We pulled into the nearly empty Walmart parking lot at 11pm exactly, the only cars around being the ones belonging to employees working the night shift for some extra money.
"That wasn't too bad, now was it?" Brendon said and squinted up at the flickering street lamp, pulling off his helmet and running his hands through his hair to fix it, even though it still somehow looked perfect. As I unstrapped mine from under my chin and placed it on the seat, he reached up, tousled my hair and laughed, brushing it back into place.
"You get really bad helmet hair." He giggled and linked our arms together, pulling me towards the sliding doors of the store.
Now was a bad time to realize how much I hated Walmart. It smelled awful, the employees were either too nice or too weird, and when you shopped there past 8pm the creepy customers made an unwelcome appearance. In 7th grade I remember running down to the Walmart a couple blocks away for some glue and almost getting jumped by a gang of kids sharing a sandwich stuffed with drugs or something of that nature. I was convinced I was going to die and only returned to the store with both my parents in tow. 'Why don't you want to go with just one of us?' They'd ask and I'd have no choice but to say 'drug sandwich'.
Brendon waved hello at the only normal looking person sitting down in a lawn chair that was eerily similar to the ones Pete had stood on and broken, and started jogging towards the multiple direction intersection in the middle of the store. He glanced left, yelled "dog food", turned to the right and declared "paint" at the top of his lungs and took off down the aisle.
I followed him at a much slower pace, not wanting to have to go through the pain of finding new boots at some expensive shoe store. Brendon was standing in the middle of the paint section, grabbing locked bottles of spray paint and normal cans filled with neon colors.
He caught sight of me catching up to him, and held up a container of bright sparkly blue. "Do you think they have industrial strength dye?"
"How should I know?"
He shrugged and grabbed another can of pink spray paint, stopping at the end of the aisle next to a display case stocked with red air horns.
"Not in the middle of the store-" I tried to stop him from dropping everything in his arms and shaking the air horn, but I was too late. He pressed the button and covered an ear with one hand, smiling an ecstatic open mouthed smile as the noise filled the air and nearly set my eardrums on fire.
He howled with laughter and held down the button for another 15 seconds straight before an employee with really greasy hair and almost nonexistent eyebrows swatted it to the ground.
"You're not allowed to use the items without paying for it." They said and I could've sworn one of the pimples on their forehead popped right in front of me, which was absolutely disgusting by the way.
"I was gonna buy it." Brendon shot back without hesitation, annoyance lining his tone. "Just needed to test if it worked." He grabbed the paint cans handles and lifted them off the ground and tilted his head swiftly towards the main aisle, gesturing for me to follow him and to try and appear to be as professional as possible. So I puffed out my chest like I'd seen these cute little birds do on tv to appear bigger and better, and strode out of the aisle with the longest steps I could take, keeping my chin up towards the ceiling and trying my best to keep the heels of my boots in place before they crumbled to pieces right where I stood.
He marched quickly through the store to the shitty food section, where I was convinced all the goods were either mass produced in China or created at a nuclear plant. Brendon started pulling boxes of gummy bears and peanut butter cups into the free space in his arms between two cans of spray paint, throwing a couple bottles of cheese whiz at me when he couldn't hold anything else.
"Ryan loves cheese whiz." He shrugged lazily during the short explanation that definitely needed more explaining than that.
And then Brendon speed walked over to the meat section and stood on his tip toes to lean over the counter, quickly grabbing the attention of whoever was stationed there.
" 'scuse me," he said "d'you sell catfish?"
"Depends. How many ya need?" A guy in a stained apron turned the corner, wiping his hands on a towel when he should've been wiping his runny nose instead.
"All of them." Brendon bit the inside of his cheek, almost like he was nervous his request couldn't be filled, and slammed a couple bills on the table and the guys eyes widened in surprise.
And a couple minutes later, Brendon walked out of the station with a bag full of catfish.
He led me to the front where the self checkout was, pulling out his wallet and shoving a card through a slot in the machine. While the transaction was being made, he quickly scanned a little package of 68 cent gum and tossed it into the bag filled with Ryan's cheese whiz.
"What are we even going to do with all this stuff?" I asked him finally, and he glanced up at me with a mischievous smile that could only mean he'd planned something no good and rotten. The only time I had ever seen that look was when he used hair chalk to dye a strip of Petes bleach blonde to neon pink and faded purple during the second month of school. Of course Pete had no idea it was washable because Brendon had told him it was permanent, so he freaked out and didn't think of washing it out until he dialed Patrick for any suggestions. He claimed he'd get back at Brendon some day, but he never did.
"I think we should do everything later," he concluded, grabbing my hand and dragging me out the door with him "it's too dark to destroy anything. However, we should totally go stargazing."
I didn't have the energy to argue, let alone commit to the decision of making my way home already since I was wide awake due to the air horn, which we decided to leave behind and shove it behind a stack of family sized Cheeto bags in the snack aisle so we'd never have to see it again. And I strapped my helmet back on, made sure Brendon was wearing his, and revved the engine to take us to the forest.
..:.::..:::..::..:..
12:18 am, 89 days
..:..::..:::..::..:..
If someone were to have asked me at the beginning of the school year what I would've been doing at 12:18 am on the real first day of Christmas Break, I would have never dreamt I'd be in the middle of the forest with Brendon Urie falling asleep on my chest. I wasn't complaining though. It was nice. I never wanted to let him go.
The stars glittered in the sky, even better than the forever flashing lights now miles away that blocked them out. Peaceful and calm, I felt like I could take on the world, scream at the top of my lungs, and do anything I wanted to. But for now I was grounded, held down by gravity in a starless city.
Brendon was waving his hand up towards the sky, tracing the constellations and naming each one off as he passed over the final connecting star.
"Orion," he said "that was my moms favorite."
Was, he'd said. I brushed it off for the moment, keeping it in the back of my mind for later use, and tuned in to what he continued on with.
He pointed towards a particularly large cluster of blushing lights and bumped my chin with the top of his head. "That one right there is Lyra. It's my favorite, I think."
I asked why after contemplating for a second and he sat up, gesturing wildly up towards the sky with a content glint in his eyes. He cleared his throat and watched the glittering stars.
"Lyra is the other word for lyre, which is what this dude named Orpheus played. He played it amazingly too, because people would come from places all around to hear him make music with it. He fell in love with a nymph named Eurydice, who fell in love with him, and they got married. And then some creep was watching Eurydice one day and went to chase after her and she ran away from him, and while in pursuit, she got bitten by a snake and died. Now Orpheus was totally devastated over losing Eurydice, and went to the underworld to bring her back to him. Hades refused to return her to him, until Orpheus played him a song on his lyre which brought tears to the god's eyes and Hades granted him permission to send Eurydice back to life with him." Brendon took a breath and relaxed back down to the grass, closing his eyes and continuing with the story with an ironic smile played across his lips.
"When Orpheus got her back, he did so on the condition that he must not look behind him until he had emerged from the valleys of Avernus or else she would be taken from him. And he didn't for a while until he got stupidly curious because he knew she'd been injured by that snake and also wanted to make sure Eurydice was still following him, and when he looked back she dissipated. Orpheus tried to grab on to her but grasped only at air, and she was gone.
"And then, according to Ovid, he was so heartbroken from losing his love twice, he refused to have any contact with women forever and instead that pedophile started to favor little boys, which was really really creepy if you ask me. And of course the moms got upset and made the brilliant decision to start chucking rocks at him. Orpheus played his lyre and tamed the rocks so they didn't hit him, until the angry mom screams drowned out the sound and he was crushed to death. The pissed off moms dismembered Orpheus, threw his lyre and his head into this river called Hebrus. The Muses chicks gathered up his other limbs and buried them, and Orpheus went to the underworld to spend eternity with Eurydice. Then Jupiter himself cast the image of the lyre into the sky."
I found the story quite interesting, and it sounded really familiar too, like I'd heard it a dozen times before. It was definitely a story that would stick in my head for a while. The only question I had was how he memorized the story. Also why he mentioned his mom just then when I'd never heard of her before then. I generally have a lot of questions that live unanswered.
"How'd you remember all that?" I turned on my side and squinted at him with a smile through the dark. He was still grinning, eyes shut and hands behind his head like he was relaxing at the beach.
"It was my moms second favorite constellation."
"Was?" I popped the question I've been turning over in my head like a bubble and instantly regretted it. Brendon shot up straight like a fairytale monster being resurrected, eyes wide and smile gone. His chest heaved and breaths grew quicker and shallower. I felt awful, and the only thing I could do was wrap my arms around him and hug, because if I was a cuddle buddy that somehow helped him sleep then surely I could help calm him down, right?
Well, I was right because he gripped my arm so tight I felt like his fingernails would tear off my skin, but his breathing slowed back to a normal pace and he collapsed into my chest. I made a mental note to never ask about his parents again, in fear of a repeat of the situation.
Instead I stupidly asked, "why don't you go home for winter break?" And instantly reminded myself to just stop talking.
"I'm afraid of ghosts," he whispered just below speaking tone "and where I come from, they're everywhere."
We were running in circles, flipping a coin only to have it land flawlessly on its side, chasing the clouds. Running into the ocean with no start and no finish. The end of the line. Metaphorically of course. I hoped that day where everything fell to pieces would never arrive. Because I'd fall to pieces, and if there's one thing I can do, it's build others back up. And you can't reconstruct everyone else if you're falling down right beside them.
"Do you think there's anything up there Dallon?" He said out of the blue, breath twirling up into the darkness like sea mist.
"Up where?"
"Up," he pointed to the glittering stars in the sky, glowing brighter than the city would've allowed them to exist "like if we go there after we die."
"Why do you want to know that? Aren't you happy here?" My heart was in my throat, beating with worry that he hated living at Seacoast and secretly despised me. I hope he doesn't, I really try to stay with him.
"I just think it'd be nice to know the universe isn't all that cruel."
[2300 words, 9/10/16, I combined two chapters because I didn't feel like updating twice is this what efficiency feels like]