Hope

Chapter 1

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story. - Hamilton

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2017

The summer was hot, the heat bleeding in through pink curtains to cast rays of candy onto the half blue, half purple room thats stuffed with teddy bears, photos and concert paraphernalia . Theres a soft lull of a ukulele filling the air-- giggles and mumbled jokes the lyrics. It's the end of April, a picture-perfect afternoon.

I'm fifteen and a half years old today, but I feel a lot older; bright eyed and kind with the wit of a genius. I'm absentmindedly fiddling with the wrapper of a bag of chips from the gas station around the corner of my house that  I had traveled to through the alleyways like my own version of 40 days and 40 nights beneath the blistering sun, staring down at my new notebook I had bought with pocketed lunch money specifically to chronicle the rest of my high school experience instead of randomly doodling on the back of English notes. I still would, but maybe this would give me an air of mystery I so crave. The ukulele player is Mara Campbell sat across from me on the bed— a girl a year younger I had met just before the previous year started during an icebreaker exercise in our shared band class. She plays the clarinet. She's talented, and funny. I like her, as my own friends do in their brief interactions within our small and clustered hallways. I play percussion, though mostly I sit  on the floor hiding from our teacher and talking with our classmates,  routinely from years of never actually participating in class.

Mara puts the ukulele down, giddy with words spoken with a lisp due to the braces on her teeth. "Can my friend eat lunch with us tomorrow?"

I tilt my head, considering. "Why?" And it might come out a bit defensive-- but Mara is my friend. Ive never liked a change in routine, and am fine with enforcing a hand should I need to. But  I trust her. As far as I can throw her, at least.

She was very light.

"Because she doesn't have any friends."

Theres a sick pleasure worming around my stomach, as I sit up a little straighter with narrowed eyes levelled at the slowly shrinking back brunette. It's a feeling derived from being the overlord-- having to be asked for something other friend groups wouldn't need permission for. A position I have worked hard for. A position no one else is aware I hold consciously. And it's my choice whether or not this new girl gets to spend the end of her 9th school year alone or not. But I am nothing if not a benevolent God. So I agree, around the slurpee thats sweating onto my bare thighs, and as more music fills my room I wonder what shall be my first written entry. I'll leave it for something interesting. 

And as dawn turns to dusk and back comes judgement day for the new girl. 

Im slumping in my chair at the speckled duo desk , my eyes heavy from the warmth of my school sweater and lulled gutlessly into that lovely little cross between consciousness and dream by the off-beat sound of pencil scratching against paper. One of my earbuds is tucked beneath my cheek, the tinny love song filling my chest with something that must be hope. Hope for someone to adore me so much that they can't help but yearn for me in every aspect of their life. 

I know affection, have seen it and been given such a sickening amount of chances to study it by people watching, or character studying the grotesque displays about the school.

In general, I avoid it.

My younger-older brother Owen and his girlfriend's obsessive tendencies had always made me ill, the way they adored each other to the degree that it often blinded them to the world at large - a thing like that, such a powerful incomprehensible illogical chemical reaction that could distract the mind so easily, was one of my greatest fears (really my greatest fear). I've had feelings before, I'm not a monster. But I much more preferred things like the adrenaline spike of stealing, or the soft bubble of my neat four walls after a day of making a wreck in someone else's house. Anything else I often found annoying.