Falling All The Way

Chapter 1

chapter 1

Nicholas Jones has been in every class I have ever attended since my kindergarten years, He was there when I got my first bike and that was when I was three, he cheered me up when I got in my first and only physical fight which I lost terribly to astral whistler but I had felt like I was on top of the world because despite astral beating me blue and black, I was the one who got a celebratory pig back ride from her best friend while astral got avoided like a plague by kids who were clearly afraid of getting beat up, he was present for my first detention, my first heart break and all of the other toxic firsts I have had over the years. I don't even have to be sentimental to say that I don't remember a time when he wasn't in my life and I have always imagined he will forever be. Years of going through life together has made it impossible for me not to love him despite his obvious flaws, like; his chronic addiction of interrupting my "morning-me-time" which is a real ache to my chronic addiction of trying-to-disappear-in-crowds. Together, we made the typical troublesome teenage duo while at Tungsten Academy and all of the other schools prior to high school, He has always been our supplier of pot, and I have always supplied the lighter. He first convinced me to try pot a day after he had come back from summer camp and swore on his life that he could literally fly after a joint, he watched me as I took my first drag ever and laughed when I broke out in a fit of cough, he then taught me how to hold the smoke in and how to release a steady stream of smoke like a pro and boy! He wasn't lying about flying after a joint, so just like that we didn't survive the subcultures: Later on, I got a couple of body piercings that nearly had me disowned by the Ba'boriques.

"Crystal Ba'borique you are going to honour God and your parents for as long as you are a child of mine" my mother would say while my father quietly grunts at the news misquoting the statistics of poverty in India. She meant well, I have always known that she did, but the rebellious teenager in me was convinced that she never wanted me to be happy.

Every Monday morning, Nick met me at my locker with his belt hanging on his shoulders, incomplete homework and a real life teenage dilemma he needed help with, I was to solve all of those problems and that included fixing his belt buckle. This specific Monday wasn't any different, so just like for a thousand Mondays prior to this one, he negotiated his way through the sea of a hundred other teenagers who double as students to get to where I was. His voice was unusually chirper when he whisper shouted "Hey Criss" directly into my ear throwing me into a slight habitual Panic mode because i normally draw comfort from not getting noticed at all in crowds like this one. For the purpose of modesty let's just say; I am an introvert with resident chaos. Although the soreness that comes with the chaos might not be responsible for my introversion, it sure as hell reminds me to keep to myself.

Another thing about Nicholas is that he doesn't know the first thing about being polite, and "hey" is as far as he goes in that area, That's how you know he's broken and desperate for illegal advice, and that's how you subsequently know that he had fucked up his life; it's like a sacred unsaid agreement that seemed to boost his almost empty store of sensible polite words. He is stupid and I love him.

"Please don't go on again about how you are just a few alphabets away from having the same name as Nick Jonas because I really don't want to hear you compare me to Priyanka Chopra, I beg you" in all truth, I really didn't want to hear him talk until after noon because am so not a morning person.

"Ok I swear I will be nice, just listen to me please, because I have a code 7 emergency" he whined, his reference to the military comes from years of obsession with serial killer movies, which convinced him that life threatening calls are coded 7 and he refused to be told otherwise.

"Bring it on" I threw his fixed belt at him and started retreating backwards out of the locker room.

He seemed unusually nervous but i let it slide trying to limit myself from the trouble of conversing altogether. He ran his hands through his jet black hair which is usually in spikes, the hair which younger me had thought to be the most gorgeous mane of black I had ever seen. But that's also because I was comparing it to my cousin's who I had thought had way too long hair and it made him look like me. But now, now I know better. Thank God I discovered Evelyn Brochu's hair; it saved me from that mediocre shit.