#foggier

Every couple of windows he saw had a tree in it, dotted with a string of little bulbs, and he tried to imagine how those occupants might have celebrated. Did they have a special day when the tree was brought out or bought? How much did it even cost? He had never celebrated with anyone but his mother and a few fellow students at the events he’d organized. Parties that he’d planned for weeks until they felt both too obligatory and too earnest, where everyone half-heartedly snuck in weed and alcohol, even if he never bothered to call them out for it. Even putting his anger aside, he was more surprised than he was upset to notice that he had no clue what big holidays were supposed to look like outside of his Christmas movies."

All the color in his iris was gone, drained out, replacing what had once been dark brown with a pale, silvery color. Even the little veins of muscle fiber were gone, hollowed out. He shuddered to remember a time when he saw Elias eating a halved grapefruit, using a spoon to scoop the pulp and separate it from a pale rind. They couldn’t even be considered blue or gray, even if one was generous. It was nearly white: the color of ash, the color of the fog that crawled over the streets and swam at his waist, the color- he thought- of fresh-fallen snow."