Jae Ham
"What are you thinking?" I ask Sage once I'm sitting next to her in the classroom on Wednesday morning. Our first class doesn't start in thirty minutes. We're the only two people in the room.
For a few seconds, the only sounds I can hear are our breathing patterns and the low hum of the air-conditioner above the central window in the classroom.
"It's quiet," she says, pursing her lips, narrowing her eyes into empty space. "Too quiet."
I almost laugh at her suspicious expression. "Isn't that a good thing?"
"No. It feels like the calm before the storm." Looking bored, Sage begins to play with the long sleeves of her taupe sweater, rolling the cuffs up, low, then up again.
My amusement doesn't falter. "You sense that something bad is going to happen because it's too calm?" I ask the blonde, who nods her head in response.
"'Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong,'" she says, quoting Murphy's Law.
"So you're a pessimist?" "No, just a realist."
"What's the difference?" "A pessimist believes everything will go horribly wrong. A realist, while cynical at times, also believes that there will be good things, though it's not as frequent as the bad things."
"Yeah, I knew that," I admit, smiling cheekily at her. "It just sounds better coming from you."
"Flattery will get you nowhere, Ham," she retorts, deadpan. "I'm not sharing my green tea crinkles with you or Ocean 9."
I laugh heartily. "Oh, relax, Heart. I've warned them beforehand about your 'generosity' when it comes to that pastry. In fact, I can still remember the despair in your eyes on the day you gave away those confections to our classmates."
Penelope Day
There are instances when I hate people so much and this is one of them.
"I'm home," I announce once I enter the apartment I share with Arrow. It is Tuesday evening and after I left school, I headed straight for the bar to drown my sorrows.
"Tough day?" asks Arrow, emerging from the bathroom. He plops down on the couch and props his feet up on the cushion to take off his shoes.
I nod at him. "You have no idea," I groan.
I walk over to the kitchen in search of wine. Before I manage to grab a bottle, Arrow snatches it from the counter. I glare at him. "What are you doing?"
"What are you doing?" he fires back. "You've been drinking a lot of alcohol lately. You know it isn't healthy."
"It's how I cope," I say, taking the bottle from his grasp.
"Well, cope another way-cope better," he grumbles.
"You know what?" I say, shrugging. "I don't even know how anymore."
"Seriously!" he yells all of a sudden while I'm pouring myself a glass. I flinch at his outburst and slowly turn to face him. "You are going to kill yourself slowly, Penn."
"We're all gonna die eventually. So as they say.. Carpe diem," I say, sipping from the glass. "You don't have to worry about me."
I'm not suicidal. I just.. I guess death isn't a big deal for me. But he's right--this habit is gradually destroying my body.
Arrow wraps his hand over my wrist, stopping me from bringing the glass to my lips. I smile softly at him, lifting my other hand to pry his hold of me away.
