Monday mornings sucked just as much for Dylan as the next guy, but for whatever reason this one felt especially terrible. Probably it had something to do with being hungover as fuck and only getting about two and a half hours of sleep, but Dylan was completely unable to do anything but lie motionless in bed, flat on his back and staring at the ceiling while his alarm clock blared a staticky classical radio station and he tried to will his limbs to move.

Eventually and with a Herculean effort he managed to drag himself out of bed and over to the bathroom, Tchaikovsky still carrying on in the background. Goosebumps rose on his arms from the frigid winter air as he shuffled down the hall, bypassing his mother and ignoring her cheerful morning greeting. Once he was safely barricaded inside the bathroom, he surveyed his reflection in the mirror without much hope. His skin was pale and sallow and his eyes looked like bottomless pits with yesterday's makeup smudged all the way down his cheeks. His hair was sticking up in the particularly stubborn way it had that meant it wasn't going to start looking like it belonged on a human head anytime soon and on top of everything else the red dye in it was steadily fading to a non-threatening shade of pink that was most definitely not goth. He'd have to get Henrietta to dye it again sometime soon.

Dylan stared down the apparition in the mirror and thought that the most depressing thing about him was that he wasn't even too far-off from what Dylan looked like normally.

Heaving a sigh, Dylan switched on his flatiron and prepared for battle.

--- --- ---

Twenty minutes later Dylan had managed to finish getting ready without puking, which he considered a win. He shambled down the stairs, grabbing a backpack full of unfinished homework on his way out the door.

His dad gaped over his newspaper as Dylan walked out, apparently too baffled to even say goodbye. You'd think he'd have gotten used to it by now, thought Dylan, stepping onto the porch. He winced as a gust of wind hit him head-on, stinging his nose and eyes. He shoved his hands in the pockets of coat and peered impatiently down the snowy, tree-lined street. A blessedly short while after that Henrietta pulled up to the front of the house in her mom's beat-up car, Georgie nodding off in the front seat and Evan sitting in back.

They all looked just as bad as Dylan did, which almost made him feel a little better. He climbed in back and Evan nodded at him, Henrietta giving a distracted little wave from the front.

She peeled away from Dylan's house at breakneck speed, ignoring the fact that his mother was peering through the front window at them and looking rather scandalized. Sometimes Dylan felt kind of sorry for her, not getting some Justin Timberlake-wannabe conformist asshole for a son, but then he usually remembered that she was a bitch anyway.

For a while, no one spoke. Georgie had fallen completely asleep, Henrietta was concentrating on driving as aggressively as possible, and Evan was busy on staring out the window in a tortured manner.

All too soon Park County High was looming in the distance, shabby and oppressive-looking. They pulled into the parking lot just as the last bell rang. Dylan watched the stragglers shuffle inside, considered having to go in there himself for yet another day of crippling boredom interspersed with torment at the hands of those conformist boners he was forced to call his classmates, and realized that this was just not going to fucking happen today.

"I'm not going in there," he announced with as much determination as he could muster while still feeling half-dead from exhaustion.

"I'd rather drown in concrete," agreed Evan.

Henrietta, who had been getting ready to shake Georgie awake, glanced back at the two of them and nodded. She pulled out of the parking lot, performed some kind of highly illegal U-turn that involved almost rear-ending several cars, and started driving to Benny's without even having to ask.

Dylan pressed his pounding forehead to the cold glass of the window, hoping that it would soothe his raging hangover headache at least a little bit. He never had done well with nonmetaphorical pain. Evan shifted around in the seat next to him, his cane bumping against Dylan's knee in a way that could almost be considered sympathetic.

Soon Henrietta was pulling into Benny's and they were all piling out of the car, sort of dragging Georgie along with them until he was awake enough to walk on his own. They claimed their usual booth and ignored the way that fucking waitress was glaring at them. It had always been the same dried-up old bitch, ever since they were eight. Sometimes Evan would make elaborate comparisons likening her to Republicans or corporate America or Kanye West, but mostly Dylan just thought she was a cunt.

She brought them their customary six dollars worth of black coffee without bothering to ask, delivering it several minutes later than was probably acceptable and with palpable resentment in her face. The four of them performed a seamless group eye-roll and proceeded to ignore her completely, just like usual.

They nursed their cups in silence for a few minutes. Dylan warmed his fingers against the hot, chipped porcelain of the mug and felt his headache recede, just slightly.

Henrietta started telling some story about a show she went to on Friday and Dylan zoned out, looking past the dancing snowmen and nondenominational holiday greeting painted on the dirty windows of the diner. It had started snowing again, which would suck when they were back in Henrietta's car and had to worry about icy roads and all that shit on top of her questionable driving skills, but for now it just looked kind of pretty. There had been a heated group discussion the other day (or as heated as they ever got, which meant that Georgie stayed awake the whole time and Evan put down his coffee cup one or twice to make a gesture) on whether or not snow was conformist. Dylan had been high at the time and he couldn't really remember what they decided, but whatever. Cognizance was for assholes.

Dylan rested his chin on his hands and watched the white flakes spiral downward, thinking he could probably write a poem about them being God's dandruff or something when he didn't feel so terrible.

Henrietta finished her story with a sigh of annoyance, maybe at whatever it was that had happened to her and maybe because Dylan hadn't been paying attention. Georgie shifted groggily next to her, clutching his mug like his life depended on it. He was probably only just realizing that he wasn't in school.

"I wrote a poem last night," Evan announced from his place on the other side of Dylan, voice sounding a little rough and scratchy. Dylan settled back in the uncomfortable vinyl seat of the booth as Evan produced his battered black composition notebook and read them a poem in between sips of coffee. The meaning was indiscernible, which was pretty typical of Evan's poetry, but that typicality was strangely comforting. After he read the last line, something about being stabbed to death by a toothpick of pain, Henrietta nodded pensively.

"Deep," she said. Dylan and Georgie made noises of agreement, and they lapsed back into silence. Once they were all finished Henrietta declared that she needed a smoke badly, so they scrounged up whatever coins and crumpled dollar bills they had between them to pay for the coffee and trooped out to stand on the curb while Henrietta smoked.

Dylan lit one up too, hunching his shoulders against the cold. After a minute Evan sidled up to him, an unlit smoke dangling out the corner of his mouth. "Forgot my lighter," he announced, looking at Dylan expectantly. Dylan rolled his eyes but leaned in without complaint, letting Evan touch the tip of his cigarette to Dylan's and inhale until it flared to life. For a brief second, Evan's chapped lips and stuck-together eyelashes and cold-reddened nose were all Dylan could see, and then there was a puff of smoke and Evan stepped back. Dylan put that second out of his mind and glared pre-eminently at Henrietta, who always laughed like she knew something they didn't whenever they did this. She looked away innocently.

Occasionally other kids that had ditched for the day went walking by in twos and threes, talking and laughing and giving the four of them weird looks as they passed.

Dylan scowled at them and flicked his bangs out of his face impatiently, rubbing at his eyes to dispel the last remnants of sleep. He knew that compared to those other conformist douchebags they were pretty non-commutative, but the idea of carrying on a full conversation this early in the morning made his stomach turn. He glanced over at the three of them, and in the split second of eye contact they all shared he knew they were thinking the same thing.

After a few minutes Henrietta tossed the smoldering butt of her cigarette in the snow. Shortly after, Dylan and Evan followed suit. Georgie leaned over and surveyed the three tiny craters that they burned into the snow with interest. He was always trying to get them to let him smoke and drink when they did, and truthfully the thought didn't really bother Dylan or Evan, but Henrietta wouldn't allow it.

"It's too fucking cold," Dylan complained, mostly just for the sake of complaining. Evan nodded his assent and Henrietta suggested that they just go back to her house, because her mom was probably the only one who wouldn't care that they hadn't gone to school.

Dylan shrugged. Henrietta's house was pretty much where they always ended up, anyway. The four of them got back in the car and sped away. Henrietta cranked up the heat and Dylan reclined against the leather seat, letting it wash over him. Living his life in cold and darkness was fine in theory, but that shit became a different story when his face started going numb.

Dylan absently watched melted snowflakes run in rivulets down the window of the car until they pulled into Henrietta's driveway, jolting slightly as they bounced over the curb. Once Henrietta locked the car she herded them through the front door and into the house, from which her mother was blessedly absent.

They walked up the stairs and into Henrietta's room, blessedly dark and menacing in contrast with the cheeriness of the rest of her house. They all went to their usual spots without thinking about it; Georgie sprawled out on the bed, Evan and Dylan side-by-side on the floor, and Henrietta sitting cross-legged and holding another clove cigarette loosely between her fingers, paying no attention to the purple candles dripping wax into a saucer perilously close to the flame.

Georgie yawned hugely and dragged a pillow underneath his head, ignoring Henrietta's annoyed command to not fuck with them. She exhaled through her nose and picked up one of the many composition books lying around, idly thumbing through it with the hand that wasn't busy with her cigarette.

Dylan glanced over at Evan, who was staring at the ceiling in a way that reminded Dylan of himself from that morning. His hair was damp from the snow, curling at his temples and the nape of his neck even though these days he wasted a lot of time and effort trying to get it straight. As Dylan watched a water droplet that had been clinging to his cross earring rolled of and dripped down the side of his neck.

"Why don't you ever wear a fucking coat," Dylan asked abruptly, making sure there wasn't enough emotion in his voice for the question to be misconstrued as concern or anything stupid like that.

"Why do you always wear those fucking purple shoes," Evan retorted, not moving from his spot. Dylan glanced down at his shoes like he was just noticing they were there before shrugging and using one of them to kick at Evan's shin.

"Fuck off," Dylan replied without any real heat in his voice. Evan just made a snerking noise and scooted closer in order to sock Dylan halfheartedly in the shoulder, which was pretty much more energy than they usually spent on physical interaction in a whole week. From behind her notebook, Henrietta rolled her eyes in familiar exasperation.

note: there is nothing about the band in this chapter i know D: but patience is a virtue! if anyone is even reading this madness, which is a big if.