Different colored minds

Why are you nice to me?

STEVEN POV

"Did you get my present?" I'm sitting next to Jeremy in class.
"What?" I whisper back.
"I told Aaron to give you a kit in case they did a drug test."
"That was you!"
"Always gotta think two steps ahead."
"What if it doesn't work?"
"I'm sure it will." He shrugs.
"Wanna hang out after school? I have a new strain I want to try." He continues. But I don't want to try it. I just saw my life flash before my eyes, I don't need that again.
"Actually I think I'm going to take a break from weed,"
"What about your issues with doing homework?"
"I'm going to try and muscle through. I think I can do it if I try really hard." There's a nagging at the back of my mind saying otherwise. Saying im lying to yourself to make my parents feel better. To make society feel better. Like they understand how to help.
"Well if you change your mind, I'll give you my phone number to call. And if you're worried about it sticking in your system just drink a lot of cranberry juice. You'll be fine."
"Jeremy, why are you so nice to me?"
"I don't know," he says with a shrug. "You remind me of myself." He says with a smile. "Now concentrate on the class."
It's a mute point. From everything I've seen on the internet I have adhd. People think that concentrating is a thing I can control. They think listening is something that if I try hard enough I can keep doing.
It's exhausting. It doesn't work. And at the end of it, the only one who pays is me. My parents won't listen. I can't even imagine telling them I have a disability. Not only that if I did tell them I wouldn't want to go on meds. I have seen the kids in class that have and all they talk about is the anxiety, the feeling of being a caged animal, the obsessive need to district your skin. Your hair. Anger. That's why I liked weed. It never made me feel chained or any of that bullshit. I felt free. Just more free to focus.
Now what was I going to do? How am I going to get through this stupid school year. Everyone says you're not alone but in the end the only one that knows my struggles in my head is me. The only one that listens is me. And the only one that won't judge me for my thoughts is me. And god. But he doesn't talk back. Or I can't hear him anyway. It's not like we're close or anything like that.
So for all extensive purposes the minute they say I'm not alone, it registers as bullshit in my mind.
If you don't know what's going on in my head. You don't know me. Because my world is in my head. It's the only place I can actually speak my mind and someone will listen. Me.
I keep seeing joe places I don't want to. At things I want to think of something else at. I know what everyone else will tell me to do. I've lost friends before.
"Ignore him," they say.
"Pretend he's not there," says another.
"You can't keep chasing after people, you know," they're all what I've heard a hundred times.
If I talked to anyone about this, they'd say the same things. They'd say I'm the one who ended it. They'd say I can't choose to go back. They'd say I left for a reason.

Ignore the majority of the memories stuffed inside my head. Ignore the muscle memory to call him. To talk to him. To be with him. Ignore the million vulnerable things I used to know about him. That face I can read like a book. Leave that behind. Leave him behind. Ignore the future we built. The dreams we scaffolded. Ignore everything we did and say that it's broken. There is no repair.
There's not coming back from this because he doesn't want to come back from this.
I wanted our friendship more than he did. More than he does. More than he can care. So I have to play pretend. I have to hide inside my head. Tell the world I'm fine. Tell them I'm moving on. Tell them I'm strong. I'm the one who's winning.

I don't even care about my homework. I have too much energy building up in my bones. I feel like a hamster on a treadmill. I can't help but move. Without weed the thoughts about Joe and then the team and then leaving weed and then leaving joe and then my parents and failing them.

By the time third period rolls around my mind is a shit show. And I know my emotions will just become more intense. The ticks happen then. I start talking too much then. I can't sit down then. I can't sit still then. I can't be normal still.

That's all I need to do to make everyone happy. Now I have to play normal while I watch my grades plummet. This is what I wanted to avoid. Plummeting. I need to do this without weed. I need to prove to myself I can do this all by myself. That my brain can be just like theirs.

It's fucked. There's no winning on earth.

The day continues like this.

A wave of me having balanced existential dread and trying to understand my classes.

The world is cold to kids like me. To the ones that cant just fit the mold. I'm mad at joe. I'm mad at whoever snitched on the team.

And that brings me to my bathroom break before Chem.

"Hey Steven," a chill runs down my spine. It's my dealer.
"Chill, I know you wouldn't nark but I did tell you I had a feeling about that stupid greasy haired mother fucker," his eyes are putrid brown, dark and ominous.
"Then you chill," I start and then in the mirror I see something reflect the light.
It's a plastic blade. It must have snuck under the school radar.
"Listen, I'll find who narked, don't sweat it, I'll tell you and you can get them," I state trying to sound nonchalant.
"You better," he hisses and packs away the blade.

I gulp. At least there's one person who has to know something, why else would he have synthetic urine unless he knew the coach was going to have to drug test the team.

I clench my fists.