Meant to be Broken [boyxboy] [Watty Awards 2012]

Chapter Four

Ives woke up on Monday morning with a headache. Kylle was annoyed with him the whole way to school, for making them two minutes late – a problem that she easily solved by speeding.

"There's been rumors of a senior prank happening today!" she told him excitedly. "I don't want to miss it!"

"What's the prank?" he asked, his eyes closed in an effort to hide from the glaring September sun.

"No idea," she answered. "Some of the guys are doing it, but they wouldn't tell anyone else. They didn't want to get caught, I think."

That made sense to Ives, but he didn't say anything until they parked in the student parking lot at school. Kylle practically ran into the building, with Ives tagging along behind. Once he got inside, he could clearly see what the prank had been.

The hallway to the library near the main entrance of the building was closed off, guarded by Mrs. Sattar, one of the hall monitors. Through the windows on the heavy wooden doors, Ives could see a wall of stacked books.

"They took all the books from the library!" he heard someone exclaim to a friend. "That's so genius!"

Ives had always thought filling the locker rooms with frogs or mice or crickets would have been fun, but he had to admit that what the seniors had done was amusing. Maybe he would have been more amused if his head wasn't pounding. He hoped the Advil he'd taken would kick in soon.

The hallway remained closed off for the rest of the day. Sitting alone again at lunch, Ives overheard the conversation at a nearby table. He was curious, so he listened.

"That's who did it?" a girl asked excitedly.

"Yeah, and they were arrested," a guy added.

"Arrested? What for?" another guy demanded.

"Breaking into the school at five A.M," the first guy explained.

"That's horrible!" the girl exclaimed.

"I think they should be putting all the books back," the second guy said. "I saw the librarians doing it. They were crying. Make the kids do it, and make that their punishment."

"If only," the girl said with a snort.

Ives turned his attention back to his lunch, but he agreed that the punishment seemed harsh. Oh well, as long as it wasn't him, he supposed.

That weekend Kylle somehow managed to get herself a fake driver's license, and Ives' dependance on alcohol grew. A year ago he would have been worried about what his parents would do if they found out, but, with his mother acting less responsible than her teenaged children, he really didn't care. She'd probably be disappointed, but he'd never find himself being grounded.

He didn't care if he ended up being alcoholic before he was thirty. All he wanted was escape. He was losing his grip on reality, and he didn't care at all.

He even started doing what Kylle had suggested, flirting. Winking and smiling were beyond him with the mood he was constantly in, so he just outright told people when he found them attractive, using the simple phrase, "You're pretty cute." The results were oddly amusing to him. One girl warned him that she had pepper spray in her purse. A football player almost punched him. A cheerleader and her soccer-player boyfriend tried to get him to be part of a threesome. Another girl tried to ask him to the homecoming dance.

But he wasn't trying to get a date or a relationship or even sex. He just wanted to be amused. It was another way he had found to escape from a repetitive, boring, sad life.

It almost made him feel happy.