It's been so long since I've done a part! Where were we again? Oh, yeah.
I rush out the door, and continue down the street, where I meet Xania.
"Did you remember the stuff?" I ask.
"Yep. I've got your bag right here," Xania slides her backpack around to her front and grabs the enchanted purse my mother handcrafted for me. She gives it to me, then grabs out my laptop. I take the laptop and we take a left and walk down that street, until we come upon a small building on a nearly empty plot, covered head to toe in graffiti. My graffiti.
My home.
I walk around to the back, taking Xania in one hand, and my laptop in the other. "Welcome to my home."
"Don't you live back with the rest of your family?" Xania steps through the door while I hold it open for her.
"I live there, yes, but it's never quite been my home." I close the door behind me, and let Xania look around. To the opposite of the one room building, lies a fouton, laid out to make a bed. To the right, a fridge and a space heater. The left, an elaborate computer setup, with a missing piece. I let Xania sit on my messy fouton bed, while I plug my laptop into the monitor network.
"I should explain." I sit next to Xania, my hand on her knee, my head on her shoulder. "Living with my family is usually a laid-back experience. I usually find a way through every situation and make it good for me. Sometimes, though, it can be absolute hell.
I search for meaning in this world with great difficulty. I yell into the void 'Why am I on this planet? What purpose do I serve?' But I never seem to find an answer. So instead, I try to find out what kind of person I am, so that I may find what role I play, and make my search that much easier. But then pressures come from all sides. My parents pressure me to be more productive in school. Most of my friends I've lost to stupid things. My last girlfriend was my life, and she left me because she couldn't deal with how these pressures were changing me. I suppose it's not living with my family that's hell, exactly, but whenever I came here, whenever I hooked myself into the internet and let myself get lost in the digital world, I felt at peace. I had found my calling, my purpose. I was meant to build my life on the internet. And build it I did. I've spent more nights here on the computers then at the house. I've built my life here. It's my home."
"Some of that, I did not understand in the slightest." Xania chuckles. "But I understood enough to understand why this place is your home." She moves my head to face her. "It's where you feel safe. It's where you feel happiest. It's where you feel loved."
"I..." I stare into Xania's technicolor eyes. She closes them and turns to me. She leans in and our lips meet. I gradually close my eyes too, and lean into the kiss. When we break apart, I hear Xania say just what I needed to hear.
"I love you, too. Even if you change, I'll still love you."
YOU ARE READING
The Others
Teen FictionOriginally a sequel to a book I wrote passionately as a child, I decided that "The Others" should be it's own book, and I never ended up publishing that other book. It has switching P.O.V.s, and is written as if just a playback of a voice recording...
