The Imperfect Whistles of the Wind

one

disclaimer: this work contains mature language, heavy referral to mental illness.. don't let your eight year old read this unless you want them saying things like insufferable prick or vile cunt

you've been warned

deds to ThePandaWriter for the beautiful cover

🔗

Two days after totalling her car, enduring a nervous breakdown, and potentially losing her shit, Aven sat at the lone table in the far left corner of the cafeteria, light years away from her old spot that she had claimed - to her satisfaction. In ninth grade, when she walked into the crowded caf - flanked by her friends - and taken that center table by storm, she'd felt an overwhelming sense of pride. Pride, that now ceased to exist . The light overhead her was flickering, and the table was grungy, as if the custodian hadn't touched it for a good while. Her turkey sandwich had never tasted this sad.

While name calling and curb-stomping were bad, exclusion seemed to the worst form of antagonism. With the names and abuse, you're treated as a human being - a degraded human being, but never the less. When you're excluded, you're cast aside, forgotten, to a point where you begin to question your own existence.

Weirdly enough, Aven didn't feel excluded, she felt like a science project. Something to give a hypothesis to and watch for the outcome. She had been used to attention, which comes with getting a 3.8 GPA, being a 3-time State ranked dancer, and having big, expressive eyes as green as grass. She was used to being pursued for tutoring and getting lewd comments from sleazy guys, not taunts like "freak, "crazy", or Aven's personal favorite "psychopath".

"Enjoying your lunch psycho?" A familiar voice hissed from behind her. Dylan Stevenson stepped into her field of view, with a hot dog in hand, and a smirk on his face. "Make sure you got enough to feed your little demons too." Dylan had asked Aven out a few months back, and after she rejected him, he made sure he took time out of his miserable life to mess with hers.

"Dylan, do you have any brain cells left? Maybe you should off those ones too - they aren't doing you any favors." He hardly looked bothered.

"Don't you have a new car from Daddy to wreck? Oh wait," Dylan let out a faux gasp. "That's right. The tap has run dry, and poor little Aven is forced to take public transit."

She shoved her middle finger in his face as he chuckled, making his way back to his table.

Aven noticed that she felt more alive than she had in the past three days. It had come to the point where Dylan Stevenson had to - unintentionally - remind her that she was a living, breathing human being that had something to live for, other than to fall into a deep depression and fade away with every breath.

A bell is ringing, and with all the commotion in her thoughts, she's doesn't know if it's the lunch bell, but Aven gets up anyway. She walked mindlessly towards the outdoor quad - stone benches that encircle a miniature willow tree. A girl and two guys sat smoking on a bench farthest from the door and on the ground in front of the bench, respectively. They looked as depressed as Aven felt. One of the boys, a lanky sophmore with shaggy black hair, drank in her expression.

"You wanna hit?" He says, holding out the joint after what feels like forever.

Aven declines. She almost laughs and gives them a lengthy talk on the long term effects of smoking, but she realizes she's no better. Aven herself was drained and sad and not in desperate need of her brain cells anyway.

So she sits quietly with them, and stays there even after they're gone. Aven's fully aware she's skipping class, but she focuses on the cool breeze that blew all around her, taking away from the intense Californian sunshine. A calm wave ran through her body after every blow of the wind, taking her mind off of everything, and introducing her to a false sense of happiness, swallowing her fears and drowning her sorrows for a while. Aven pictured herself as an eagle soaring above the clouds. Up, and up, and up, only to be brought back to land, starting from ground zero, which had sent her flying away in the first place.