crap on a stick

“nerd? i’m offended. i like to think of myself as… not a nerd.” chase took another long drink, following her line of vision, “it’s, like, not that warm and people are going for the pool. i don’t get it.”

        “what? nerd? geek? same thing, dude.”

    her chest puffs in  the  jest, a roguish grin spreading across her face languidly,     through the haze of her own drunken stupor. she doesn’t mean it though, she     rarely ever does. experts argue its her own fucked up version of friendliness.      after all, what did she know of friendliness when everyone growing up called     her nothing but an ugly c-- 

“do you ever stop and think about who’s going to end up cleaning all this up?” reggie questions to the person beside him, taking a sip of his beer. “i’d hate to be the guy that has to live here. i mean, i’d sorta love to, because – look at this place. but, to have to clean all this up? no thanks.”

     eyeballing the place and estimating the damage hurricane partygoers made      in this house, she offers the other a shrug and a frown. 

sure, chase had gotten a little wasted at after parties in korea, but it had been awhile since he’d gone to a real house party. he found himself with a cup full of something he wasn’t sure of, leaning against the doorframe in the kitchen, taking long drinks. “i’m pretty sure everyone is already fucked.”

       “they’ve been fucked since an hour ago.”

    her vision  settles  on  idiots  doing some form of the cannonball into the pool     through wide pupils and heavy lidded eyes. the punch was fucking something     alright. practically wading  through  a  pool  of  a  muddy fog, her mind tries to      comprehend the sensory  overload  she was coming  down  from  as  she  sat      outside in the fresh air. 

      this is what she told herself: enjoy yourself. live. feel like a teenager. do what       dumb shits like these do in college.  frankly,  cassie  wasn’t a popular option        when deciding who to invite to a  party  back  in  high  school,  and that she       never went to college, cass felt like she missed out on what ‘fun’ was. when       she arrived, it had only taken  a  little under a  half  an  hour  for  her  bag  of        paraphernalia  to    sell  out,  and  another  minute  before her brain started        fogging up from her joint she smoked out back  by  the pool. consciousness       pulsing  to the deep bass thumps of the house, she stubs out the end of her       joint and  shuffles  back  into the crowd between slick bodies, in search of a       quieter area to enjoy her high, to stop all the thinking. 

      the next second and half later, which only felt like an  eternity later for cassie,       she finds herself midst conversation with this  other girl. it felt like a rope had       been dangled down the  cavern  of her foggy high, and all she had to do was        grab hold and  climb it,  fight  to  find  out  what it  felt  like  to  not  have  the        weight of a quiet, somber high on her shoulder. and it absolutely helped  that       those eyes across hers sparkled, and her smile sends cassie’s  chest  aching       from realising how gorgeous she looked in the moment. it takes every  ounce       of her conscious effort to be as coherent as she could be. 

             “-- right yeah i’m cassie. it’s good to meet you.”

      remember: enjoy yourself. live. be a kid again. stop trying to grow up so fast.

whatever their dynamic was in high school- it was different now. they had both changed. hudson hadn’t changed as much, but she was still different. she was less angry, less full of hate. and she didn’t hate cassie- she had never really hated her. in high school, hudson just wanted a reason to be an asshole and there was cassie and she could get to her back then. her eyes flicked over her, not backing away as she got closer. no way she was going to show any weakness, “i don’t know… maybe nothing. maybe lookin’ to see what you’re thinking. to see what’s going through that head.” 

     part of her wished to look her right in the eye and shout. show her that  this      was who she made, who hudson and others like her carved out of a human.      she wanted  to  yell,  ask  her  if this was beautiful, if she was how a person      should be-- empty, angry, guilty. but she doesnt. she only retreats back into       her seat, plastering on a seemingly satisfied smile at the other’s answer.

“Alright alright, fair,” he said, nodding his head. He didn’t really want to continue this game, but he didn’t have any other one in mind. “Your turn,” he instructed, figuring that a silly game such as this was better than shared silence.

       “fuck marry kill-- --”

    she thought about it for a second, letting the smoke gradually slip out     her nose, watching the white wisps flicker about in the soft breeze. 

“interesting choice of words. i don’t think i was that bad.” hudson let out a dry chuckle. though she really had been that bad. your average teenage rebellion mixed with the misplaced anger that she couldn’t aim back at her own father when he hurt her or her brother did not bode well for those hudson didn’t like during high school. she was not the best person now, but she was an even worse person then, “less of a douche? yeah, maybe.” she shrugged, “what? small talk can be interesting. can tell ya a lot about a person if you look close enough.” 

       cassie wasn’t who she was anymore. honestly,  the  quiet,  submissive, little girl        died when her daddy left and the whole  town  knew  that  cassie had no daddy.         she shakes the thought out  of  her  head,  though traces of it stick hard, in how        cassie’s holding her breath, or how her knuckles were pale from wrapping them        round the bottle  like  a  vice.  quickly   burying  it under a saccharine smile, she         reminds herself to relax. look at hudson-- look at  how  she’s  grown  and where         they’re at now. notice  her  features,  her  tan skin, those wide eyes that used to         stare her down the halls that have now seen life outside high school. cassie         exhales. 

              “lookin’ close enough huh?”

       she leans  toward  the  woman slightly, closing up some of the spaces between        them. who’s afraid of who?

             “what are you looking for, hudson?”

“That’s me.” Hayden lifted her left arm to flex, showing of what little bicep definition she had. There was some but, far from she hulk status.  Dropping her arm back down, she exhaled a soft laugh and shook her head in response to Cassie’s words. “Get those no-good trash can lids off my lawn.” She mimicked in her best old grandma voice, a shit eating grin soon following soon after. She wondered if the semblance of friendship was paper thin or if it had some footing now, finding herself wishing for the latter and ignoring the irony that came with it. “Funny how nothing scares you now, hm?”

      for now, the only truthful response that cassie could offer was that non-committal         hum. was  that  what  people  thought  she was? numb, and completely fearless?         guess so. the heaviness  in her chest settles  in  the  kissing  of  her  teeth  as she         mindlessly kicks  the earth beneath her boot. her head was filled with nothing but        fear, if not rage. fear of the ever  ominous  and  looming future, running straight at        her a million  miles  per  second.  fear  of being the freak those kids used to claim         that she was. fear of looking into the  mirror  and  seeing her mother’s crazed and         helpless  eyes  staring   right  back  at  her.   fearing  that it’s too late for her to be        normal. cassie flashes her own shit eating grin right back at her. 

“Fuck, Marry or Kill,” Benji said, breaking the ice with someone who he’d been sitting in silence with for a long moment on the front porch of a local bar. “Miley Cyrus, Kylie Jenner and… Channing Tatum.”

        “huh.”

    she exhales, the word slipping past her lips as a solid statement to stand on.     strange choices for a game like this. she pulls the cigarette  back toward her     mouth, blue eyes trained on the  empty  horizon  as she  processes  it slowly     thorough the creeping haze in her mind. 

jimmy shook his head a little roughly, the alcohol creating a hazy filter over his vision. cassie might be sober as a judge, but he was well on his way to wasted. it had been a particularly busy week at work, and jimmy had rewarded himself with a few jack and cokes before wandering outside to bum a cigarette. you aren’t a smoker if you only smoke when you’re drunk, he always told himself. 

“a plastic bag in the ocean. i swear to god it felt like a jellyfish or a shark or something, and i thought i was going to die right there. they have all these signs, warning you about poisonous jellyfish…”

he grinned at cassie, feeling some sort of camaraderie after sharing the story. things had always been awkward between them, partly because he’d technically been her teacher, but mostly because he had turned her in for selling drugs. well, that was probably the only reason. but looking at her now, he felt relief that at least nothing worse had happened. she was still walking and drinking and talking about trashcans or whatever, so maybe he’d been in the right? 

     oh she remembered  him.  she  remembered   the  day she was stupid enough to       fuck up in front of him, and have  he landing  in a boiling cauldron of trouble back      at the halfway house. kids  lost confidence in her business for a while too-- she’s      sure that he thought  he  did the right thing, but she  knew  he  never  considered       that perhaps it had only been the right thing for him. still-- the green haired youth      had a quiet soft spot for him. he was new, didn’t  realise  the  crap  that had been      spreading about her, and treated her like a normal student, unlike all  those  other      teachers with their sorry eyes and  pathetic  placating  voice  when  handling  her      like she was a broken mirror on the  verge  of  falling apart again. not that it wasnt      what she was, but -- well, at least for once she felt normal. 

he cocked his right eyebrow up as he looked at her and laughed a little bit. “where the fuck are driving where bats are flying out in front of cars? hell?”

“cute.” hudson quipped in an uninterested tone, raising her eyebrows for a moment and bringing her drink to her lips, looking at the other woman over the rim of her glass. her answer actually did amuse her. it was a good one. but she couldn’t let that on. she set her glass down on the bar, moving it back and forth across the counter slowly, “surprised you’d even speak to me, honestly.” she let out a dry chuckle, her mouth lifted up into a half-smirk 

        “why? cause you were some batshit stink hole in high school?”

    oh yeah. high school  cassie  would’ve  beat her ass right now for even trying     to engage with the few people that plagued her with anxiety back then. there     was definitely a myriad of emotions flurrying through her chest, right beneath     the stone cold exterior-- quickly realising that  she’s  probably never going to      get over the crap that happened in high school. where’s  your daddy, cassie?     it takes all of her will to relax the tense in her jaw. it wasn’t as though hudson     was being a particular bitch over anything right now. 

        “surprised i am too. but honestly i’m over it-- seems like you’re          less of a douche bag now too.”

    cassie pauses, letting the words form on the tip of her tongue before she     continues.

he frowns at that, then takes another lengthy drag of the cigarette. he thinks for a second — of course he’s been scared before. he was always pushing the limits, seeing how far he could go. but those fleeting moments — the ones that felt like maybe this was it — always sent a jolt of adrenaline and a wave of panic over dylan, all at once.                 “fine,” he exhales, “when i was sixteen, i thought i saw my grandpa’s ghost — do you                  believe in ‘em ? — anyway, i swear, there was a guy standing outside my bedroom                 window, had a cap on — my pop always wore a baseball cap — but when i got up to                  get a closer look, he was gone. my dad thinks it was just a homeless guy, though.                        but i still get shaken up about it, sometimes.”  he wasn’t one that necessarily believed in ghosts, but some things seemed too inexplicable to be natural. a homeless man? staring at his bedroom window at some ungodly hour of the night? it sounded unrealistic, even to him. 

        “sheesh.”

   thin smoke  trails  out  of the tiny crack between her lips in a soft hiss, her eyes    staring  at  everything  that’s  the  sky  for  a  hot  minute before readjusting her     spotty focus back on dylan. absentmindedly, her index finger taps haphazardly    on the filter of her cig in her lazy attempt to ash. 

“Um,” Hayden curled lips into her mouth to stifle her laugh, running fingers through her long dark locks before tucking it behind her ears. “I threw it across the room and it broke.” She confessed, crinkling her nose at the memory. Though she was sure it was only a matter of time before they were exchanging barbs, thinly veiled comments that a passerby could misconstrue as a misguided compliment, Hayden was determined to actually allow herself to enjoy this rare moment in time. “What did you say to the trashcan lids?” Her left eyebrow arched up curiously.

         “wow-- the she hulk strikes again at age ten.”

     thin jabs at the other was perhaps all she could muster towards hayden      for now, knowing that there was a growing  foothold  of  friendship right       beneath their relentless exchange of taunts,