❝I mean at some point you have to stop looking at the sky, or one of those days you'll look back down and see that you floated away, too.❞
-John Green
Horns
"MORNING SUNSHINE!" Someone yelled before I heard a crack and I felt myself falling onto the floor with my mattress right under me. I snapped up into a sitting position and pushed my hair away from my face. I looked around and realized my bed had completely collapsed.
"WHAT?" I yelled before I spotted a bunch of red hair peeking out from the side of the bed. I felt my face getting hotter to the point where I probably looked like a tomato. "MICHAEL. GORDAN. CLIFFORD." I practically growled through clenched teeth. His head raised the slightest bit so that I could see his naturally perfectly shaped eyebrows.
"Heyyyyy, Jasey." He tried to keep his tone nonchalant and still chipper.
"Don't you 'Hey Jasey' me," I snapped. "You broke my bed!"
"It's not my fault that you have such a shitty bed." He chuckled. I flipped him off and lugged myself off the bed and onto my feet.
"I can see your bum!" He laughed maniacally. I had my suspicions, but now I was such that he was high.
"How much did you smoke?"
"Just a weeeeeeeennie bit." He giggled, showing a small space between his index finger and thumb.
"Jesus." I rubbed my forehead with the palms of my hands.
"IT IS I!" He boomed. I threw a pillow at his face, trying to shut him up.
"My mum is home!"
"If she was going to come in, wouldn't she have done it when your bed broke?"
"She's smashed. But I still don't want to give her a reason to come in here." I rolled my eyes and walked into the bathroom. Before I shut the door I looked back towards Michael, "Don't touch anything and don't make a sound. I will be right out." I locked the door and stripped before getting into the shower.
Halo
"It's not even your first week and you've been late everyday!" The principal yelled, his pudgy face getting redder by the second.
"Look," I took a deep breath. "I am sorry. Some things came up."
"Don't do it again," He muttered before making a shooing motion with his hand. I stood up and pulled my bag with me. I sighed and walked out of his room rolling my eyes again.
I mumbled incoherent words under my breath. This is a public school; they aren't supposed to care about what we do. Just let me come late, my grades are still straight A's. I don't know why they're asking me to meet the principal for coming into school late when there are people smoking weed right behind the school.
I headed towards my next class and tried to keep my head down. I had to blend in. Bad things happened when you stood out.
"Jasey!" A voice rung out from the other side of the corridor.
All at once the noise died down. The adolescent chatter. The obnoxious laughter. The sound of shoes tapping against the tiled floor. The only thing that could be heard was our breathing and the air conditioner. It was so quiet that there was almost a ringing sound in my ears. Almost painful.
"Jasey!" His voice bounced off the walls. My shoulders dropped and I kept my eyes casted down.
I could feel it. Everyone's eyes on me. It isn't a nice feeling- everyone looking at you. It feels like their stares are burning through your skin. Searching through the deepest darkest parts of your mind, ready to exploit your deepest insecurities.
I shut my eyes and squeezed them tightly, sighing deeply. He was going to ruin everything.
I could hear the all too familiar sound of his bulky black combat boots thumping along the floor.
"Nothing to see here." He made shooing motions with his hands. "Go on. Scram."
He kept walking until he was roughly a meter in front of me and grabbed my shoulders in his hands. He shook me, making my head go slightly dizzy. "Jace, what the fuck are you wearing?" His eyebrows bunched together and he loosened the grip he had on my shoulders. I looked down at my pair of normal dark blue jeans and hoodie.
"Do I know you?" I pulled my eyebrows together, shook his hands off and took a step back.
"It's Michael," He said unsurely. "Clifford?" His shoulders drooped as he stuck his hands in the pockets of his ripped jeans. I shook my head slowly.
"I'm sorry," I didn't look at his face. He would be able to tell if I were lying.
"We smoked together just yesterday!" He huffed.
"I don't smoke," I said slowly. Hoping that he would just drop it and leave.
"Jace! What is wrong with you?" He had genuine concern in his eyes and if I had feelings this would probably hurt.
"I think you should leave me alone. You've obviously got the wrong person." I turned away and walked back towards my class. People were still looking at us. They were eyeing the whole encounter. Do people honestly have nothing else better to do with their lives than to feed off the drama in others?
Michael was so bold and free. He didn't care about what anyone thought about. I strived to be like that. He seemed so confident in his own skin. He was always in his own bubble. Others didn't like people like us. People who dressed in all black, people with piercings, people with tattoos, people who smoked, people who lived without any sense of fear.
Sometimes you get to that point in time where you're so completely unafraid. You just think what's the worst that could happen? I could die. So what? That's the most dangerous part in people like us. We weren't scared of death. We weren't scared of the consequences, for us there were none.
That's why I had to act this way. Totally un-provocative, completely un-noticeable. Normal. In some ways I kind of craved being normal. How easy it must be to be normal. No one would judge you. You would just be gliding through life. No one telling you that you're not good enough. You would just be an average person living an average life. That would be unquestionably boring, but sometimes the plain is better than the drama.
The class was almost suffocating. The stuffy summer air and the pungent smell of hormones and weed. The clock was making ticking noises that were far too loud compared to a normal one. I let out a sigh of relief when the off pitched sound of the bell rung.
Looking back, I realized that I should have enjoyed the time I had left. Or at least have smoked more weed.
