set those sails

there's a key to every door, that's what our hero found

Click.

It was less intense than a full-on whiplash, the kind you'd get when you're supposed to be falling asleep but you feel more like you're falling, period. You know, that flash of air-time that was different from waking up from a nightmare, with that distinct life-or-death fear making a world of meaning out of a split-second. This click of sorts he'd just experienced wasn't like jolting awake from a nightmare, it just kind of happened. It was more like a quick snap of the fingers, or flipping on a light switch. Innocent enough, but it was the kind of click that could change the temperature of the room, of its inhabitants, could change a mind, could halt the run-on sentences Jason had thought in for as long as he could remember.

Like the click-flash of a Polaroid, the image of that moment spilled out and waited patiently for clarity; Jason had come to not one, but two, stark realizations.

One—he didn't understand his father.

Two—God could probably stand to turn off the flash, huh?

Context: Jason was sitting on a fire escape outside his apartment, a joint balanced carefully between his fingers, trying to peek at the stars past the ferocious glow of the city between his roommates, their legs dangling off the ledge. It was a balmy Friday night in early March, and at this point in their college careers they were all too bored of dorm parties, too tired to actually go out, but too bored to not do anything. Jason welcomed the chance to clear his mind—with graduation only a few months away, he had a lot on his plate, and he was never one to eat when working.

Ben and Marnie were both in the same boat. Overworked and burning out and showing it, the trio had set a very strict "no school talk" rule for their thrilling Friday night plans. Thrilling plans, meaning, smoking weed out of their 10th floor apartment and not changing out of their zip-up hoodies and sweatpants.

It started with not Jason, not Marnie, but Ben—as he did with most rules, was the first to break this one.

"You know, this might be one of the last nights we can do something like this," he'd said on a long inhale, spewing the warm smoke into the cold of night.

Marnie groaned, head rolling back and feet kicking the air. "Why would you even say something like that?"

"I've always been a sentimental," said Ben.

"Don't lie," said Jason.

"I hate it when people talk like that," Marnie continued, "and make me remember that we're graduating and becoming adults and shit."

"No school talk," reminded Jason, taking the blunt from Ben and taking a long, practiced drag.

"No after-school talk either," said Ben, "if one more person asks me what my plans are for after graduation, I'm going to lose my fucking mind, or whatever's left of it, anyway."

Marnie shook her head. "That's not what I meant, and you both know it."

"Then what did you mean?"

Both Ben and Jason turned their heads to look at her after she took a few long moments to answer. Marnie was pretty in this light. Jason wished he'd had his camera, but being back through the window sitting in its bag by the door, it was too far away. The light of the city was catching her afro, her black painted nails through the smoke of the blunt, her wistful expression that wasn't quite sad, wasn't quite happy, in a way that made it seem like all of New York wanted to hear what she had to say, right now. It would've been a good portrait, if Jason was into that kind of thing. Maybe it would've cheered her up, out of this funk she'd been in, they'd all kind of been in tonight.