Paper Hearts

c a r t e r

zachary carter
❝ the damaged ❞

there had only ever been two people in ramona's simple life who had called her pathetic. it was a shame how she ended up wasting her tears over them both. the first was zachary carter.

a little over three months after falling into post-oliver depression, ramona was—as always—sitting on the bleachers at lunch when zach decided to sit down next her and interrupted her thought bubble.

"ramona, right?" he had asked, "still pining for the exchange student, i see."

he joined her up on the bleachers every day after. zach got on ramona's nerves often, she'd end up punching him all the time, but that helped distract her from her oliver depression. the bruises that occasionally appears on his skin that seemed to be mapped out like constellations also helped her forget. for a while anyway.

it felt nice to have someone to worry over other than herself, and zachary carter was a puzzle she didn't mind solving. wanting to solve zach meant that the time they spent together was mostly in silence, with him spacing out and staring beyond the present and her observing.
solving him meant being near him and that meant that she had to get used to the smell of cigarettes, since he somehow always had a packet with him.

ramona had tried to tell him to stop smoking, his response always made her fingers twitch with an urge to punch him. and she can still recall that conversation today.

"are you done with that?"

"you got a problem ma'am?"

"yes, actually. it's killing you,"

"yeah, well. i don't see how that's a bad thing."

"and it's killing me too, and everyone else around you."

"i get that a lot, i'm toxic see?"

"you're pretty morbid, you know that?"

"you ask a lot of questions, you know that?"

broken hearts can be fixed, zach had helped stick her fractured heart back together throughout the post-oliver depression. broken people can be fixed, he had indeed given her a reason to smile when she woke up in the mornings that overruled the sadness of remembering that oliver was no longer there.

broken things have a chance of being whole again, damaged things—not so much.