BY THE TIME Lindy's spring break came to an end, she was dreading having to go back to school. Being back at Weatherwax every weekday meant that she couldn't see Kurt as often, not even after he was done working his job as a janitor at a local doctor's office. They had spent so much time together that week that it would be foreign for her to not see him at every waking moment.
The night before Lindy's first day back, she and Kurt sat beneath his bridge, watching the sun set lazily on the horizon, seeming to blend into the Earth in an orange hue. They had brought a blanket to sit upon, and Lindy was stretched out with her head in Kurt's lap, reading aloud from William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch.
"'You were not there for the beginning,'" Lindy read, her hands clutched around Kurt's battered copy of the book. "'You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.'"
Kurt was running his fingers through Lindy's hair, soothed by the sound of her voice.
"Burroughs is wrong, you know," he commented.
Lindy tilted her head back to meet Kurt's eyes. "About?" she inquired, closing the novel and placing it on her stomach.
"Us not being here for the end. I mean, maybe the rest of humanity won't last, but you and I, we will."
Lindy chuckled. One thing she had learned about Kurt was his 'us versus them' mentality. He had found a steadfast partnership in her and had every intention on isolating both her and himself from the rest of the world that he declared was absolutely fucked.
"How so?" Lindy asked, fighting a twitching smile.
Kurt smirked knowingly. "I'm working on a plan. Give it some time. But you'll see. When everything else goes to shit, I'm counting on us being the last two standing."
Lindy sat up, her dark hair falling like a curtain around her face. She propped her body with one arm, leaning into Kurt closely.
"Sounds like heaven to me," she said softly through a smile.
"Heaven, in the midst of my hell, is you and a guitar," Kurt said solemnly. Quickly, she pecked him on the cheek, before laying back down and opening the book again.
In a week's time, Lindy had grown used to Kurt speculating on how his life was an utter mess. It concerned her, and she wanted to help, but he would always follow up with a remark about how her existence was enough to drag him out of the inescapable darkness that had consumed his brain. Granted, she had her own shit too, but becoming a beacon of golden light in Kurt's life had seemingly been the best thing that had ever happened to her.
_______
The next morning, Lindy grudgingly woke up for school and got ready. Now that Trae had left with his car, she was forced to take the bus, a dank and harrowing place that she did not enjoy spending time in. On the ride to her school, where she sat alone with her head pressed against a dirtied glass window, she thought of Kurt and what he was doing at that precise second.
After her arrival, she trudged into the building, walking through several hallways before getting to her locker. She was greeted by the face of Julianna Smith, who was clutching her books anxiously to her chest and waiting beside Lindy's locker like her feet had been glued there. Lindy was surprised to see her classmate at first, but her stomach sank when she realized what Julianna was about to say.
"Did you finish the project?" Julianna asked anxiously, her eyes wide.
Lindy bit the inner corner of her lip, feeling a million tons of guilt crash upon her shoulders. Of course, she had forgotten the Hamlet project. She had been so busy seeing Kurt that it had been cast aside, totally forgotten in her school bag.
