Nightshade

Grace's Tea Cup

     June 12th, 2017

     She wakes up with a seemingly life-threatening daze enveloping both her eyes and her soul. With her having become a relentless insomniac, she has missed school again, after a night of no sleep.

    Life for her seems to be getting worse and worse. From her perspective, she already hadn't had much of a life. However, after the whole community having a minor social collapse, life in general feels much more hopeless. It had been such a tragedy; the loss of someone so young and with so much potential. Her and her sister had unashamedly cried their eyes out at the memorial service, along with their family and so many others.

     The only thing worse than thinking about Arthur is facing Soline, who is devastated beyond words. She has been out of school for the majority of the last month and a half, and has failing grades in her classes for the first time in her life. Soline has not yet let go of her feeling that she is at fault for not helping her brother, when she had partially known how he felt.

     Grace rolls out of bed, and walks into the other room, her body containing a sensation that could only be described as misty. On the table she sees a bright blue mug with a note written on lined paper next to it. The cup contains chilled tea with two tea bags inside of it. The note beside it reads...

     Gracie,

I know you're going through a hard time right now, 

and remember that you can talk  to me whenever you want to.

-It also might be a good idea to drink this...

     ~Mom

"...may as well," she thinks, wandering over the the stove to re-heat the tea in a saucepan.

     A few minutes later she is drinking the tea, while letting the effect of life itself wash over her. She enjoys the process of deeply, physically sensing life's details, such as the flavor of the herbs in the tea bag, the way the waters swirls within its container, and the way one is physically heated by its warmth from the inside of one's throat. She wished that having this heat inside of her would not only last longer, but would actually cure coldness in the heart.

     She then goes into her mother's bedroom, and after leafing through various items, she finds what she has come to crave more and more of; a pipe of weed. Getting high had started out as a way to look cool and have a certain image, but as of late, it has become more of a coping mechanism to lighten up the intensity of life.

     She looks up at the clock, and plays a familiar game with herself. The game of thinking, as a braid is subconsciously being formed and then undone again in her disheveled hair; "...if I get to school right now, I'd be there for History..." 

     More time then passes, and she thinks to herself the reoccurring mind pattern with a sultry, glassy-eyed gaze; "if I left now... I could get there for 6th period," ...but she never does.