama of the day.”
“So, are we gonna talk about yesterday?”
His eyes met mine, but his expression didn’t change. “Nothing happened yesterday.”
“So that’s how you’re gonna play it.” I rose to my feet.
“Brandon fell and hit his head. Too drunk for his own good. That’s what everyone’s been saying.”
I snorted. “Yeah, you got lucky with that.”
He narrowed his eyes on me, and that was supposed to be the end of the conversation, but as I shuffled off, I remembered we were both walking in the same direction. I could feel his cold eyes on me, like a weight on my chest.
We got to the side door and Lowell opened the door for me, pushing open the metal exit with a satisfying click. The autumn air washed over my face, tingling the edges of my skin and washing my eyes in chilliness. The sky was bright. I honestly loved this time of year–the scattering of clouds, the light breeze, the sweet smell of the air. You never get that experience in summer. It’s also a lot less fun to go on smoke breaks in the summer. The chill really adds to the experience.
Outside the side exit, there’s a little alleyway between the edge of the school and the beginning of the neighborhood, and that’s where we were headed. Skinny was leaning against the brick wall by the dumpster, a pre-rolled joint in hand. He liked to prep them in the morning before school, like a mom packing a lunch box for her kids.
When his eyes met mine, he smiled. The smile faded slightly when he noticed Lowell. “You got a lot of explaining to do.”
“About what?”
He scoffed, but nonetheless handed me the joint for a puff. “You guys could’ve just said you were jumping Brandon Foley last night.”
Lowell interjected. “Who told you about that?”
He smirked, exhaling the smoke through his nostrils. He waved at the vapors hovering in the air, watching them float between his fingers, “Here’s what I know–Brandon got fucked with in the bathroom. You guys were in the bathroom. There was blood in the bathroom. Case closed.” Skinny rolled his eyes. “You know where you slipped up, Lowell? Collin would never do cocaine. He hates uppers.”
It was true, but I hated how he said it.
“So… what? You’re telling everyone?” Lowell asked, crossing his arms tightly to his chest.
“Pfft. Yeah, sure. I’m not telling anyone shit. I hate everyone here.” Skinny graciously accepted the joint back. “I just wish you guys… I don’t know, invited me. You left me out with all the drunk girls from our school. I hate talking to drunk girls. They always want to touch my hair.” He met Lowell’s eyes. “Especially your girlfriend, man. She told me how much she liked my piercings.”
Lowell fell silent, leaning against the brick wall yet barely breathing. He was motionless, staring down at Skinny. “You were talking to Tracy?”
He snorted. “You gotta control your girl. The second you left, she started talkin’ about–” When his eyes landed on me, he paused and neglected to finish his sentence. He let the silence hang in the air for a bit, and then he continued, “She just drinks too much, man. I don’t like seeing girls like that.”
Lowell didn’t respond. Instead, he glanced at the asphalt beneath his feet.
I cut in quickly, “Girls can be like that, though. I don’t think she meant anything by it.” I glanced at Lowell, who still averted his eyes.
“What do you mean, ‘like that?’ Was she acting slutty or something? Is that what you’re trying to say?” he finally asked, leaning in closer. “I don’t gotta control anyone. That’s not my job.”
“Chill, I didn’t mean shit. I don’t even remember last night,” Skinny muttered, his voice trailing off. He was still hanging onto that joint, staring up at the big, blue sky between breaths. His eyes were completely swamped under his thick side-swept bangs. He cleared his throat. “She wasn’t drunk in the slutty way. She was drunk in the concerning way. That’s all I’m saying.”
He finally handed the joint back to me. I changed the subject. “Skin, what’s this? What’re we having right now?”
That usually cheered Skinny up, that stoner son-of-a-bitch. He smiled warmly, and rattled on, “This shit’s, like, my favorite this year. Blue Widow–hybrid between White Widow and Blueberry, sativa-dominant strain. It’s got a, like, sixty-percent-to-forty-percent ratio. Real smooth, sweet taste. I’ve actually been sleeping since I got it.”
“No, yeah, it tastes like… It’s got a wood-y taste to it. Like–”
He nodded, “Like, pine, or mahogany, or something.”
I took a light hit, passing it back to him and exhaling. “I like that shit you brought last week. The strawberry thing.”
“Strawberry Diesel,” he said with a smile. “I like the fruity ones. Speaking of which,” he turned his attention to Lowell, “We’re still hanging out with Thomas tonight, right? What time are we coming over?”
Lowell was distracted, playing around with his LG flip-phone. He had to be texting someone, but his eyebrows were furrowed, and he was biting the inside of his cheek. He glanced up at Skinny. “Uh, yeah… Any time after six. Tracy and I are hanging out before then.”
“You look stressed, man.” Skinny finally passed the nearly-finished joint to Lowell, who took it without looking up. He finished the entire thing in one deep inhale, reducing it to its filter. “Jeez, man. You could’ve just asked.”
“I’m texting Tracy.” He said it firmly and flatly, barely even acknowledging both of our existences.
I noticed him pinching the bridge of his nose. “Is something wrong?”
He paused for a moment, and then all at once, he flipped the phone closed with a click and shoved it in his pocket. “Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine.” He finally exhaled fully, smoke pouring from his nostrils.
“You’re talking to her about what I said, aren’t you?” Skinny asked, now moving on to a cigarette he had stashed in his backpack. He handed me one without a word.
Lowell replied, “Tracy doesn’t drink.”
We stared at him for a long while, and he didn’t respond. He was staring at the asphalt underfoot, tracing the displaced shards of concrete with his Air Jordans. His hands were shoved deep in his sweatshirt pockets, his eyes distant.
Skinny could only muster up, “Oh.”
Lowell probably didn’t hear him, as he’d already turned to start walking to the side door, and as he was trotting over, he didn’t look back.
Skinny and I exchanged glances, our cigarettes hanging from our lips. Lowell walked in a way that it seemed every step hurt–with his body weight shifting in such an uncomfortable, disjointed way. Seeing his back, the memory of last night came to me, and all I could see was his coat of fur.
There’s a part of me that just accepts I imagined it. Sometimes, I’ll have dreams so vivid, I assume them into my everyday life, or sometimes if I have a dream where I’m doing my laundry, I won’t do it the next day. I just assumed this was like one of those times, where everything was okay, and nothing was different than before. I met Lowell in middle school, after he transferred from homeschooling, and I’d never seen anything like that before. I’d noticed his sharper canine teeth, and his strangely shaped ears, but to assume someone is supernatural because of some physical abnormalities would be kind of rude.
“What’s his problem?” Skinny took a long pull from his cigarette, and slowly exhaled through parted lips. “Not my fault he’s dating a skank.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I see how she looks at you, dude.”
I paused, glancing up from the cigarette posed between my fingers. “Me?”
“Yeah, man. In class, in the hallway, at the party… And the way she was asking’ about you–’Oh, uh, Skinny, where’s Collin going? How long are you guys staying? Do you know if he’s talking to anyone?’” He took another drag. “And I said no, you and me are bachelors ‘til death at this point, and she went, ‘Oh… That’s too bad,’ or something like that. Like, shit your friend’s girlfriend shouldn’t be asking you.”
“I barely know who she is.”
“I think she wants you to be her getaway car.”
I snorted, and leaned back against the brick wall. We were both staring out across the front lawn of the school, watching the cars roll on by and the geese eat up the grass. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“If a girl hits the ball in your court, you’d be an idiot to let it go.” He scoffed, throwing his hands in the air. “Tracy Phan is like, an eight out of ten, in that edgy tomboy sort of way. If she wants you, dude, the heavy-lifting is already done.” He shrugged, “Except, you know, the fact she’s Lowell’s sloppy seconds.”
I gagged, “I don’t want to think about that right now.”
“Having sex with that guy must be, like… fighting off a grizzly bear with your arms tied behind your back.”
“We’re not having this conversation.”
“Hey,” he interjected, nodding his head upward, gesturing across the field. “You see that?”
In the distance, at the top of a hill down the street, stood a figure. It was hard to make out, due to the brightness of the sun and my shotty eyesight, but as I squinted, I could make out someone with a large hoop-skirt dress, holding a black umbrella. Past that, I could only make out the colors of red and white floral patterns, but I couldn’t get a good look at the person’s face.
“Yeah…” My voice trailed off as I squinted. “What the hell are they wearing?”
“Fuck if I know.” He took another drag. “Looks like a Renaissance painting. Looks like Mona Lisa.”
“Honestly.”
“Y’know, whenever I see people like that,” Skinny said, pointing. “I think about us. Like, we’re fucking weird. Like, let’s be real, if we weren’t selling weed to Thomas Ralphina, and Lowell, and all those meatheads, we’d just be, like, the weird emo fags. Let’s be honest.”
“Agreed.”
“But then I see people like that, and I think, ‘Y’know, maybe I’m not that weird,’” he laughed, exhaling his smoke. “Like, these Renaissance Fair freaks and shit… At least I can be a weird loser without anyone lookin’ at me. Like, I smoke ‘em up and they just accept me. Like, as long as I have something to offer.” He smiled. “Isn’t that a really shitty life?”
“The life we have?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I can’t think of it being worse,” I reasoned, still staring at the strange figure in the distance, “But I don’t know if I’d be comfortable with it getting better.”
“Yeah, like, how would you improve your life, honestly, if you could? Like, don’t say you’d wish for a million dollars, or something gay like that. Like, realistically, what could change right now that would make you happier?” Skinny shrugged, “Like, if I could get a job that didn’t make me wanna put a bullet in my head, I’d be happier.”
“Well, now you’re assuming I’m not already happy.”
“Are you happy?”
I glanced at him and snorted, “No.” The cigarette was nearly halfway done. “I guess… I don’t know. A reason to keep living my life, right? Like, why am I waking up in the morning and doing all this?” I shrugged, “A reason would be nice.”
“You got me. Am I not enough of a reason? Do you not wake up everyday and think of my beautiful face?”
“Whenever I wake up hungover and half-dead, yeah.”
“Then there’s your reason.” He’d already finished his cigarette. “Our purpose in life–you and me, we’re gonna go out and get fucked up every night, but we’re gonna do it together.”
“That sounds sweet.” And for some twisted reason, it did.
last updated: april 28 2023
created: february 14 2022