In the Melancholy Moonlight, Part 5: Dark Matter

Chapter 269: Christmas Lights

A/N: Necessary disclaimer that underage drinking is illegal and excessive drinking is detrimental to your health and yes I know it's only September, sorry that this Christmas chapter is several months too early, it's driving me a little crazy too, my AirBuds has suffered this week and I am full of shame. The Straight No Chaser version of the song at the end has been played 22 times this week. The Green Day song Claire sings is "She," by the way, if anyone wants to give it a listen. Anyway, enjoy! <3

🩵💛❤️💜🩷

CLAIRE:

The second my last final was done, I biked back to my dorm as fast as I could, grabbed my pre-packed suitcase, tossed it in my car, and hit the road. I stopped at my favorite coffee shop for their tallest cup of black coffee, then made my way to the I-5 South, a stack of CDs on my passenger seat ready for my listening pleasure on the six-hour drive. I'd done all of my Christmas shopping at the record store I'd found downtown, and I'd grabbed a handful of CDs for myself as well over the course of the quarter. I had Dookie and Nimrod by Green Day, Everywhere by Tim McGraw, as well as Trio, which featured Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt. And, reluctantly, Merry Christmas by Mariah Carey, since it was December. I started with Green Day, though, and shouted out my frustrations with the world as I tore off in the direction of home.

As close to home as any place could be without Lucy, anyway.

I couldn't wait to be back, if for no other reason than I was sick of living with Lorna. I fled Davis like a bat out of hell so that I wouldn't have to see her again until 1998.

Even though we'd gotten off to a rocky start, with Lorna telling the whole floor something about me that was supposed to be private and all, I'd really tried to give our potential friendship a second chance. I ended up thinking her boyfriend Eli was swell, we became fast friends, and I did my best to understand why such a great person was willingly dating someone like Lorna.

Three months later, and I was still at a loss.

She'd told me on move-in day that she was a bit obsessed with her Game Boy — "obsessed" didn't even begin to cover it, and "a bit obsessed" was an outright lie. She played it late into the night every night, except for the rare nights every couple of weeks that she was cramming for a test she had the next day. Her life appeared to be one stressful cycle of stacking stars and studying, though she did far more of the former than the latter.

And that was okay. Really, it was. Sure, I hated never really having true alone time in my dorm, it bugged me that she was almost always there (her boyfriend always visited our dorm room, not the other way around), but Isabella and Cindy were always willing to let me hang out in their room when I couldn't handle the never-ending clicking of Game Boy buttons. I understood, though, at first. Lorna was on her own for the first time, and she was struggling with the independence of it all, that was all fair and valid.

I understood the need to have something to do, the desire to have a reliable source of comfort. I'd been listening to the same CDs on repeat for the whole quarter, just to have something consistent in the midst of such a big life change. She had her Game Boy, I had my CD player, it made sense.

I understood even when she started skipping class to lie in bed playing her Game Boy. She told me she was depressed, and I told her I understood and expressed my sympathy. I did my best to make sure she was still eating and getting at least a little sunshine every day.

I started taking issue with it when her grades were not as good as she hoped they would be, and she started complaining to me about it, apparently baffled by her failure. She complained to me about how her homework didn't make sense. She complained to me that her textbooks didn't make sense. She'd skip class and then complain to me about how much studying she had to do the night before an exam. She complained about every aspect of academics, unable or unwilling to confront the fact that her failure was due to her own actions — or, rather, her inactions.