It feels like days when it all finally wears off, and I'm left feeling worse than when I started (roomate still isn't back, but he hates me anyway- after a spectacular week into term, he's discovered that I'm a despicable person to be around) and I can't say it's worth it because- look at me. I laugh at myself, before everything in my brain rattles and the laugh becomes a groan and I have to hold back the urge to vomit all over the bed (again). I lie still and try to concentrate on just breathing in and out without puking and/or losing consciousness, until I can push myself upright and reach for the glass of stagnant water waiting on the bedside table. Most of it falls on my shirt and on my bed rather than into my mouth, but it tastes like nothing but wetness anyway, so it doesn't matter.
I stare up at the ceiling and try to remember the feeling of the high, and then realize that I won't be able to, because I haven't been able to for a while. It just makes everything worse. Never better. Always worse.
X
There's...a week.
A few days.
A week.
A week full of days that blend into each other and don't matter (waking up and schoolwork and eating and not talking, pretending I can handle another day and trying unsuccessfully not to give in to heroin again, schoolwork and trying to stay conscious) until one day at the end of that week (a dreary, tempestuous Saturday that feels oppressive in its grays and obnoxious thunder) when a boy appears at the doorway who my old room mate (never bothered to get his name, and I don't think he ever got mine) has switched out with.
Some last name with a W, he says. A Common First Name. I'm actually sober, but I don't care enough in those first, crucial moments to pay close attention. He hovers in the middle of the room with his bag slung over his shoulder, until he turns away from me to put his clothes away. Nothing remarkable, I think, looking him over once, and then again, noting the haircut, the clothes, the stature, those books...
"I'm sorry about your grandfather," I say, just as the boy is kicking his bag under his bed. He startles.
He frowns intensely at me, taking a step away, and then falling back on the bed. "How did you know about that?"
I open my mouth to point out that I didn't know, it was obvious, when I realize that maybe it's not as obvious as it is to me. Mycroft did this, and I tried in vain to imitate him. At least, I thought it was in vain; I still exercised this skill I had from time to time, without ever really voicing my conclusions, but since Mycroft often corrected me when I tried it around him, I always thought that I wasn't good enough.
This boy was staring at me, waiting for my answer. I couldn't disappoint- or rather, I could, but it was mostly for my own benefit that I explained. I was probably wrong anyway. Who cared? He'd hate me soon enough and leave like all the others.
"The way you hold yourself, you haircut and clothes...strict upbringing." I frowned, trying to gather my thoughts again as the haze of my earlier high still persisted. "Probably military. Your father's a military man, used those influences in disciplining you, probably as he was. Your books...the first few are your fathers- new; unopened; brought with you to avoid him suspecting you of disrespect. The age and condition of the others suggest they had a previous owner, and also as they're medical books that you couldn't get unless you were a doctor yourself or someone you know is, they're a gift. Some of the pages have been folded at the corners before, but you've used a bookmark to avoid that, so you don't want to ruin them. The way you treat them- carefully, sentimentally as if they carry your own memories- maybe the person that gave them to you is someone important." I paused. He still stared at me- he looked slightly horrified, or maybe that was just me. "There's a sadness when you hold them, rather than the usual pride you'd expect in being given something with valuable. They're old, expensive. So he's dead then, and that's the last you have of him. He was a doctor, and inspired you to become one in his memory. You wouldn't have worked to get into a place like this if you weren't serious about it."
There's a long silence, where I expect him the get up and leave with some excuse (water, fresh air, going to call some random person in my family who doesn't actually exist, be right back!) or to sneer at everything I got wrong (which I assume to be most everything.)
"That's...that's fucking amazing," he says instead, and it's my turn to startle and be amazed. I want to say something ('but it was obvious', just be a dick) but I can't because I'm too surprised to say anything. And for a tiny second, I'm afraid that he's just taking the piss, another prank from the rest of the boys who absolutely hate my guts with enough hellfire to make Lucifer proud, but one look at the wonder on his face shows otherwise.
"Yeah," I say eventually, looking away from the excitement in his eyes that I just know I'm going to disappoint. "Thanks."
X
His name is Sam, I find out later.
Jim.
John.
Kyle.
Samuel. His name is Sam. Sam Walther.
He's the first person to ever listen to my deductions and not want to punch me in the face. He's amazed by me, and I'm amazed by his amazement. We're never exclusively friends exactly- the only time we ever talk outside of our shared room is when there aren't enough people around to really spread rumors (since being in my company automatically turns you into some sort of freak). It's enough that I'm not completely alone, but I might as well be, since half of the company seems to be out of pity. I have no else, so I hang on to him whenever I can. I'm his party trick most of the time, if he's got others around who have the patience to listen to me speak, if I haven't already humiliated them. Sam was the popular one who got along with almost everyone he talked to. He got the top marks and the friends and the girls and graduated with a wonderful shinning career in front of him. I'm not actually sure how I even got into uni with how messed up I was by the end of our last year, but I think it was some combination of my brother's exasperation and his bullying me into working hard enough to scrape through.
A day after we all graduated, Walther was murdered.
It was the first case after making the drug mistake, the first one that lifted me out of that self-pitying fog and woke me up a little. I read about Sam's death like everyone else, but with considerably less compassion than most others. Amidst the fake tears and the sad faces and the many voices who claimed that Samuel was a beautiful person- divine and almost angelic in the imagined virtue manifested by the grief of people who barely knew him- I knew better. I saw it better. He could be manipulative and abusive, angry, wrathful (there were certain incidents that he was involved in when we were in school that no one dared to really think about after he died), shallow in some cases, and narcissistic. I didn't care as much as everyone else, and I suppose that gave me an advantage. I was the one who noticed the points in his suicide that led the police to classify it as a murder, as it should have been in the first place. It wasn't easy, getting my evidence noticed, but I had my ways.
A week after he died, I picked up my violin again.