The Loudest Minds

Chapter 9

Ronin Carter was not where he was supposed to be.

He was supposed to be at home, tiptoeing around his unconscious mother. Not because he was afraid of her. Never that. It was not because he feared the pain of her touch. He knew pain, and he did not fear it.

It was because he didn't want her to suffer the pity he had to offer. He hated showing pity just as much as he hated receiving it, and he knew she was the same. They were all too alike.

Instead, he was tipped back in the smokey black of Deadre Stanley's basement, fighting off the cold with a bottle of some mysterious liquor he had acquired from a boy with a shaved head. By the same token, he adamantly fought off every hazy joint that came floating his way. He sat in the darkest, and unfortunately the coldest corner of the basement, and acted like he wasn't bothered by this fact. He said thanks for the thickness of his coat, but cursed the loss of his scarf, which he saw around the neck of a girl whose features were too muddled by the liquor and the smoke to be properly recognized. Not that he would have known her anyways.

Another face struck his thoughts; one of black hair and pale eyes. He shook his head rapidly to clear the image, and accidentally cleared some of the effects of the alcohol, too. He was here to escape his mother, not think about her passed out on the couch with her hand flung over the end, vomit crusted into her black cardigan and half a bottle of cheap wine slowly drying up on the couch cushions.

Guilt seeped into his pores, and he pushed it to the back of his mind, sighing. He tipped the bottle back and the hot liquor flowed into his throat, some of it sloshing down onto his jacket. He payed it no mind.

The burn almost caught him off guard, and he coughed. Looking up through his watery eyes, they snatched on a flash of blue, the same color as the worn bits on a good pair of jeans. Very pale. Before he knew it, he was up and stumbling in its direction, reaching out his hand to grasp at it, like it was a star and he was being drawn to its orbit. By the time he noticed that the ice his fingers stretched towards was actually hair, it was too late. He had already grasped at a lock of it before the regret could smack into him like a freight train. Luckily the liquor kept most of the embarrassment at bay, but not all of it was fought off as his cheeks were tinged pink with heat. He blamed it on the burn.

He thought the girl would protest, but she simply looked at him over her shoulder and out the corner of her eye. Not a drop of resentment touched her face, for this was not the right place to get angry at someone who had no ill intentions. Ronin was still staring at the lock of hair that was clutched between his fingers. Finally he dropped it and gasped lightly when her face slowly slipped into focus. His eyes weren't sure what to land on first.

She was gorgeous.

Her eyes were dead.

By gorgeous, he meant stunning in that way that goes unnoticed at first glance, but turns heads for a second look. It was a unique sort of unkempt beauty, like that of a house whose owner had once maintained pristinely before giving up one day and letting it grow into a state of disrepair of curling vines and crumbling columns. The house was still stately and grandiose, but it came to resemble something despairing yet proud, and just a little bit magical.

But her eyes...a light shade of amber, like a well aged brandy without the reflective beauty provided by the bottle. Ronin suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to return a spark to those deep pools, but feared he would drown in them if he tried. He was already drowning.

His hand was still outstretched by the time he noticed that she was walking away from him. No one had taken any notice of their exchange. Ronin slowly slunk back to his corner of the room.