cigarette daydreams

/11

Karden didn't know what he was doing anymore.

In class, he sat beside Amber Delaney and talked about price tags and glitter. After class, he sat next to Connor and talked about sports teams and the missed physics homework. At night, he sat next to Lydi Stern and never said a word.

And yet, those were the most meaningful conversations he'd had all day.

And so it continued. The rest of the week passed without Karden hearing Lydi speak a single word either to him or to anyone else. It wasn't a strike on the English language. It wasn't a statement. It was just Lydi, and for some reason, beyond all reckoning, he liked it.

She didn't speak. She didn't need to.

He smoked beside her, and she played with a cigarette in her fingers. He had never seen her light one, but she put one in her mouth sometimes. She had told him on the first day he'd talked to her that it was too late for her - he had assumed she had meant she was already addicted.

He was presently at a loss.

On Saturday, he did homework. It occupied him for maybe half the morning, and since it hadn't snowed all day, he didn't have to shovel. Which meant he was free to just sit and think.

He didn't like thinking these days. All his thoughts, when left to their own devices, looped back to the accident. And when that happened, they crashed and burned, just like bodies in a car crash.

Just like the bodies in the car crash - 

Shattered glass embedded in his skin. The wails of his little brother. And the worst - the dead, cold silence of his father.

And then his brother.

And then the world turned to ash, and Karden nearly fell silent too.

For some reason, though, he stayed.

And every day, he wondered why he hadn't fallen away too. Why the world hadn't let him go. And he hadn't come up with an answer, so he could only draw one conclusion: there was no reason. There would never be a reason. Because something meaningless never has any reasons for anything it does.

Karden felt like he was leaking again.

Lydi kept asking him to open up. But how could he open up with this? If he opened his mouth, the car accident would screech out of his mouth, along with the smell of burning rubber and the taste of copper in his mouth.

Karden's grip tightened, and he heard a crack. A trickle of dark blue oozed out onto his skin.

He had broken his pen.

He stared at it for a long, desperate second.

Then, a shuddering shout ripped itself from his throat.

He threw the pen across the room, then swiped his hands across his desk and knocked all his books and papers to the floor. They landed in a clatter. His mother shouted to see if he was okay. He didn't reply.

He never wanted to speak again.

He knew who he needed to see.