Tonight.

Home

            Outside, tiny snowflakes started to dot the street and then melt away, because it wasn’t cold enough to stick, like powdered sugar on a warm stack of pancakes. On the other side of the window, however, a blizzard was raging inside of Derek. Clumps of snowflakes would fall from the sky and crash onto him. Each snowflake was a different insult from a different person. They were all unique and not one was the same as the other. The words echoed through Derek’s head, and as if someone had just yelled avalanche, even more clumps of snowflakes came crashing down, burying him. Their insults lashed at his face as if they were a stinging gush of cold air.

            “He’s an annoying little prick.” One voice yelled out.

            “He just annoys me…I don’t like the way he is.” Another shouted. The voices seemed to crash onto one another now. “Why are people friends with him?”

“He should just fuck off and-”

“No one wants-”

“No one needs-”

“Who even cares-”

“He should-”

“Maybe he could-”

“If only he-”

“This place would be better if he-”

“Just die.”

            Derek had enough of the storm. He grabbed a coat and threw it on as he closed the door to his house. He knew just the place he needed to go during a storm like this. He needed to go home.

            Derek took a sharp breathe of the stingingly cold November air. His breath exited his mouth like steam out of a locomotive with only one destination in mind, so he chugged along, walking up the hill on his street towards home. It was a lonely night out on the street, the snow continued to sprinkle itself onto the street, before fading away. If only the snow in his mind would melt away like that, instead of sticking and clumping up into huge piles of never ending white. He wished that he had someone, anyone to help guide him out of the artic tundra. Throughout most of the walk Derek had his head down, staring solely on the ground, until he heard the footsteps of another person walking in front of him. He looked up and met the gaze of another guy, around Derek’s age, a bit shorter, and almost as sad as Derek was. It was around 12:10 in the morning, what was he doing out so late?

            There was a grounding sadness in the boy’s eyes. Like they both understood what each other was feeling, even though there wasn’t any words spoken between the two, just the sad looks that they both gave each other. It was in that second, where their eyes locked, that Derek felt so connected to the other boy. He’s seen that kind of look in another person’s eyes, the hopeless kind of depression mixed in with the silent scream of desperation. Just as Derek and the boy were about to pass each other, the boy’s phone rang. Derek watched as the boy looked at the phone screen, deny the call, and sigh as he put the phone into his pocket. Then the boy was behind him and all he could hear was the soft crunch of the snow as the two of them walked away from each other. Derek wished he said something to the guy, because he’s seen that pain in someone else’s eyes. Someone who let that kind of depression take over and rule his life. His name popped up into Derek’s but he brushed it away quickly as he sped up his pace as if he was running away from the name… He didn’t have enough courage to admit it was his own.

            Derek took a deep breath as he pushed forward through the last block before he got home. Not the house in which he grew up in, and slept in, and woke up every morning feeling like shit. No, that wasn’t his home anymore. What was his home was the place that held so many happier memories. The place where he could remember when he was truly happy; where he had his first kiss, where he had his heart broken for the first time, where him and his friends went when they first got drunk. Where he went with his best friend to just hang out on a nice and warm summer night. Derek knew that once he saw it, the storm in his head would cease and sun would come out to melt the snow away. He was basically jogging now towards his home, and the snow that was previously powdering the streets had turned into bigger and colder snowflakes that littered the ground like the trash in landfills. Derek turned the corner with a smile on his face. The Pla-