#novelsquid

                I leaned over and ruffled up his hair, cooing about how he needs to learn how to function with very little sleep. It was a blessing he didn’t shove me off the bed or something along those lines. But he was also tired and in truth, I was waiting for him to lay back long enough for him to fall asleep. After what felt like only a few minutes but in reality was quite some time, he did and I sat still, waiting for his breathing to even out so I could get up. I didn’t want to leave like this, not really, but he was the type of person to make me want to calm down and grow up and if I did that, I’d be stuck in this town. And I didn’t want that. If I stayed in this town, I would never accomplish half of what I wanted to. I would get a job, a home, I’d get married, have seven kids. I wouldn’t live, not really. I’d get by day-to-day. Do you see what I mean? The more time I spent around Nicky, the less I wanted to leave. I didn’t want to leave him, but if I didn’t, I’d never get what I really want.

                                I just hope that one day I’ll find out what that is.

                I got up off the bed, kissing the tip of Nick’s nose before setting to work. Quietly as I could, I flipped all the posters and pictures on his wall upside down, along with anything else that could be set like that without falling over. I wasn’t going to leave without causing him some sort of grief, you get me? Finally, I found a pen and in my usual unintelligible scrawl, I wrote him one last note on the notebook containing most of his homework.

“LITTLE NICKY,

YOU’LL ALWAYS BE MY FAVOURITE HOBBIT,

BUT I HAVE LEFT THE SHIRE IN SEARCH OF GREATER THINGS

LIVE YOUR LIFE

DON’T DO YOUR HOMEWORK

DON’T EAT YOUR VEGGIES

DO DRUGS

DON’T GO TO COLLEGE

LOVE EVERYONE YOU COME ACROSS

DON’T DIE WITHOUT REALLY LIVING

AS MUCH LOVE AS MY COLD LITTLE HEART CAN ALLOW,

MORGAN LE FAG

P.S. IF YOU REALLY DON’T HATE ME DON’T LOOK FOR ME I WON’T BE COMING BACK

P.S.S. YOU REALLY ARE MY FAVOURITE HOBBIT AND I’LL LOVE YOU

UNTIL I GET ALZHEIMERS AND CAN’T REMEMBER YOUR

DUMB FACE”

                Pleased with my final message, I slipped my shoes back on, whispered a good-bye to Nicky and was crawling back through the window in a few seconds. I grabbed the bag I had packed before coming over and hopped onto my bike.

                I didn’t look back.

  Mallory and I have always been different. She was the one that jumped in front of the video camera for home videos so she could sing and dance while I just stared into the camera or ignored its presence completely. She was the one who wrote neatly and could form sentences from a young age but struggled with reading whereas I couldn’t write until sometime later, but I was always better at sounding words out. She danced and sang in her spare time, I ran – I quit, she didn’t. Mallory was a social butterfly and I was a misanthrope. She was normal - liked Chinese food, didn’t complain, got average grades, and didn’t have any trouble liking things everyone else liked. She was a member of the student council who talked to anyone in need and was a shoe-in for prom queen. I, on the other hand, was the annoying prick who liked to find something wrong with anything everyone else liked - I hated Chinese food, I complained frequently, and I did better than her in school (probably the only thing making me better than her in any way). I thought participating in school-related organizations was stupid and did my best to avoid attracting any attention at all, which was difficult to do when my name and my sister’s legacy were on the tips of everyone’s tongue. Mal was a healthy person with her emotions in the right place and I was the one that made a point of making myself miserable. It was like a reflex.

Maybe I should add the disclaimer somewhere that while I sound like a complete and total ass, I really don’t hate my sister. In fact, she’s one of those people I can really stand, so when she makes her cute little attempts to get me “out of my shell”, I go along with her. I have no discernible shell to speak of but if it makes her happy for me to walk around the mall with her and her friends or show my support at council-thrown events, I guess I’ll do it. Helping her is probably the only thing I can do that prevents me from becoming some raging sociopath. 

“It’ll be fun; I promise,” she told me as she fixed her hair in the foyer mirror before pushing me out the door. She always said that and, somehow, she was always wrong. “And I know I always say that and you never have fun, but this will be different.” That was another thing she always said and, once again, she was always wrong. It was never different.

Her constant friends were generally the sort of people that made people like me lose all faith in humanity. They had more cellphone cases than they actually had phones, bought million-gigabyte MP3s when their music taste was never enough to fill past the two-gigabyte mark, spoke venom about people I’d have thought were their friends, and probably didn’t know anything about the world beyond their little bubbles. They were the people who got everything handed to them with as little effort as possible and were utterly dismayed when they lose network service in a particular area.

I walked with Mallory down the street as she talked to me charmingly about her day and what exciting things were going to be going on. She asked me questions and knew exactly how to get me to talk. She was infinitely better than the people she hung out with and that’s the reason I’d come up with to explain why they all regarded her as the centre of their well-spun social lives. Her company seemed to make everything a little better and our half-hour walk to some kid’s house felt no longer than a walk down the street.

It was supposed to be a birthday party at this kid Richard’s house. He was a local hotshot: head of the football and soccer teams, turned down several scholarships for universities I’d sell a kidney for, and on top of that his parents were horribly rich – horribly as in they ran out of places to toss their money. My sneakers were scuffed by years of durability and I groaned: I’d probably spend most of the night feeling bad about tracking mud onto their heated tile floors or leaving a handprint on their hand-polished marble countertops imported straight from fucking Iceland. Mal looked over at me with a look I could easily attribute as being sincerely her, a look I grew up with. Her smile looked like the aftermath of a laugh but her blue eyes were panicked with the sudden realization that not only was she wrong about everything being fun and different, but I was not going to make any superfluous effort to bond with any of the pretentious, supercilious pricks at this social event.

And the brother of the year award goes to...

The house is about as swanky as I’d have imagined it to be judging by its appearance, if not more. It was huge – though it looked small with the amount of people within it – and comprised of expensive-looking things. I felt as if I was walking through a really crowded, delicate shop filled with overpriced antiquities: I just wanted to get out like I had never stepped in to begin with; I wanted to cause as little damage as possible so there would be less of a price to pay afterwards. It wasn’t as hectic as I may have envisioned it to be, though. Litter wasn’t scattered everywhere, save for a cup or two hither and thither, and people weren’t shoving each other everywhere. I think I caught a glimpse of a pretty nice birthday cake securely on a table.

As Mallory walked around and between people, sending greets here and there as she made a beeline for the birthday boy, they instinctively parted like the Red Sea. I don’t know why it was so easy for her to manipulate her surroundings to get things she wanted without uttering a word but it held me at a fine line between envy and awe. Instead of following her, though, I settled for manoeuvring myself less gracefully around until I found the cooler where I picked up a can of pop – man, I just live it up at parties – before perching myself on the edge of some furniture and staring idly at my phone, pretending I had gotten a text when, in reality, I was just analyzing the photo of my dog that was my default wallpaper. I did whatever it took to avoid awkward situations that I isolated myself from the mere prospect of one looming on the horizon. I did not do well with awkward.

“Cute dog.”

I looked over my shoulder as casually as possible; despite the minor fact my cover was blown. The voice belonged to a girl of average height who was comfortably pretty – the sort of pretty that wasn’t verging on Helen of Troy and most certainly wouldn’t be starting any wars but, contrariwise, could be admired and appreciated all the same.

“Thanks,” I replied, eloquent as ever. “I raised him myself.”

She smirked – which was good because I wasn’t telling a joke so if she’d laughed I would have assumed she was either delusional or simply had a horrible sense of humour – and ambled over to perch next to me, a comfortable distance away. Everything about her was pretty comfortable from the tone of her voice to her choice in conversational topics and prompts. Above that, though, she was interesting in that she had a mind of her own. She wasn’t driven by the media and was able to understand a few of the pop culture references I made to things not exactly on MTV today. I guess that was an endearing trait, since I ended up talking to her much of the night and it was only about a half hour in that I realized we’d never exchanged names.

“Nick,” I told her as soon as our conversation finally reached a pause.

“Olive, my family moved here about a week ago from REGION/CITY. Dad likes to hop around from city to city as work permits.”

“Doesn’t it ever get tedious coming up with new routines and stuff?” I asked her, forever intrigued by frequent movers.

“I’ve learned to stop making routines and just stop expecting things,” she grinned at me as if she’d just opened up a box of chocolates she was proud to have stolen and was really excited to share them with me. The more we talked, the more I learned about her. FACTS ABOUT OLIVE WILL GO HERE. Not once did I look back at my phone. Eventually I realized the mobs around us had eventually picked up and left one by one like a fine-tooth comb through messy hair and maybe two-thirds of the people who were there when I’d first come in were still left. I could see Mallory sticking herself as high in the air as her little legs would let her be in her search for me. I raised an arm to signal her over and when she came it really was inevitable that she’d introduce herself to Oliver and also somehow trade numbers with the girl after a five minute conversation with her. I, on the other hand, had spent ages in conversation and I’d never even noticed I didn’t have her number or anything. Don’t worry; I rectified the situation before we went our separate ways.

so when that one guy kills himself and the funeral's a public viewing, she goes in hopes of confronting her funeral fears and it's sort of like closure for her sister. and then that's where she meets elijah after the amount of time where he's not at the coffee shop because his dick of a friend pulls his dick move?

morgan something something idk i haven't picked anything else

likes her name because it is unisex. is trying to prefect a male voice so she can call people over the phone and truthfully say her name is morgan.

had an older sister who killed herself when morgan was a sophomore. it was an open casket funeral, which freaked morgan out so badly she didn't stay for the rest of the service. shortly after, she decided that how she was living sort of sucked and changed entirely. (erica do i like this????)

used to have perfect attendance / fantastic grades until epihany that you only live once.

reckless, wild, carefree, blunt, sarcastic, unreliable, relentless.

- prefers to be called by nicholas or nick because "elijah's a fucking hobbit name"

- twin sister is mallory, one of the most popular girls and, for that reason, he has connections made available to him except he thinks her friends are all cunts so he ignores them all

- judgemental, well-read, pessimistic "realist", genuine, rational

- talented in debates -- working towards future in law or business

- was a runner most of his life; stopped after ninth grade

- LIKES: running for leisure, debates, winter, mint, cinnamon, spicy foods, italian food, 

- DISLIKES: chinese food, bullshit, warm weather, change, mallory's cunt friends, religious ignorance, constant questioning of the way things are, 

I think the funniest thing about life is perspective. The way it changes with the atmosphere and the elements, and even with time. The way your opinion on someone can change so much from when you first meet them – someone you didn’t know existed in freshman year might have turned out to be the person you celebrate graduation with and, contrary-wise, someone you would’ve taken a bullet for now might very well end up washing away from you and becoming of no more significance than a shadow to drift over you as you walk down the street. Everything seemed to change with time and as tragic as that may have seemed, I thought it was good to be conscious of that fact. Maybe it made me a worse person than someone who could throw all caution to the wind and live in the moment, making decisions as they went, but I tended to have a bad habit of looking a little ahead. Once, I had this girlfriend and before we’d even hit that first month mark, I had to end it with her; the more hearts she put into the texts she sent me, the more I wanted to gouge my eyes out with a fork, which wasn’t exactly proper dining etiquette which my mother pointed out when I’d tried.

Back to the point: views on things always change, for better or for worse.

Except my views on Chinese food; those views would never change.

The last time I had Chinese was completely against my will, as it usually is. While the smell of wonton soup makes me want to throw up everywhere, it’s practically the bane of Mallory’s existence. If she found a magic lamp while on a deserted island, she’d probably wish for a Cantonese buffet instead of something practical. So whenever August rears its ugly head out of the ground, you can already expect dinner reservations to be made at Happy Kitchen, the sort of place you barely pay a first glance when you pass it by on the way to that sweet Italian restaurant on the other side of town. If it weren’t for a referral from one of Dad’s business workers several years ago, Happy Kitchen would have never crept into my life. If it weren’t for the fact my sister was a manipulative bitch when she wanted to be and bribed me to let her have her way, I wouldn’t have had to go to Happy Kitchen year after year to celebrate my birthday at the same time and put effort into pretending I actually liked the food.

Fucking Happy Kitchen.

The restaurant was small, crowded, and reeked of jasmine tea and stir fry. I was actually pretty sure it was left in this constant state: no matter what people we passed by were eating, it always smelled like that. What made this year the worst of all, however, was the fact it had somehow slipped my mum’s mind to warn me that all the normal tables had been taken and we’d be sharing a large, round table with complete and total strangers. If that was not awkward enough, I also found myself directly across from the most amazing girl I’d ever laid eyes on (and right beside some old Asian man who kept spilling tea on the table with every attempt at pouring himself a cup).

The entire night I was either:

a) Pretending I could work chopsticks; 

b) Pretending chow mein was lasagne; 

c) Avoiding eye contact with “that girl”; 

d) Hoping looks could kill as I stared Mallory down; or 

e) Wondering if “Ho Fun”, the name of one of the ordered dishes, could be the title for an acceptable porno.

Determination kept me from looking up but when everyone began to sing Happy Birthday to us, acknowledging the people around me was inevitable and I was forced to plaster on the sincerest-looking fake smile I could muster and sit through the awkwardness. That girl was singing too and for a moment our eyes met and a smirk slithered onto her face. I wanted to die. I wanted to be curled up in front of my laptop with a bowl of ravioli. I wanted to lie in front of the television and pretend I actually cared what scenes flickered onto the screen. Hell, take me anywhere – I just didn’t want to be there.

Some part of me sort of wanted to talk to that girl – to ask her for her name, her number, tell her some witty joke to make myself seem far more debonair than I really was, and actually keep in contact with her. That wasn’t something I normally did. I can be social when I want to be but most of the time I didn’t want to be social. Checks were placed on the table, my mum laughed with that girl’s dad, Mallory replied to the myriad of birthday wishes she got via text and I sat there chewing on a bit of calamari which, surprisingly enough, I could admit I actually liked. Then, sometime after the old Asian man put on his coat and hobbled away without a word, everyone knew it was time to leave and while my mind barked at me to urge my family to move along quicker so I could casually bump into that girl and have the conversation I hoped I’d be social enough to conduct, I remained quiet and when we all spilled out into the moist August night, that girl was nowhere to be seen.