10
"My core felt like winter, and I was shivering between the layers of hot weather and depression, and I was choking. I was choking on something that didn't exist, and I just let it happen. . ."
Calum
It was senior year, and I still had a suitcase full of the highest quality drugs instead of clothes, and nobody knew. I was on a cord that nobody held up, and my body was conforming. It was dissipating into thin air. "You're almost eighteen, grow the hell up."
He was cinnamon and cochineal and my favorite cherry ice-cream, but I hated him. He brought upon madness, chaos, he brought upon my depression and made me feel like I was walking on droughts of water, even if I wasn't. He was Michael, not salmon and cosmetics used for blush. Not periwinkle, just Michael, and he sat in the back seat of the car with his fingers quavering against the seatbelt. "Thanks for inviting me, Cameron. I've always wanted to go to Santa Cruz."
Cheyenne was muddled, her fingertips winding across the tiller, eyes propelling into the windshield. "Did you just call him Cameron?"
"That is his name," Michael bit his lip, cheeks suffusing like smoke, but of a roseate color rather than a burnt charcoal. "He told me it was during Freshman Academy."
"Oh," Cheyenne gawked, piercing eyes flaming into my spine, "I'm afraid to tell you that Calum has been lying to you."
Michael didn't talk the rest of the drive. And I couldn't stop riveting those red-complexioned corkscrews, or those hooks of barley. "I'm sorry, Michael."
"I bet you are."
-
There was a shop around the corner, and I adumbrated behind it, my posterior loafing, my brain liquefying and thawing. I decided to try something different. Starting with tranquilizers and moving to a cigarette within a time span of ten minutes. Michael found his way towards me, the outline of his dome approaching me faster than I would have liked.
"He was exquisite, charming, a reef hung up on a door to represent fall, a spare pumpkin in a patch, a radio on full blast during a drive down the highway. Existing just got harder with those bright eyes and thin lips. . ."
"Nice to see you," I blustered a dollop of fume. "Want one?"
"I don't do cigarettes," Michael shrugged, green eyes impaling with brown.
"Good, you're too beautiful to smoke and I don't want to ruin you," I conceded, the weight lifting off of my shoulders. "Why did you lie to me, Calum?"
I didn't want him to know about me.
I didn't want anybody to know I existed.
It'd just put pressure on their lives.
It'd make them want to help me.
And I don't want to be saved. I never did.
"Because once you know me, there's no turning back," I inarticulately muttered, feeling alleviated and constrained all at the same time. "You can't go back now, Michael."
"Maybe I don't want to turn back," Michael stepped closer, his incalescence upsurging like a bag of popcorn. "Maybe I want to know you."
He's making me want to exist.
He's making me want to forget.
"I - I have a girlfriend," I crazed, "I'm still with her, you know. . . ?"
"Of course you are," Michael rolled his eyes, "but I don't care."
"You should," I candidly aforementioned. "I want to be with her, not you."
"You know what, Calum?" Michael disposed, arms pending at his flanks. "Fuck you."
Every inch of my body detonated, and the appendage of my hand wasn't tenacious enough to clasp the cigarette any longer. Michael spun on his heels, his russet hair scintillating underneath the horizon. "P - Please don't leave."
But he was already gone.
Just like my feelings.
I lit a cigarette and tried to forget.
But I never really forgot.
Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough.
"That cloud kind of looks like a dinosaur," Mali chuckled, "almost like those kid cuisine ones that you're addicted to."
"C - Cuisoons! I want Cuisoons!"
"Sure, Cuisoons," Mali laughed again, and we heard faint chattering coming from the kitchen. It was mama and dada. "Dinner is ready, kids."
I ran inside, and Mali tried to catch me, but she couldn't. Quite frankly, she was tired from her piano lessons and her constant hours on end of homework. I didn't understand.
"W - Where's Bearie?"
"In the wash," Joy smiled, "I brought you a coloring book."
"A cooler-en bookie?"
"It's good for mental health," Joy assured, "it's something you can do to calm you down for the rest of your life. Always rely on something easy like this, rather than drugs or alcohol or anything bad."
"What's a droog?"
"Something you'll hopefully never get into."
I felt the tears staining at my eyes, at my cheek, at my chest, and everything was rolling down, like the rain and the lightning and the thunder that you could hear from an hour away. I quickly put the cigarette out and rushed inside of the hotel room we were staying in to find Michael and apologize, but by the time I made it inside, I realized that he was already gone.
-
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