The Art of Life

I, Jonah Hastings, was an addict.

And, like all addicts, I needed to feed my addiction regularly or succumb to the nasty symptoms of withdrawal. Suffice it to say, foaming at the mouth and twitching spastically like someone had sat me on an electric fence was so not a good look.

It had been what, at least six hours since my last hit? However long ago it was, I was definitely overdue for more.

Driven by need, I parked my car up in front of Coffee-licious and practically mowed a couple of teenage boys down in my haste to get through the door and into the queue of people waiting for their daily doses. I ignored the hostile glares of the boys still staggering in the entryway; it wasn't my fault they'd been dawdling.

It took eight torturously long minutes before I was served, and another three before a jumbo cup was placed in front of me at the end of the counter. Breathing out a contented sigh, I lifted the cup to my lips - and scalded the entire inside of my mouth. I sputtered, trying to swallow the giant sip I'd taken in one go. When I finally got it down, I had no tastebuds left and looked like I'd been on a crying binge. I blinked the tears from my eyes and, unperturbed, took another sip, only this time a much smaller one.

I'd been going to Coffee-licious almost every day since I was fourteen and had my little routine down, pat. I picked my cup up and made a beeline for my favourite spot in the homey café. In the event that it was taken, I also had three back up seating arrangements. Fortunately it was a Tuesday, the least busy day of the week for the café and I was in luck. The worn out couch in the far corner was free, so I sunk into the plaid covered cushions and swung my bag up onto the low table in front of me. I took another delicious sip of my coffee and rummaged around in my bag until I came up with my battered copy of A Tale of Two Cities.

Assigned reading sucked, and it sucked even more when you had Mr. Rhodes for your AP English teacher and he insisted on reading something he called "A literary work of art." More like a literary work of boredom. I'd had the damn thing for two weeks now and hadn't got past the third page. I was inclined to believe that if teachers threw out books by authors like James Patterson or John Marsden, they'd start seeing As on the report cards instead of Es and Fs. Even Christopher Paolini would have had more of an affect on me than Charles Dickens. I mean, a story about the French Revolution, really? We were in America, for God's sake. The least we could do was read a book that was directly related to our country.

I tucked my legs up underneath me and opened the dreaded book. I'd had English last period today, and Mr. Rhodes was none too pleased that I had no idea who Charles Darnay was, given that he was apparently one of the main protagonists in the story. So, sitting here in my second favourite place on earth, I was going to make a dent in this so-called literary work of art if it killed me.

"Heelllllooooo?"

Startled by the sudden and unexpected noise, I snapped my head up out of my book and gasped at the person standing in front of me. It even took me several moments to register that it was Darcy, my best friend. It took me a few moments more to realise I was on page 201, and that my jumbo cup of coffee was empty.

"Wow," he said, shoving his hand into his jeans pocket. It came back out clutching his phone. "I have to get a picture of this. Jonah Hastings reading a book. An actual book! The world must be coming to an end."

He clicked away with the small camera on his phone, smiling manically.

"Stop it," I grumbled, moving a stray piece of hair out of my eyes. The strands were a mixture of blond, red, several shades of brown, and black. I'd dyed most of it myself, and it was more effort than it was worth to maintain all of the colours considering my hair reached my lower back. My only saving grace was that my hair was ramrod straight and there was lots of it, so the colours were strikingly beautiful next to each other. As for the neon purple streaks in my bangs, well, that was another story, and I was still waiting for my hairdresser to okay the undoing of it. Turns out you can only use so many chemicals in your hair at any one time and I'd reached my limit. Any more, and it'd start snapping off at the roots. Obviously I'd take bright purple streaks over bald spots any day.