ghost town

“I love my job. I love helping people and knowing that I’m putting forth good into the world. However, some evenings, like this evening, I wonder why I didn’t go another route.”

Cole isn’t positive how she discovered a house party being thrown on a Monday night or if she even knew anyone there, she chalked it up to being summer and every high schooler or freshly graduated high schooler thinking they needed to party like it was the last party of the summer every single night. She wasn’t complaining, though, and focused on the red solo cup someone had pushed into her hand a few minutes ago. Ever since the text notification dinged on her phone, the one that alerted her to a message from Gretchen, the message that announced her very new and impulsive marriage, Cole had found comfort in slipping sips of the expensive tequila and irish whiskey that she found in their house into her water bottles. 

It wasn’t that she objected to her sister marrying Sawyer, or that she still had feelings for the boy she once loved, but it caused something dormant to click in her, something that struggled to unravel every fiber of Cole’s being, something that she tamed with smuggled alcohol and high school parties and dancing with boys and girls she’d never remember the next day. That first red solo cup turned into two, a boy in a toga yelling something about fuel near the punch bowl as red liquid dripped down her chin. That’s all it took; two drinks of whatever ‘pure fuel’ was made out of before Cole was stumbling, slurring her words, and pressing a random, blurry contact on her phone. By the time she approached the car and slid into the passenger’s seat, a miserable look on her face, she just wanted to cry. Instead, she shook her head, sloppy, drunk, truly a hot damn mess, and muttered, “It’s bullshit.”

      Chandler had heard about the party being throw across town but in all honesty, it hadn’t piqued his interest. There had been another he’d been looking forward to for a few days and annoyingly enough it had turned into a total snoozefest an hour in. He’d been thinking of heading home and just smoking a bowl when his phone had gone off. Expecting it to be his Mom or Chanel, he’d answered it with without looking, mouth opening to start shoveling excuses towards them when drunken rambling caught him completely off guard. 

     Cole.

     She wasn’t exactly his biggest fan, to put it lightly. His attitude clashed with her personality on a fairly regular basis but they’d still ended up begrudgingly trading contact info a while back when they’d been forced to do an english project together. Contrary to popular belief, he actually enjoyed being around her. She challenged him and called him out on his bullshit in a way not many people did. She didn’t give up or step down, she didn’t let his ego win. He’d always teased, calling her the classiest chick in the school despite all the shit people had tried to put her down for. Cole was a badass in her own way. 

“That’s a good mindset to have. To each their own though, it’s not like everyone needs school for the path that they choose. Wouldn’t your parents care if you start slacking though?”

Yeah, no. school comes first you know that as well as I do.

“There are a million things wrong with what you just said and speaking about your mom like that is on the top of that list. So she was an over-achiever… I don’t think it’d kill you to try a bit harder at doing life.”

“I’m pretty sure the point of non-career specific courses in school is to make you a well-rounded human being. I’m also positive that your mom wouldn’t approve of you only focusing on singing considering she was in every club known to mankind from what I gathered from the yearbooks in the library.”

“If that’s the route you’re choosing, I wouldn’t believe so but don’t you think your attendance now will affect how you act in the future? Slacking off now might seem okay because school to you is meaningless but in the future, you might think it’s okay to slack off with more important things.”

“Good Old Fashioned fear of my parents does it for me. But I know it’s not everyone’s jam.”

“I’ll be the first to get a front row seat next to Chanel as your parents chew your ass out for failing.”

hi, no neither of us are allowed to fail Chandler.

“Not sure if that’s the best idea. Probably not the best thing for employers or colleges too if they find out that in school you flunked all of your classes and never showed up.”

“If I’m not mistaken, the first half of the year still kind of matters, but after that, no one cares.”

“You’re a lot like me when I was your age. Makes me feel like I should give mom and dad a call and apologize.”

“That really doesn’t sound like a solid plan at all.”

“I use to think the same thing, but you need the education. I wouldn’t be the man I am now if I would of dropped out and went after my dream. I learned a lot in my time in college, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.”

“You’re a St. James, Chandler. You are expected to be nothing but the best. We are the family that everyone wishes they could be apart of. That’s not going to happen if you can’t even keep your grades up. Plus–it’s good to start paying your dues early in life. It’s so important to give back to the little people.”

“Chan, you better not flunk your classes next year. I don’t care what you do after high school, but I expect at least B’s from you. I said the same thing to your sisters, so I’ll say the same thing to you. If you expect any sort of money from your mother and I, we expect good grades in return.”