I'm Going Slightly Mad

Chapter Eight

It seemed that Aaron could not be trusted to have even one week of contentment. He shouldn’t really be surprised, all things considered: his main hobby sometimes seemed to be inadvertently ruining his own happiness. Ever since he was little, he’d had a tendency to screw things up just so things were interesting again. It was if he was afraid of boredom, and in order to avoid it, he wrecked things.

He’d come to terms with this a long time ago, but every now and again, he remembered what a trainwreck he was, and it got him down.

He couldn’t even go to Coby for a quick mood lift anymore.

He was getting very tired of his constant moping, and so were the people around him. One of his professors even pulled him aside to inquire about the sudden maudlin that had infected his writing style. When he refused to give her more than a vague explanation, she referred him to one of the campus counselors. Aaron never bothered visiting the guy. He’d never really believed in shrinks, and anyway, if he couldn’t fix himself, nobody could. There just wasn’t any point to it.

It did occur to him that he was only making things worse by sitting around and feeling sorry for himself. It also occurred to him that he didn’t really care.

He started constantly speeding again, always at the same time, on the same highway, so Lucas and Quinn were always the ones that caught him. Quinn was unsympathetic to his plight, and Lucas was very obviously getting tired of covering for him, but Aaron kept on speeding, if only for the attention. He was fully aware of how completely pathetic this was, but he was to the point where he just couldn’t quite muster up the energy to care.

As he kept sulking, the weather started getting warmer, spring finally catching up. May came and went, and with it, Aaron’s birthday. It had been a long time since Aaron truly cared about his birthday, but he usually at least treated himself to dinner or something. This year, he just noted that he was only one year away from being able to buy booze for himself, and went on with his day. Despite his insistence that he didn’t want to do anything, Lucas bought him a stupid birthday card and another bottle of pinot grigio, which was still sitting, untouched, in Aaron’s fridge. He’d have to do something about it soon, or his parents would notice it next time they visited and give him one hell of a lecture. For Italians, they were surprisingly unforgiving when it came to him drinking wine.

He had to cheer up eventually. It was inevitable. Even the most terrible of things couldn’t keep him down for longer than a few months, and slowly, this proved true. By the very beginning of June, he was smiling and laughing again, getting ready to move on with his life.

Things were looking up, but the problems weren’t gone. They’d just gone underground, gearing up for their grand return.

***

The only class Aaron had ever dropped was that ill considered cooking class back in March. Other than that, he was too stubborn to give up, even if he wasn’t really enjoying something. This was what had happened with an HTML class he’d picked up after Jenna dumped him.

Aaron wasn't really a computer guy. He could handle a simple PC, as long as he didn’t have to do anything fancy with it. He was the master of word processing software, had a good understanding of Powerpoint and Excel, and could do some basic things in Photoshop. He often lurked around the internet, researching things or starting arguments in forums, but that was about all he did on computers. He didn’t have a clue about much else about them, so it was natural to try to learn more. For this reason, he took this dreadful HTML course.

Aaron did not care about websites. He never planned to have one of his own, so he had no need to know how to make them pretty and effective. In retrospect, this class was simply a waste of time and money, and a blight to his GPA, but he refused to give up on it just on principle.