a cigarette for cade | ongoing

13 | only the good die young

"I've learnt that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
- Maya Angelou -

[ T H I R T E E N ]
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THE MUSEUM WAS A lot brighter than I had anticipated. I thought it'd be all dark and empty, with the sound of your footsteps bouncing off the sterile walls eerily. However, it was the complete opposite.

Though all the ceiling lights were turned off, the display lights were still on. The building was illuminated by glowing blue and amber lights that casted the silhouettes of dinosaur bones onto the surrounding walls.

"Wow," I said, not making an effort to hide my awe.

"Right?" Cade laughed.

I walked past a large brontosaurus, craning my neck to get a full view of all its wholly grandeur.

"Its so hard to imagine that dinosaurs actually existed," I said. "Like, they're just so huge. How did the Earth even support all this weight?"

"Because the Earth is much larger than the dinosaurs, Willow Knight."

"I'm just thinking out-loud here."

"Alright."

"And what's even harder to imagine, is that they're extinct. That asteroid. Killed them all off."

"Not that hard to imagine, otherwise we'd see them walking around. And I'm pretty sure that's just what asteroids do."

He was sardonic, his tongue lilted with a biting sense of humor. I wasn't appreciating it at the moment.

"What I'm trying to say, Cade, is that the universe is much bigger than ourselves. We seem to think that everything revolves around us, but in reality, we couldn't be any less irrelevant. Right? Cade? Are you even listening?"

I spun around, confused as to why he wasn't answering me with a snide remark or a scoff. Cade, however, was too busy to listen to me ramble. Instead, he jumped right over the glass barrier and onto the platform.

"Cade!" I screamed, but it was already too late.

In a swift movement, he hooked a leg around one of its massive fibulae and hoisted himself upwards. My hands went up to my face in absolute horror. Oh God, he was going to break the skeleton.

Within the span of a couple of seconds, he was resting inside its cavernous rib cage. His legs, however, were folded quite awkwardly due to the fact that he was very tall.

"Cade."

He grinned.

My feet were planted firmly into the ground. I should've known that this was a recipe for disaster. Dinosaur bones... Has he got any idea of how much trouble we'd be in if he breaks that stupid rib cage? What my parents would do to us was the least of my worries. I had no intent of spending the next ten years in juvy for trespassing and destroying ancient artifacts.

The last thing I needed was for Cade to start smoking.

But right after that thought crossed my mind, I saw him reach into his pocket and pull out his pack of Marlboro Lights.