He'd fallen asleep with his arms wrapped around me again. The murky coloured cast around his wrist had been removed, but an ace bandage was still coiled around it because Chris had told him it would still be really sore for a while. I didn't get what an ace bandage would exactly do to help, but he was the one that was going to be a doctor so it was better not to question it unless you wanted to be bombarded with an hour-long lecture complete with PowerPoints and diagrams. I couldn't go through that a third time.
He smelled like freshly cut grass and pencil shavings. Like the beach, or maybe even literal Autumn. Watermelon candies too, the scent that wafted throughout his dorm room the first time I'd met him, standing at his counter and eating cereal while wearing a decently clean white tank top paired with ripped black jeans. It seemed like yesterday when he'd hung on my chest and smiled bigger than I'd ever seen him smile. Yet the intoxicating whiff of alcohol continuously ruined the memory.
"Have you ever wanted to do something so totally insane you know you'll get busted but it would be so worth it?" Dan sniffed and pushed off my chest, rolling off the couch and standing at his window. The sky was clear, exception of a couple clouds, yet the ground was still drenched with rainwater and overflowing with a burst pipe from the fountain in the middle of the yard.
"I want to do something great, it'll never be forgotten." He concluded, staring at me then over to everyone else in the kitchen. They'd been trying to construct a paper mâché brain for Chris' anatomy project. It wasn't going as well as anyone expected.
PJ pulled a strip of gooey newspaper from his hair and slapped it on the front lobe, trying to smooth out the air bubbles left behind. "Well what do you wanna do? Pranks seem like they'd be our speciality."
"I don't know," Dan muttered and placed a hand on the smudged glass "I don't know."
He stared out the window while Cat frantically tried to hold up the right side of the newspaper brain as it collapsed in on itself with no structure to hold it up. The next 30 seconds were filled with screaming and the pain of loss of a full hours' worth of time dedicated to building a brain with no structure. I felt bad for laughing.
"It's like a metaphor for my life." PJ whimpered sadly and tried to squish the goopy newsprint back in a distinctive form with no success.
"Everything's a metaphor for your life," Chris giggled happily, despite the possibly failed grade seeping across Dan's table and dripping through the cracks in the surface and onto the floor "you point to the garbage truck daily and say it's a metaphor for your life."
"You're a metaphor." PJ shot back with the stupid grin he reserved especially for stupid jokes.
"What happens if you fail this project?" I asked Chris out of the blue, who went silent. When I looked over, he had the mush hanging off the edges of his hands and his lips pursed together in thought while PJ and Cat both tried to reconstruct the paper mâché brain for hopefully the final time. The shitty frame they did create didn't seem like it would be able to endure much more.
"I get disowned by my brain surgeon dad and emergency responder mum." He said blatantly with a slight smile that must've meant he was joking. Well I hoped he was kidding. If he wasn't I don't think we had room in my semi-apartment for another, because I know for a fact Dan wouldn't want to give up half of his living space, and Cat's other roommates would refuse. She already had one more person living in her dorm room than usual. I would've said she hated Lent and Harrison with a burning passion if she didn't speak so highly of them. PJ laughed and so did Cat and then Chris, so I followed along and smiled with them.
"I want to release cats on campus." Dan announced, spinning on his heels away from the window to face us. Pesto purred loudly in approval from his little box home; I'd almost forgotten about him. He was always so quiet it was like he wasn't even there sometimes.
Chris clasped his hands together and grinned wildly. "That sounds like fun!" PJ and Cat agreed, finally giving up on Chris' project and tossing the last strips of newspaper on the top where they sunk into the gluey mixture, never to be seen again.
It reminded me of a paper mâché vinegar and baking soda volcano I attempted to create in the 7th grade; long story short, the only thing that made it look like a volcano was the paper and glue pulpy mush spewing out of the top and some shitty repaired holes in the sides. It wasn't supposed to do that apparently, and I didn't think the F was supposed to lower my grade as drastically as it did. 'How did you mess up that badly?' My friend asked when I took it home, and I told them it was for the experience because I couldn't think of anything else to say. But I guess it was, because I learned I should never do paper mâché again for the rest of my life.
I shuddered just thinking about the disaster. One of the worst days ever, yet somehow one of the memories I was constantly reminded of the most. As PJ would say, it was a metaphor for my life.
"Where are we going to get an abundance of cats?" Cat squinted suspiciously at Dan, then at PJ who's eyes had lit up like the city at night.
"Tyler! Tyler Joseph still works at that pet store we went to where we got Pesto!" PJ said with an overjoyed smile, and was joined by Chris who also grinned excitedly.
Cat rolled her eyes. "And we're just supposed to buy a couple dozen cats, smuggle them on campus, and set them free without getting caught?"
PJ nodded once with a straight face that meant he was dead serious.
"We should save it for after winter break," Chris suggested, emphasising the after "because if we do it now they're gonna know it's us since we've been the ones making all the noise lately."
PJ shrugged and started counting down the days until then on his hands.
"Well we're either going to get kicked off of campus for Christmas break, or staying the full couple weeks at Seacoast, so 3 weeks and maybe a week after that, so... Soon." He concluded with a sly smile and the unexpectedly loud crack of his knuckles against the table. Chris stared at PJ with a face of regret and everyone laughed, except for PJ who started sweating furiously under Chris' glare.
Dan splayed out across the couch again; his head resting on my legs like it had been at the jacuzzi when I'd started to get to know him for the first time. He closed his eyes and grinned contently, wiggling his nose like a rabbit.
"Clear your schedule, Philly. It'll be one hell of a way to go out."
YOU ARE READING
Paper Hearts (Phan)
Fanfic-NOT MINE- All credit goes to the original author, imaginary-numbers This is just a rewrite of the original story about a different ship so all I changed was (most of) the characters and the American to British stuff. I rewrote this for my best fri...
