Inhale

6.

"At fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon."  - F. Scott Fitzgerald.

(A/N: This chapter contains some reference to irresponsible use/abuse of medication. Some symptoms of withdrawal in certain characters will be depicted moving forward. Please be safe and mindful!)

I've begun to understand how the problems of the present day manifested when looking back at the sort of people who attended the Academy. None of them were terrible or anything. There was just an overwhelming population of apathetics; people who didn't really care about anything at all. Congregating and milling around the place, not attached to each-other but also incapable of independence. It was these people that blurred at the edges of my vision, permanently out of focus but somehow always in my field of view. 

This lack of care - or even acknowledgement - for their surroundings meant that you were sure to find them without meaning to in places they didn't belong. Lurking in the back of classrooms, dazed and bleary-eyed. Seeing them made me wonder if maybe their lives were easier that way. Hanging on the slither of stability between consciousness and deep slumber. No, I thought. Happy people don't do this to themselves. I didn't want that, not at all. All of these types were intoxicated on an endless variety of prescribed and non-prescribed materials, all of which I could hardly pronounce.

I felt a great distaste for them for most of my time there. It was easy to blame them for small things, like traffic in the corridors or the lengthy assemblies about littering and loitering. It was easy to consider them nuisances or obstacles, and easier to still to push them out of the crowd into the spotlight. I said it had a lot to do with their apathy. But I realise this was what we all said to feel better about our behaviour. They didn't fight back because they were too tired. 

I feel bad for them, now, having learned what the details of that sort of life entail. I had only a vague idea of what mum told me in the past, of the crude jokes Ruell made at dinner. But I never thought to ask questions, to understand it; it's too circumstantial. No one does until it turns up in their life as an unwanted visitor. It lets itself in under the muffled quiet of the night and stays, stays, and overstays its welcome until it eventually must let go. It must let go because it is so full that it can't bear to indulge any further. Perhaps you know and I'm just pandering to the wrong audience. But you asked, I listened, you're waiting, so I'm writing. 

One such apathetic as I thought them, had found his way to the doors of the Journalism classroom. He had claimed it, his shoulder and head resting against the polished wood casing. His arms were crossed against his chest, and one leg was crossed in front of the other. It looked terribly uncomfortable, and above all impractical; he was blocking my way to get in. Peering through his hair, I noticed that (to my simultaneous amusement and alarm) he was asleep. 

I recognised him as one of Kaspar's cronies. He spent most of his time trailing behind the group with a tattered paper in his hand that he pretended to read at intervals. He spent even more time passed out in the lounge, mumbling back responses that made no sense to anybody but himself. Killian was not exactly the type of company Kaspar liked to keep, but knowing Kaspar, he probably had some value. Strictly transactional, you see. More on that later. 

"Killian?" I touched his shoulder awkwardly. It was strange to wake someone you hardly knew, stranger still when that someone was standing. "You're in my way."