The wind howled through the dark night, the only thing keeping Casper company as he took the last mile of his journey, the last mile before his final rest. His steps grew slower, gait uneven, as if the ground rolled and wavered beneath him. He wasn’t sure he was going to make it any further, the life slipping from him like sand—running through his fingers, wasting away the clock. Casper hated to admit it, but he never thought he’d even get this far. But he couldn’t stop now. Not when—“You know, you’re supposed to watch me, not write in your diary. It’s called babysitting for a reason.”
I lifted my gaze to find Cassian with both of his eyebrows raised, lips pursed. I tapped my pen against the page. “You’re right, it is called babysitting. Should I start sitting on you, too?”
“You’re supposed to be watching me.”
“What, watching you figure out what four plus four equals? I think you can handle it while I write a paragraph or two.” I glanced back down to my notebook. “And it’s not my diary, wise-mouth.”
“I know what four plus four is.” Those raised eyebrows of his slammed down. “Are you writing again?”
Writing again. It almost made me laugh, but in the way one laughs to brush off an uncomfortable statement. Writing again. The idea of ever stopping writing was ludicrous to me, or would’ve been, if I hadn’t taking a brief hiatus on the fiction font. Ever since my parents died. It wasn’t that the urge to write disappeared in the year since their death. There just never was any time to. Not with being placed in a foster home, finishing up high school, pulling long hours at the diner to save up cash. In all honesty, time had flown by in that chunk of time. I’d been in my apartment for months now, on my own, and everything before that felt like a blur.
“Earth to Jonas.”
“I said yes,” I said, though we both knew I hadn’t responded. “Nothing serious, though. Just fun stuff.”
“Am I in it?”
I clicked my pen and scratched out the name that I had written, writing Cassian over Casper. “You are now.”
He shifted in his seat, pushing away his math homework. I opened my mouth to reprimand him for it, to tell him to get back to work, but he quickly cut me off. “What am I doing? Killing zombies? Meeting aliens?”
“You’re…” I frowned at the passage I’d written. “Dying.”
Cassie didn’t seem fazed. “Cool.”
Mrs. Michaels had decorated their house with various autumn-themed decorations. The placemats on the table were in the shapes of apples and fall leaves, her dish towels covered in an assortment of pumpkins and vines, even down to the mat that rested just in front of the sink; that was covered with trees losing their leaves. I didn’t mind all the festivity, especially when I couldn’t afford do decorate on my own apartment.
Fall had come upon us quickly, and I hadn’t seen it coming. It felt like just yesterday the sun had been out and shining, fiery hot, turning my apartment into a blaze of heat and death. But October had brought cooler temperatures, nicer nights. Beck and I’s three months was coming up fast, on October 31st, actually. Did that bode well for our relationship? No idea. Hey, at least it wasn’t Friday the 13th or something.
I traced a figure-eight on my paper as I thought about everything. Beck and I still hadn’t said those three words, and I tried to convince myself that was okay. Kelsey disagreed, but that figured with her. Some of the dating magazines said that three months was an okay time to start distributing those words, but I was afraid to say them first.
