Hola amigos! I'm back with another chapter. This one does mention self-harm towards the end, just as a heads-up.
"It's like the sky is falling. But not the normal kind of falling where everything just crashes, but a controlled fall, one that tells someone 'Ya I'm going down but I'm doing it my way.'" Riley giggled, laying on her back. She smiled up at the stars and they twinkled in response.
"The sky isn't falling Riley. It's breaking. It's breaking in a way that can't be fixed, and it's not controlled in anyway. It's a fucking mess. Don't try to tell yourself otherwise." Maya lay down next her, frowning. "It's like the stars are screaming for help but the darkness doesn't care, the darkness just wants to squash out the little lights of joy."
"Why's that?"
"The darkness thinks that if it takes something that's happy, then it becomes happy. But it doesn't work like that."
"Don't listen to her Riley. She gets all moody and depressed when she's drunk." Lucus joined them staring at the sky. He raised his hand to take another hit of his joint, he blew perfect smoke rings and sent them up to the stars.
"I don't become moody and depressed. I become a realist."
Lucus didn't think the sky was doing anything particulary interisting. He wasn't seeing it fall like Riley, or seeing it break like Maya. He was just seeing it. It was just starts and a vast endless blackness to him, and that scared him.
Vast blackness, to him, meant no ending. And everything had to have an ending right? If there's no ending than there can't be a start either. And everything has to have a start too, right? Lucus didn't like how the sky wasn't following the rules, the rules were there for a reason and that reason was for order. If it was one thing Lucus needed more than the drugs and the alcohol, it was order.
Lucus has lived his whole life without order. He was the one who had to take care of his little brother and sister, it was his job to make dinner, to make sure the house stayed clean, and no one suspected anything. Despite how miserable his homelife was, he didn't want to be taken from the only home he ever knew.
But it wasn't his job! And that's what angered him so much. His parents weren't following the rules, they weren't following the order.
His mother was a hopeless dreamer, going to audition after audition in an attempt to become something. She would come home at midnight from her auditions that led no where and would leave at dawn to work her shit job.
His father was a depressed man. Has been ever since Lucus' older sister passed away in a car accident a few years ago. Only coming out for meals, and then shutting himself up again in his office where he can escape in bills and books.
He doesn't like people knowing. He wants people to think that he comes from this perfect little family and that he's happy. Maya knows, but that's it. She's the only one who knows that he isn't always as happy as he may seem. Everyone else though... it's all smiles and jokes with them.
He realizes he hasn't answered Maya yet. So he shakes the thoughts out of his head and smiles even though he knows that she can't see it. "I thought you were trying to not be an excrutiating human."
'I suppose my mother is depressed too,' Lucus thought, 'I suppose that it's different for everyone. '
"Oh come on, Lucus." He can practically hear her roll her eyes at him. "Stating the truth doesn't make someone excrutitating, it makes them honest. And there is absolutley nothing excrutiating about that or me."
"I think-" Riley begins but stops suddenly as if the thought just escaped her. Lucus lifts his head to look at her, but she just keeps looking at the dark night sky before she speaks again. Her voice is soft but strong and it seems to echo in the darkness. "I think that all humans have excrutiating tendencies and it's not up to them to try and hide it."
The blond stared at him. The beautiful boy in the front row of class. He knew everything, but it wasn't like he was smart and tried to make everyone else feel bad. It was like he was so amazed with the wonders of the world that he couldn't help but know everything. He knew everything and he was absolutley gorgeous. Gorgeous and perfect.
Except he wasn't
She knew things about him. Even though they never talked, she knew things. It was what she did. All the years of hiding out in various places trying to make herself invisible have come in handy when spying on people.
This particular person would often roll up his sleeves and scar himself at night. He was always careful about keeping it a secret, but she had her ways. The boy wouldn't do many cuts. Just enough to feel something.
At first she was angry at him. So unbelievably angry. Here she was, with scars on her body that she didn't want, and then there he is giving himself his own. It wasn't fair, he didn't see how lucky he was. Everything about him was perfect.
But then the girl realized that perfection isn't really all that perfect. She realized that some people are just broken and the only way to fix themselves was to hurt themselves first, and so she would never try to stop him. She would only silently watch in her own private agony and watch the crimson slowly roll down his skin.
She knew that he was only doing this to make himself happy. He deserves happy.
In English class that day, they were working on poems.
The blond wrote a poem about him.
anotherxwallflower