A is for At the bottom

"And there's a lake, and at the bottom you'll find all my friends,
They don't swim 'cause they're all dead, we never are what we intend or invent;
'Cause I make little lies and then I pull them apart
Think something dark's living down in my heart;
And if I wanted to die before I got old,
I should have started some years ago digging that hole…
I stole bricks from the dam almost every day, now I'm drowning in the flood I made;
Well, explain myself to me on the other side, I'll watch from heaven when I die."

What am I looking for?

I exhaled in short spurts, keeping my lips round. Perfect smoke rings floated in the air above me, one after the other, until they faded into the sky. It probably wasn't a good thing that I had come to depend on weed to calm me down, but so far, it was the only thing working – and it felt like I had tried everything else.

With a long sigh I eased myself back onto the grass and closed my eyes. I hated when spring came early; all it meant was hot, sticky weather and bugs. Still, I appreciated the ability to come here, to the pond where we had spent so much time as kids, and smoke a joint without getting frostbite.

I guess there's just no making me happy.

Happiness. I struggled to keep the incredulous smirk off my face as I repeated it over and over in my head, and wondered if I really wasn't happy, or whether I was just pretending I wasn't so I would have an excuse for this behavior. Avoiding my friends. Letting my grades drop. All that normal teenage angst bullshit I had always tried so hard to evade. And yet here I was, age eighteen, on the cusp of adulthood and still feeling like a whiny little bitch who couldn't accept that yeah, life gets harder as you get older.

Another long drag and I started to feel my body relax completely, like I was sinking into the ground. That would be nice, actually, to stay comatose in oneness with the earth.

"Kyle?"

Mother fucker.

"Kyle, are you over here?"

I listened to the crunching of branches under heavy, panicked footsteps and sat up begrudgingly, half of the joint still sticking out from between my lips. A moment later, Stan appeared from within a wall of bushes, face red, lips parted, eyebrows nearly together. He was pissed.

"Dude, what the fuck?"

"What?" I looked up at him lazily from behind red eyes.

"Kyle, you can't just skip class for three days and expect no one's gonna catch on! Fuck man, what the hell is going on with you?"

I shrugged and looked away, turning my head to blow smoke in the direction opposite Stan. When I glanced over at him again, his face had changed from angry, to disappointed. He looked completely crestfallen.

Damn it.

"Sorry…" I muttered, without really meaning it.

"You're not fucking sorry," He breathed, taking two steps to stand right above me. "In case you forgot, I've known you since kindergarten, and I know that if you were really sorry you would have stood up and looked me in the eye. You used to have the guts to admit you were wrong." Without knowing how to reply, I simply sat there. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Stan stared down at me, unreadable. Or maybe he wasn't, but I was stoned and couldn't be bothered to make the effort.

"You're pathetic, Kyle Broflovski."

What?

I shook my head once. "Sorry?"

"Pathetic. Absolutely, one hundred percent pathetic."

I pulled one last time on the joint, felt the heat tingle against my lips and spat the butt into the grass beside me.

"And what would you prefer, Stan?" I swayed dangerously as I got to my feet, unstable from the effects of the pot. Confusion flickered over my friend's face for a brief moment, and then was replaced almost immediately by hurt and anger.

"I want you to be my best friend again," His voice wavered, like he was scared of the weight in his words. "I want you to stop lying and pretending. I'm fucking sick of watching you fade away."

I gave him a weak smile, exposing only half my teeth. "I really hoped that you wouldn't be the one to do this."

"Huh?"

"Pfft. I expected it of someone like my mom, to give me this talk. You were supposed to understand." I was already playing the guilt card and it made me want to vomit. I cast a fleeting glance at the pond, and suddenly wondered what it would feel like to sit at the bottom and stare up at the sky through the water. Until I drowned, that is. My eyes darted back to Stan; whose mouth was moving but no sound was coming out, and hated myself for accusing him of being in the wrong. He was right – I had gotten a little too accustomed to lying.

"You're going to d-…" Stan's words trailed off and he looked at the ground. Weird, how he lost his nerve so quickly.

"What did you say?" I tried to keep my tone innocent.

"I said you're going to die, Kyle, fuck."

I barely kept from bursting out laughing. "I'm going to die?"

I'm only finding this funny because I'm high.

"Fuck you," He snarled, turning on his heel. "Go to hell."

"Stan, wait…" I suppressed my laughter and willed sincerity to ring in my voice. I don't think it worked.

"No, Kyle, no," He turned around sharply and I almost crashed into him as I reached out to stop his departure. "If you're going to spend all your time stealing bricks from the dam, then you'd better be fucking prepared to deal with the flood."

Wow.

I tilted my head and watched as he disappeared into the brush. My whole body felt heavy, but I think it was the weed more than anything else. I never intended to have that happen – in fact, in my selfishness, it hadn't even occurred to me that I was damaging other people when I was damaging myself. Then again, I never intended to be sitting beside a pond, smoking joints and wondering what it would feel like to drown. I guess that was what happened when you started floods.

I am going to die. I'm going to die under the mountain looking for gold.

Author's note: I do not own any part of Brand New or their material/songs.