MONEY TREES, gossip girl [DISCONTINUED]

11

tw! morbid thoughts, mention of vomiting, drug use

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CHAPTER ELEVEN
PICK ME UP
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CRISTIAN feels like he never wakes up.

His eyes open. He's conscious, but he's still asleep. The mind that was once going crazy with outlandish thoughts and ideas and intense feelings has now been muted, a dead shell of what it was. Still— that's the best word to describe the happenings of his mind. It's still.

Those crossed wires caught fire, and now they've been all burned up. They're fried, struggling to get a spark from one end to the other. Anything CJ wants, anything CJ needs, can't be communicated to his body. He's left idly laying in his bed, tired and unable to feel enough to consider it sadness. He feels nothing, and that's worse than feeling everything.

A light knock hits his door. A sharp pain shoots through his skull— surely a result of the alcohol and his breakdown in the middle of the night. He manages a hum, which thankfully is heard from the person on the other side.

"Cristian, you need to get up. You're going to be late for school." The voice of his mother warns him. He can hear the distraction in her voice. He's not at the forefront of her mind. Why would he be?

He closes his eyes again. He squeezes them shut, praying that he slips back into slumber and never wakes up again. He'd be content with never waking up again. No more internal battles, no more opportunities to fuck up this life he doesn't deserve. He wishes someone else had been born in his place— anyone would deserve it more than him.

She knocks again. Cristian moves his sore limbs. He has to sit at the edge of his bed for a moment, mustering up the energy to drag his weight out of bed. He already misses the warmth of his blanket. Cristian digs the heel of his hands into his eyes, attempting to rub the tiredness out of them. It doesn't work, but he hadn't expected it to.

Cristian forces himself out of bed once his mother knocks a third time. He thinks about putting a shirt to hide the red marks littering his chest, but he decides against it, as he'd hardly able to move at all. Every step towards the door is in pain. He opens it, revealing himself to her. She doesn't notice anything wrong, at first.

"If you leave within fifteen minutes, you could make it in the building as the bell rings," Farah frets in his behalf. CJ supports his weight on the doorframe, eyes glazed over as he stares at the wall behind her, "Lets get a move on, Cristian. Lets go."

Cristian doesn't move. He can't. Farah takes a look at him, a good look, and she finally sees it. She has seen it before, many times, and it never gets easier for either of them.