What do the stars feel when they look at Us?

Chapter 7: The constant heartache Pt. 1

My friends met up a lot during the first week of the following holidays. They went to the local bathing lake twice. They texted me about all the boobs they saw. Boob. Beeb boob.

Pedro and his parents took their mini-van and drove to someplace in the mountains. He sent me pictures. I replied once. To an image of his dad hitting his head on an avalanche warning sign.

Linda and her dad went to visit her mom in Romania. The hill was quiet all the time.

-

I actually found it quite relaxing to walk. To wander around the city and find new places onto which I can project all of my newly found thoughts.

I noticed my head was more comfortable with going out during late evenings or nights. Whenever fewer people were around, my skin started to sweat less and my imagination became more clear.

Following that realisation came quite the logical one.

I started searching for places that had been left alone.

I went to my school as it was empty.

Entering it was more difficult than I initially thought it would be, though. I had to find a window through which I could climb. There were always different ones left open by the janitor.

As if he always knew that someone would come around.

As if he wanted to share the magical halls that he could experience every day with people like me.

Or he was just a slightly incompetent, clumsy clot.

I felt myself becoming more attracted to things that objectively gave me feelings.

I figured that subjective feelings hurt too much.

Whenever a feeling is connected to a certain thing or person and only to that thing or person, the feeling becomes fragile and breakable.

But if it's a potentially omnipresent one, one you put forth yourself, one you can feel while walking through an old and forgotten tunnel just as much as during tiredly sitting in front of your vacated physics classroom, it feels safe and comfortable.

I was craving comfort, for the first time in my life.

It felt like a revelation that shook the world to its core.

-

Over time I started looking for different ways home.

I knew I didn't like walking by crowded streets. I knew I didn't like walking through parks. I knew I didn't want to risk getting lost in some unknown neighbourhoods. I knew I was scared to walk through narrow alleys at night.

The perfect solution I found was the brightly lit, straight bikeway leading through the middle of the whole city, directly to where the pathway up our hill begins.

-

There was this giant supermarket right next to it.

I had asked my mom about it, she had told me they would probably close it down soon as it was really old.

All the lights were out at night.

I cautiously wandered past the premises.

And noticed that the location, the most left alone of left alone places, the one I had been searching for for days, was right here.

Right there, next to the run-down white concrete shopping building.

An unfilled parking garage that was meant to be for lonesome travellers such as the one that I have become.

As I entered the empty driveway, sudden thoughts greeted my headspace.

What if I got murdered right now?

That'd be pretty bad, right?

I tried to be logical about it. My whole journey so far had been reasonably logical.

I hadn't written out a will yet. That'd be a problem.

I could cut my finger and write it on the wall with my blood.

But I thought that I'd probably bleed out before I could get close to getting murdered.

I could write it down on my phone, but I'd rather have millions that the state receives after my death instead of my widowed mother and for them to use it to produce weaponry and sell it for profit to sketchy warlords than write a will on my phone.

I don't think that'd count as an official document anyway.

I kept on going to eventually reach the top of the parking garage.

To be honest, if by the time that I reached it, I decided I wanted to just kill myself so no murderer could do it - it might've actually worked.

It was a three-story structure and if I landed properly I could probably make it.

-

By the time I actually got to the top, I realized that my thoughts really hadn't been logical at all.

Humankind probably wouldn't have gotten to this point in terms of social and economical development, nay, they would have perished millions of years ago, if everyone had thought like me from the moment I entered up until the moment I stood on the edge of this roof.

So I sat down and just focused on not quitting breathing for a while.

And then decided to go back to acting irrationally for just a moment.

I took my phone out of my pocket and dialled a strangely familiar number.

It went straight to voicemail.

"Hello, Linda. You're in, like, Romania right now. That's cool."

I stood up and marched alongside invisible lines close to the edges of the calm and quiet construction.

"I'm on top of a parking garage right now. It's quite late, I should probably be home already."

I sat down again.

"I thought about how bad it would be if I got murdered right now - don't worry - I'm not. You might have already noticed that. Anyway, then I thought about how I haven't written a will yet. Is that something teenagers do? Write a will? Maybe we should do that when you're back. That'd be nice. Real nice."

I let my back fall onto the coarse, cold ground.

The irrational headache that had occupied my brain slowly withered away. All these stupid thoughts about murderers, wills and humankind finally jumped off the building. They were somewhere else entirely.

"I thought a lot about a lot of things lately."

I felt this weird, aching pain in my chest when the message she had sent to Pedro popped up in my mind.

I took a long break and gazed at the sky.

It felt like every single star in the galaxy must've been visible to the human eye that night.

"I never noticed how pretty starry nights could be, Linda."

I took a deep breath.

"I never noticed that you were pretty."

I hung up but kept staring to undermine the constant heartache.