It's a one shot. Don't worry. Anyways.
I felt bad for not updating or anything, so I'm filling you in with this. Just something that came to my mind.
Set BEFORE Across the Universe (obv.).
----
"You drank that milk, didn't you?" Chris asks, looking over my shoulder.
I look down at the carton, which is staring back up at me innocently. "Yeah… why?" I mumble, bringing it up to my lips again.
"Don't!" He pulls it away and throws it across the room, spilling milk all over the chalkboard.
"Are you fucking retarded? That was my last milk you dipshit."
"Didn't you hear the news?? I just about saved your life, Max, if it's not already gone."
"…the fuck are you talking about Chris? It's just milk."
"It was in the paper this morning; they said that you shouldn't drink any of that milk…"
"Any of what milk? It sounds like a load of bull to me."
"That specific brand, because they put hormones or something in the cows and they produced bad milk that could kill a person if you consumed enough, and they didn't mean to release it, but some schools got it. Where the hell did you manage to find that? They have them all in the kitchen. They aren't selling them."
I shrug, even though I know perfectly well that I sneaked into the kitchen to get some. For once in my life, I was craving something that was good for me… I seized the opportunity. There's nothing wrong with that.
It was perfectly good milk, too. I didn't taste anything wrong with it. It was just ordinary milk.
"Man, you're screwed. People have died from drinking that stuff, man."
My face feels hot all of the sudden. "What? Are you sure?"
"Yeah. I told you, it was all over the news."
"Shit."
"I know."
There's a bit of silence as I consider this. It seemed a little hard to believe.
"You think I'm going to die?"
"Probably." He assumes, shrugging his shoulder.
My face felt hotter. I moved around in my seat, awkwardly, trying to find out something that felt wrong in my body. There wasn't really anything. I said this to Chris, but he responded,
"Maybe you'll just… drop dead, or something. You don't need symptoms."
Oh, God. That makes me feel better.
"What do I do, then?"
He shrugs. We do this a lot. Trust me. "Uh… I don't know. Is there anything that you want to do before you die?"
Which I guess, is where it all started.
----
"Write it down."
"Oh, you sound like my fucking mother."
"You might forget them."
I grab a pen off the table and write it on the back of a newspaper.
I think for a while.
"What were they, again?"
"It was a list of things that you want to do before you--"
"I know that…" I say, slightly annoyed. "What was I supposed to put on the list?"
"I don't know, you know that."
So, I wrote. I got to 10.
"Done." Chris is lying upside down on my couch by then.
"What are they?" He asks, sitting up, suddenly interested.
I read them out loud to him, slowly. It was hard to read even my own handwriting.
Loose virginity.
Smoke a joint.
Get drunk.
Dance with a stripper.
Make out with Olivia Starkey.
Slap Ms. Mills.
Tell Chris how I really feel about him.
He interrupts me there.
"What? What do you mean?"
I laugh. "I just put that on to screw with you."
"Are you gay or something?"
I shoot him a look that makes him wish he could take the words right back.
"It's uh… cool if you are." He attempts to recover, but that's not the answer I'm looking for. I respond by punching him in the gut, then continuing to read from my list.
Pull the school fire alarm.
Smash a guitar.
Get in a fist fight.
There's a pause, on the fact that he's still doubled over in pain. I wait for him to sit straight again before asking what to do now.
He looks at me from the beat up couch in my dorm.
"Do them."
----
"Okay, we can do a lot of the things in a stripper bar, so let's go there first."
"No, are you crazy?" I interject, pulling the list out of my pocket. "I have to do the school stuff first. I won't be able to do half this stuff wasted."
"Or high." He points out.
"Or high." I agree.
Another pause as we consider what to do.
"There's no way that Olivia is going to make out with you, dude." He says, cracking up.
"Well, you'll have to convince her. I might be on my last hour as we speak." I doubt it as soon as I say it. But I try to believe myself. This could end up being… fun.
"I will, man." He says, all seriously and all. He even puts a hand on my shoulder. I shake it off, obviously. But still.
"So, if I go into class, I can sneak Olivia out, convince her to make out with me, slap Ms. Mills, and then pull the fire alarm before she can do anything about it."
"And then?"
I think for a moment. "We run as fast as we can to the nearest stripper bar."
"Okay. Good plan."
"What class is Olivia in?"
"I have no idea."
We look through what seemed like every class room in Princeton before we found her, sitting right at the front, writing something down.
She's wearing one of those short skirts that just cover her tiny ass—god, she's so hot. Her straight brown hair falls down in front of her shirt, making her feel less exposed, I suppose, because all of her clothes were a size too small. I don't know why she orders them a size small. Maybe it's because she really thinks that it's her size. Or maybe it's because they made her look hot and she knows it.
I knock on the door. Ms Mills (coincidence, I don't know) gave me a look before opening the door.
"What is it now, Chris?"
Chris never got on the good side of teachers. Neither did I, but I never had Ms Mills as a teacher. I just hate her. A lot.
"Max needs to talk to Olivia; it's for a project in a different class. I think she's done the notes right now, anyways."
She looks up at the sound of her name, and I feel my stomach rise up into my throat. That wasn't a good feeling. But she had such pretty eyes. Coffee. Without milk.
The teacher motions her over, and she walks up to the door, a little bounce in her step. She has on lip gloss, or something, that made them shine.
"Yes, Chris?"
Chris shuts the door to the classroom once she comes outside.
We sit on a bench outside the class. I notice how Chris sits between me and Olivia. I hate him for that. But I get over it quickly as soon as he says,
"Max is going to die today."
She covers her mouth with one hand, showing her perfectly manicured fingernails. "Oh, no." She shoots me a look of sympathy. "Is there anything that I can do?"
I can't say anything.
"Actually…" Chris says something else, but I can't hear him. I just see her, and then her moving over to my side of the bench, then her pushing the hair out of my eyes, then her pressing her lips against mine.
Wow.
I can't even hear anything. Not Chris laughing in astonishment, or me mumbling, or her giggling. I can't even hear my hands move up to her back and holding her closer, even though it feels like it should be making noise. Screaming. Singing.
I get high when I see you go by
My oh my
When you sigh oh my inside just flies
butterflies
Why am I so shy when I'm beside you?
It's only love, and that is all…
She pulls away.
"Uhm… is that good?"
I can only stare back. The lip gloss is smudged on her face.
"You're pretty cute without the acne." She smiles and wipes her face with the side of her arm.
I blush, remembering my high school days. God, I feel like such an idiot when I'm around her.
She stands up. "Call me if you aren't dead tonight." She jokes, but touches my shoulder on the way back to class.
I can't move.
Jesus.
My first kiss.
"Damn." Chris says in approval.
I touch my lips faintly with my fingers, just to make sure that they're still there. To make sure that she didn't take them away with her. Damn, she was so beautiful!
"Now what?" I ask, in a trance.
"Slap Ms Mills."
I come back into reality.
"Oh yeah." I snicker, and push open the door.
He waits outside.
The door shuts.
He waits for a minute or two before I come speeding out.
"RUN!" I scream, racing him down the halls. We're laughing like maniacs, and we're both out of breath, but neither of us stop. I only pause once to pull the fire alarm, and then we sprint to the doors, not stopping until we're off campus.
"To the stripper bar!" I exclaim, half victory and half adrenaline. We both laugh, exhausted, as we haul ourselves over to the nearest club, with big neon letters spelling CATSCRATCH on the front.
----
She thinks it's pretty funny. "And how old are you?" She laughs, trying to put on mascara. "13?"
"19." I correct her.
She glances over, not believing me.
"18."
She looks back at the mirror, satisfied. "I don't think so, boys."
"Not boys," I correct her. "Just me. I think I might be dying. This is probably my last 24 hours. I just need to dance with you. And maybe get a drink or two. And a joint, if it's available. But if it isn't, I can totally find a different one somewhere else."
She laughs again. "What kind of dance, the hokey pokey?"
Chris buts in this time. "If he wanted to do a kindergarten dance, he would have gone to a kindergarten."
She looks up, raising one eyebrow. I found this kind of sexy, strangely. "You want me to give a lap dance to a minor?"
"Not just any minor," Chris grabs me by the shoulders and shoves me over to her, still holding my shoulders. "Him."
I don't know what to do in this position. So I smile pathetically.
She snorts. "What's the pay?"
We both look down. "Uh, we don't have any money."
She rolls her eyes. "That's what I thought. I'm not a charity, you know."
"I'll pay you back later."
"I thought you said you were dying."
I shrug. "If I don't die."
She stands up. "Fine."
I look up, surprised. "What?"
"I said fine, have you changed your mind or something?"
"Uh, no, I…"
She walks over to the back room and puts a needle on a record.
Music starts playing, an upbeat kind of thing, and she walks over.
"Aren't you going to get in costume?"
"Don't push your luck."
And we dance.
She smells like sugar and smoke.
----
"You did one thing out of ten in that stripper bar." Chris complains, kicking a rock down the sidewalk.
"I thought there would be more people there."
"Whatever. What are you doing now?"
I looked over Chris shoulder and noticed somebody rolling up paper in a back alley.
"Got any money?"
"No."
"Great."
I walk over to him anyways. "Is that pot?"
He looks up.
"Best damn pot in the city." He mumbles, looking back down.
"Could I, uh, try some?"
He laughs. I'm really getting sick of laughter right now.
"How much you got?"
"Uh… I just want to try it before I buy any of it."
He nods in satisfaction. "You know what you're doing. I like that." He lights it up and takes a big breath. He blows it out in my face. I don't know what to do. "You've ever smoked pot before?"
"No sir."
"Here." He hands me the joint, and I take it gingerly in between my fingers.
Big breath…
I cough.
He takes it back, laughing. "Don't hurt yourself, kid." Then he walks away.
Chris runs up to me, and I laugh at him.
"Man, that stuff is fucked up."
"He gave it to you for free?"
I cough some more. "A puff."
I don't really like that word. Puff. It reminded me of marshmallows.
"What else is on that list?" I ask, feeling dizzy.
"Uh… I'm pretty sure getting in a fist fight was one of them."
I see an uptight business man walking up on the street. I stumble towards him, and swing him one right in the face.
I think I hurt myself more than I hurt him, because I fall on the ground and hold my fist. It feels like I broke every bone in it. I'm pretty sure that his face is made out of metal.
He looks at me, checks his nose to see if it's bleeding (it isn't), and he walks on.
After rolling on the ground holding my fist for a while, I stand up. "Let's go to a live band and smash a guitar and get drunk and have sex." I say breathlessly, and he doesn't argue.
----
The band is pretty cool. They call them selves 'Wings', and they let me smash one of their guitars at the end of the show. They want that… 'bad band' look, and I help them do just that. People go wild when they see me destroy that guitar.
I laugh crazily, and the bartender gives me some drinks on the house.
It doesn't take much to make my head spin. I'm laughing and dancing with a girl named Jessica.
"What's your name again?" I scream, my speech slurred.
"Jessica." She smiles, showing all of her white teeth.
"You want to dance?"
"We are dancing." She giggles and puts her arms around my neck.
"How about we go someplace?"
Chris watches.
We leave.
She lives upstairs.
I feel like shitting myself before I'm halfway up there.
----
"So this is your number one thing to do before you die?" She asks, putting a leg over me and pulling herself on top of me.
I cough, awkwardly. "Yeah."
Then she kisses me.
Then…
Guess.
----
I walk down the stairs, feeling a little tired and shocked and completely satisfied.
Chris is waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, sleeping.
I kick his head to wake him up.
"Chris?"
He looks up.
"You done everything on that stupid list?"
I shake my head. "Almost."
"What are you missing?"
"Number seven."
He thinks for a long time. Finally I enlighten him.
"You're pretty cool, Chris."
He smiles. "You're cool too." He's pretty tired. It is 4 in the morning.
There's a few minutes of just us listening to each other breathing.
"There wasn't really anything in the paper about people dying, was there?"
He rubs his eyes with his fist, like a kid, and then sits up straight.
"No."
FIN
Author Notes:
"You drank that milk, didn't you?" Chris asks—Chris is actually the name of Max's friend… in 'With a Little Help' Chris introduces himself to Jude. Betcha 15 bucks you missed that!
I don't really know what to do in this position, so I smile pathetically. –If Max smiling pathetically doesn't make you 'awwww', then I don't know what will.
Big neon letters spelling CATSCRATCH—RENT. I don't picture the dancer to be Mimi, but it's your imagination. I tend to leave a lot of room for it.
Thanks for reading! Review?