It All Started With Him

:: 6 :: The Woe Is Already Over

Remember when I said that the last chapter was a happy chapter for you to read? At least for the part of Wes and I? This chapter has a different vibe. Think Noah Kahan if he were to do a time lapse and be a nineties grunge band.

****

"Come to the game with me? I mean I'm technically at the game but you know what I mean," Wes says when I see him again at the end of the Biology class. His eyes don't look so sunken or dilated from his addiction. In my mind I try to calculate what being sober looks like. I don't ask, and he doesn't tell.

"I have," I started to say something, but it appears that when it comes to Wes, my thinking span becomes shorter than it should be, and the excuses become adversely affected.

"Homework? Meth?" The last word hit me hard enough as his eyes closed for a moment before opening them again. "Imagine actually having fun and not feeling guilty about it," he adds as Anna walks by, looking at though she had wanted to say something, only to change her mind instead.

"My mental health doesn't scream anything else," I tell him with a deep dimpled smile. He must have over skipped the point of my comment as he slides a little baggie into my hand. I knew what it, I knew why he gave it to me.

"I don't. I can't," he says before waking away. It wasn't the fact he couldn't, it was the fact he wouldn't. He's stuck in a world where people who aren't addicted themselves would have no problem judging him. He's a common denominator for people who don't want help, but only for someone who understands him.

****

I have two choices. I could either say fuck it and drive home to count another day of Anna and myself not talking or watching anything sexual I can find or go to the game.

Now I know what you're thinking. He got high as shit. A Crystal Queen. However, no. It's not like that. Here's what happened. I took a selfie. Posted on my Instagram, tagged it as day two sober. Then I went to the game. Honestly, I'm not sure it has been two days sober. I hadn't kept track.

I left the game and went to the gym. Fitness center to be exact, so technically I was still waiting for Wes either way you want to look at it.

Shortly after I received a text from Anna. The first one I had received from her in days. My confidence level bounced back and forth between opening it or not opening it. A guitar riff from the track I had been listening to speeding up as I sat down and finally opened up the text.

Anna: We should talk about....

My only thought was wondering what she thought we should talk about. Instead of texting, I place my earbuds in and FaceTime her instead.

Her recently dyed magenta hair and almond shaped face comes to life on my phone screen. I think of how much I miss seeing her to talk with. In my maze of thoughts I think of what I want to say, but I'm glued to my brain, nothing to reality wants to happen.

"Okay then. What did you want to talk about?" I ask her as I shift my attention to something that I am attracted to. Isn't that how high school gyms work? Without anonymity I'm back to paying attention to Anna.

"I think maybe we should stop talking or something, ya know?" Her voice rings through the FaceTime app. Who says that to someone who has been a friend for so long? Friends fight, don't they? However, with what she said, it shook me to the core. The environmental impact of this situation became harder to quantify as we stabilize our "not talking or something."

"Anna, please. We've been friends since we've been kids and I got my thumb stuck in the swing chain," I tell her. The only wording I could muster up. The memory resurfacing as I recall how I was using the swing at recess as most kids do. I was done using it, but I wouldn't move my hand in time, leaving gravity and my thumb to not work together, resulting in my thumb getting stuck in the chain. It was Anna who noticed that I was stuck and went to get a teacher. I don't remember crying. I just sat there calmly waiting instead.