𝑭𝑨𝑳𝑳𝑬𝑵 𝑨𝑵𝑮𝑬𝑳 // 𝐉𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐩𝐡 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐬ᥫ᭡

𝑿𝑰

"YOU KEEP PLAYING WHERE YOU SHOULDN'T BE PLAYING"

જ⁀➴
These boots are made for walking
by Nancy Sinatra

I tiptoe into my large living room, careful not to wake my father, who's sleeping in his room. Descamps is coming over so I need to clean up. You know throwing the bottles away, perhaps even cleaning liquor that he's spilled off the floor.

As I'm taking the bottles one by one, I notice something strange on the table. A thin white line of powder. I feel my heart starting to pound incoherently in my chest as my blood races faster through my altered veins. Cocaine.

The alcoholism is already bad enough, and poor little silly me thought it couldn't get any worse. Where does he even get the money for all of this? The last time he left off to go to work was the morning of my birthday. My 13th birthday. And keep in count that I'm turning sixteen this year.

After cleaning up the living room as good as I could, I quietly run upstairs to my room, my world. My room is the only place where I can do all the things I want without being judged. I have my library, my little music spot with all of my vinyls, which I collect, and my bed. God, how much I love my bed. Not that I'm doing things I shouldn't be doing, I just love to sleep. But at the end of the day, who doesn't?

My head turns to look at my clock, which signs that I still have about an hour before the failed chemistry project arrives. So I walk over to me little library and take out a book, the picture of dorian gray. My favorite book of all times.

Instead of reading it for the four-hundredths time, I lay at the end of my bed, kicking my feet, and starting to flip through the pages. I like to perceive the paper in my hand, the way it's rough and, at the same, time smooth surface feels when I skim my thumb on a random page. Page twenty-one, and as I examine it, I notice a little note, whose writer is pretty evident.

"Boo!! This book is the most boring thing I have ever held in my hands. Never taking advice from you again. XOXO"

I laugh, as this old memory unlocks once again. I have four editions of this book, I must've picked the first one I bought and which I also gave Louis to read when we were twelve. Well, from what we've vaguely gotten and from our absurd little minds, we can work out on our own what he thought of it. To make it even easier, he returned it after two days. I don't know about you but I've never finished a classic book in the arch of 48 hours. Maybe 72, but never 48.

All of the sudden, I hear my doorbell ring. No way the guy is already here. I walk downstairs and open the front door, just to be found facing the one and only; Joseph Descamps.

"What are you doing here?"I ask him, a little annoyed because I really wanted to use this little time for myself. "We're studying aren't we?"he smirks, his eye patch seems to stand out even more when paired to his brown leather jacket. "No, we're doing a project." "Isn't that the same thing?"he asks, before his tongue glides on his lips to try to prevent them from getting to dry with a smile.

I get to the side, signaling for him to come in and without hesitating, he does. As I'm about to take his jacket he shakes his head at me and puts it away himself. "Lovely house. Didn't know you were this rich." I let out an annoyed, low chuckle while I cross my arms. "I'm not rich. This house belonged to my grandmother, who then passed it on to my mother and once I turn eighteen, it's going to be mine. Right now, it's legally my fathers."

He nods, walking around examining the clean living room. "Why is it yours? Its not like your mother is dead."he laughs and turns around to face me, my expression tells him everything he needs to know. The boy lowers his head, a look of shame plastered across his face. "I- I didn't know. I'm sorry." I nod and start to walk up to my room. "Of course you are." I whisper underneath my breath, as I feel him walking right behind me.