Asterisk*

Vigilance and Vulnerability*

"Absolutely not," Kyra exclaimed straight away, flipping through her notebook. "Besides, we all need to study, and let's face it, you're the one who understands all this the best."

"And Marcus will be here in like half an hour," Jinx remarked, handing me a piece of paper that he had written some bullet points on. "There's two tests left for this quarter. Let's crush this shit."

I took a deep breath, truly smiling this time. Just a few months ago, I could never even imagine that someone would waste their day over me. They insist they aren't, but they wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for me. These were the people who would be next to me for a lifetime, that I wanted next to me for a lifetime. Marcus came into the room a few minutes later, plopping down next to me in the little study circle that we had made. He touched my shoulder slightly, sending sets of sparks down my spine.

We continued to study for a few hours, trying to help each other in every way we could. Marcus had to get up and jump and down at a point to clear his mind from what he was reading before sitting back down like nothing had happened. There were a few instances where I wanted to rip my hair out, but we all managed to keep each other sane enough, at least for now.

At around five, Kyra's phone started ringing, so she had gone outside in the hallway. She had been outside for about twenty minutes before she came back inside, hands buried in her hair. Everyone looked at her for a second before resuming the small chatter about some article they were reading, waiting for Kyra to speak up.

"Hey, want to tell me what's up?" I questioned, giving Kyra a hug from the side.

"Parents and shit, you know?" Kyra muttered, shaking her head slightly. "Yelling about every little thing. The soap bottle is empty in the shower? A fight. Someone forgot to do the dishes? A fight. And fucking India too, having fifty different languages. I learn all the insults in one, they move onto another. There's no way I can keep up."

"Want to go somewhere? Get your mind off of it?"

"You sure? We can just study, if you want."

"Not worth killing yourself over, you know?"

"Where'd you learn that?" Kyra laughed, pushing me slightly so I bumped into Marcus.

"Some girl. I think her name was Kelly? Kylie? Who knows, I don't really know her that well."

"Wow," Kyra stretched out, smirking at me, taking the textbook out of my hand.

We packed up the books and stacked them in a corner, promising we would get them later. Jinx pulled up some movie options on his phone, rushing us all so we wouldn't have to pay the extra fifty cents for the late show. Thankfully, no one cared about bringing your own snacks at the movie theater here, as long as no one saw it, unlike the movie theater back home. I threw Marcus one of my bigger coats, which thankfully fit him, even though it was still a little small. Kyra went to get something out of her dorm, promising she would be back soon, and Jinx went outside to answer a phone call from his mom, who was still pretty shaken up from everything that went down.

I walked closer to Marcus, throwing my arms around his waist and sinking into his embrace like I should have done the first time. I could feel him breathing on my neck, kind of ragged like he was just as nervous as I was. Closing my eyes for just a second, I pulled away from him, looking at the ground.

"Hey, I'm sorry I didn't realize how important this was to you. But you could tell me, you know. I'm here," Marcus told me, trying to get some eye contact with me.

"I couldn't even tell myself," I whispered back, flicking my eyes up to his for just a slight second before studying the floor again. "I desperately wanted everything to be fine. Right now, when I'm with you, everything does feel fine. And I don't want to ruin that."

"Okay," he responded, squeezing my hand lightly like a mom would do when you were little. "Just know I'm here, yeah?"

I smiled and nodded, fiddling with my shoelaces that had come undone. I started twisting them around, just thinking about my life like it wasn't even mine, but a character I had seen in a movie or read about in a book. I was like the members of the court when Catherine of Aragon died, poisonous rumors swirling around everywhere, trying to make sense of what no one knew.

I forgot how to let go and live. I wanted to do it, really. I kept remembering how that felt like, wind blowing in every direction and for once, letting myself flow in it instead of going against it. Instead of throwing my hands up in the air, it felt like I couldn't get them up at all, sitting right down next to my body like limp noodles. Instead of a spiral, I was stuck into a tornado, trying to hide behind every possible area that I could find. Beautiful turned to terrible, the dark of the mind taking over all of the area of light. Sun and moon all broken, asteroids taking over every space left for rubble.

In a world where living is considered life by so many people, I am the blurred crazy middle grey area of 'where the fuck am I and what the fuck am I doing.' I'm somehow trying to find out how to be everything that I want to be, then end up being everything I'm trying not to be. I don't want to hurt these people I loved, so I kept throwing it all to myself. You know, as long as I'm not interested in dead animals, I was doing well enough.

"Come on," Marcus started, grabbing my hand when Jinx and Kyra appeared at the doorway again. "Jinx found some movie about pets coming alive. Starts in twenty minutes. We'll make it if we run."

"Do you think I'm running?" I questioned, furrowing my eyebrows.

"I can carry you, if you want."

"No you can't."

"That's true," he shrugged, wrapping his hands around me and lifting me a few inches off the ground while I squealed. "Shit, this is the best I can do."

"Better than I can," I answered, waving a goodbye to my roommate after asking if he wanted to come with us, even though I knew he would say no.

We ended up just walking really fast instead of running, and managed to get to the movie just in time. We missed all the beginning ads, but no one else was really here, so we still were able to get decent seats. Kyra took Ziploc bags of popcorn out of her pockets, handing one to me, and sharing the other one with Jinx. The movie started off like shit, the credits that took up about fifteen minutes in the beginning instead of the end. There were a lot of random things that happened in the movie, none of them making sense in the plot.

"This is the definition of 'Florida man,'" Marcus whispered, trying to hold in a laugh for the old couple that were sitting a few rows in front of us. "What the hell are we actually watching?"

"The discount movie. No wonder the tickets were on sale."

"The whole movie theater is a discount theater," Marcus remarked, propping his hands up on the armrest. "The toilet doesn't work in the bathroom. No one's ever heard of any of these movies. And there's a sick old guy working at the concession stand."

"Kind of fun, right?" I laughed, glancing up at the screen again, looking at the dog barking loudly.

We watched the movie in silence for a while, Kyra joking about every scene that came up. Apparently she had watched the movie trailer on YouTube, for reasons we all wondered about. Jinx got locked in the bathroom for a few minutes until Kyra was able to open the door from the outside, without having to pick the lock, thank goodness. Jinx and Kyra started dancing along to the song that was playing in the movie, while I tried to wiggle in a way that would resemble dancing. We stopped after a while, just watching the movie again, which was almost over.

"You know, this might be the best scene of the movie," I remarked, nudging Marcus while referring to the scene of the woman screaming happily in her car.

"Why?"

"She seems alive."

"Aren't you alive?" Marcus prompted, furrowing his eyebrows.

"Not in that way, no."

"Wanna start living?" Marcus asked me, starting to smile.

"Yeah," I uttered, putting all my energy into this one word. "Hell yeah."