𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗩𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 (𝙵𝚞𝚛𝚛𝚢 𝙱𝚡𝙱)

Track 10 | 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀

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I rested my chin against the counter of the concession stand. Tomorrow, another boresome week of school would start up again, and here Eden and I was, wasting our last moments of freedom, locked up in a customer-less movie theater. As we've said before, we love this theater, but no one even saw movies here anymore. There wasn't even a whole staff. No usher or ticket collector. Eden and I manned those positions while working at the concession stand simultaneously. There was Cobi, the film projectionist, and lastly, Gregory, the manager. It was incredibly difficult with such a tiny crew, and we sure weren't paid enough for our labor. That was only because the theater wasn't making enough money. Eden and I would never quit though, we wouldn't ditch our favorite establishment in its last moments. 

"God, no one's here, why are we even forced to stay when we can't even do our jobs?" I groaned, smudging my face against the counter. Don't worry, it's been cleaned. By me. 

I was resting on my knees, collapsing my head and arms on the countertop.

"Just two more hours, the final showings started fifteen minutes ago," Eden sighed, trying to relieve both of our cruel, hormonal angst.

I sat up from the floor and stretched my limbs against the edge of the counter. I grunted and yawned, incredibly exhausted. I heard a few small cracks as I extended my arms. I turned around to see Eden, leaning against the popcorn machine, a cigarette in her mouth. She flicked on her lighter and burned the tip of the cigarette, cupping her paws around the flame.

"Hey, you know you can't smoke indoors," I teased, grabbing a receipt from the counter and crumpling it up. I effortlessly tossed it at her head. She smacked it out of the way. "I thought you didn't want to get fired."

"Greg's out tonight, remember?" Eden scoffed, blowing a cloud of smoke and waving her paw past her muzzle to clear the air. "And I don't see any Karens around to complain."

"Isn't Greg on a date tonight?"

"That poor, lonely man, let's hope he scores big."

"I know, right?" I began to chuckle as Eden wheezed with laughter. I thought her laugh was so adorable, the slight rasp in her voice as her face scrunched up with hilarity. "Where'd you even get those?"

"Found them on the floor next to a dumpster."

"You know it's bad for you, right? You'll ruin your singing voice."

"Shut up, you smoke weed."

"I am self-medicating, thank you very much."

"Shut up. I don't even smoke often, this is my first cigarette in, like, a month." Eden looked at the burning roll of paper in between her fingers as she exhaled the smoke through her nostrils. She then held her paw out to me, gesturing for me to take it.

"What was it like the first time you smoked?" I asked as I reached out, claiming the cigarette from her paw. I put it into my mouth and inhaled, only to start coughing and sputtering from the sudden intake of nicotine.

"Careful," Eden chuckled as I touched my fist to my lips, trying to suppress the coughing. I attempted to play it off in a cool way, but as always, I failed and looked like a dweeb. "Ari and I found a case of them outside of a fast-food restaurant. Ari had a lighter, so we both decided to try it at the same time. We basically had the reaction you just had."

"Ari smokes?"

"Not a lot. Not as much as me, that is."

I scoffed and looked away. I went back to leaning against the counter and staring into the distance. "You both are gonna kill yourselves."