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Description
SUNDAY
When I lay in bed the sun barges in and hits me white in the eyes.  I blink a few times.  My arms are sprawled out either side of me.  I curl then uncurl my fingers, the tips are throbbing and everything else is numb.  Pulses of electricity through ice.
I closed my eyes and stared into darkness, trying to empty my mind.  Trying to forget all the things that I had learned.  Forget all the thoughts that spun then dropped down tunnels of my memory.  Like: a picture flashed on a wall for one moment, ghostly, composed of light.  Like: a bundle of printed pages in a plastic bag, no cover, look closely, black letters, unread.  Like: a circle of darkness curving downwards towards a pinprick of light that, no matter how fast, how far you go stays the same size, painfully far away.
I gave up, got up, walked to the phone, dialed someone up.
“Hello?”  The voice came through the phone.
“Yeah, man?”
“Oh yeah, hey.  What’s up?”
“Dunno.  Trying to take a nap but couldn’t get to sleep.  You know?”
“Yeah, I’m exhausted.”
“What you up to?”
“Nothing much.”
“Yeah, man.  Sundays.”
“I’m so fucking beat.  I dunno.  I just feel tired.  And dirty.  Like there’s this dirt covering my skin.  Shit, when I swallow it hurts.  I have all these bruises going up and down my body.  What happened?  Like, up and down my arms there’s scratches and shit.”
“Yeah, man, I didn’t see you too much.  You disappeared for a while, man.”
“Like how long?”
“I dunno.  A few hours.”
“Shit.  Where did I go?”
“I dunno.  The shops I guess.”
“Shit.  I don’t remember that…” and awkward pause, our minds winding around blurred memories, “…so how do you feel?”
“Shit.”
“Yeah?”
“Not just beat but…  things feel like they’re changing and I don’t like it.  I mean not just the seasons or anything like that but…  I just can’t put my finger on it.  You know?  Like, last night some people who I used to talk to loads, just, like, walked past me and didn’t even say a word.  Like not even hello or anything.”
“Maybe they were just drunk.”
“Yeah, but it’s not just that it’s…  all these little things piling up on me.”
He paused.  “It’s all in your head, man.”
“What?”
“It’s all just a reflection of what’s going on inside.  If you change that, you change everything.  You know?”
“No, man.  Not really.”
“Okay.  It’s in your attitude.  What you put out.  You think that things are going to be strange and awkward so they are.  Yeah?  Simple.”
“But it isn’t like that.  You can do that for something big, something definite.  But…  the problem is that I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong.  So I can’t change it.  I don’t know what there is to change.”
“You sure there’s even something wrong?”
I paused, ran everything through my mind.  “Yeah.  It’s wrong.  There’s plenty of stuff wrong.”
“You can’t expect everything to be right.”
“But…  with big things there’s a focus.  Some gravity that forces everything together.  Right now… everything’s like dust.  Separate and pulling apart.”
“It’s all on the inside.  Everything.”
“Yeah…” My body was so heavy, my body was so heavy that it sunk into my chair, numb, my body so numb that it lifted up light into the air.  I closed my eyes and thought about things for a while.  Sometimes I’d twitch, flinch, I’d-
“Man?” my friend asked.
“Yeah?”
“I gotta go.  Got some shit to do.”
“Yeah.  Me too I guess.”
“See you at school.”
“Yeah, man.  Tomorrow.”
“Later,” he said and the dial tone filled my ears with a souvenir of icy blackness.
MONDAY
Morning and the gutters were filled with a dusting of red, crackling leaves.  When the wind blew they flew in little spirals and circles, tracing patterns in the dry air.  Armies of formless figures left home for work, blurred outlines.  In cars.  On the street.  Clutching briefcases, with bags slung over shoulders.  They made their way in the sluggish morning, all the excitement of the weekend washing off, leaving an embarrassed, hollow ache.
School moves slow on a Monday morning.  We clunk down empty hallways staring though empty eyes at empty faces.  We don’t notice much.  We lurch into classrooms and sit in our seats (like every other day) talk about what’s been happening (like every other day).  We let out groans and rub our eyes and stare down into our books wishing for just a few more hours wrapped up in warm, wishing for another day of weekend where we could tune out and lose ourselves (like every other day).
Monday stretches out empty and flat.  Nothing happens and nothing gets done.  By the end of Monday I’m so bored all I can think of is a blank white sheet of paper, and rest, blackness, this ache sinking underneath my skin and into my blood.
TUESDAY
“Yeah… but really, what’s wrong?” some girl I was talking to asked.
I shrugged.  She was sat in a circle with all her friends, me standing hunched over them.  It was afternoon and briefly warm.  “You see, that’s the problem… I can’t put my finger on it.  Like, it’s just this feeling.  Like maybe I’ve drifted away.  Lost the plot.”
“What plot?”
“I dunno but… but that’s the point.  I feel left out.  Like now, this lunchtime I’ve just been so bored.  Like, I go up and I talk to people and they… I dunno.  They just act different.  I look and I can tell that I’m not really wanted.  You know?”
I looked down at the grass, one last violent green before the winter.  The trees were all pretty much bare, tracing black fingers like bones across the sky.  Litter was spread across the field, dots of colored plastic printed with labels and logos.  When the wind blew it picked them up and carried them like leaves.
“Poor Brendan,” she said then looked up.  “I’m sure nothing’s really wrong.  You’re fun to be around.  Like, you’re just so excited about everything.  So much energy.”
“But that was before.  I’m not anymore.  I’m bleak and empty.””
She looked into the empty sky.  “Maybe it’s just the seasons.”
“Yeah, maybe.  Maybe I’m just in a bad mood,” and smiled and laughed.  Looked into the sky and all it’s endless blue, this cold air like breath against my skin.  “Sometimes… sometimes I don’t know.”
“Don’t be sad.”
“You can’t just say that.”  I looked down at my feet.  Tried to name the feeling I was feeling.  It’s colored dark blue with an outline of green.  It smells the way things do when it rains for too long.  It’s off balance and it’s surface shimmers.  Look in and it rises and falls, reflects back light.  When you reach down to touch it you only touch empty air, or else a slight cold mist.
She said something which I didn’t hear and I just nodded.
WEDNESDAY
Oh man.  What the hell?  The TV’s on, so loud and noisy just turn it down turn it off already because there’s nothing on and I don’t wanna watch this crap.
“Turn it off,” I said.
“It’s my house,” Daniel said.
“There’s nothing on.  It’s boring.”
“I gave you weed.”
“Stop being such a dick.  It’s crap just watching you watch TV.”
Pete spoke up.  “Yeah, this is boring.”
“Yeah,” I repeated and Daniel struggled up reluctantly.  We were all sat on Daniel’s bed in Daniel’s messy room after school, doing nothing, letting our vision get blurry.  That’s it.  Silence now.  Man, my mouth feels so dry and fuzzy, like, man, I feel mashed.  Like tired like my head is fuzzy, man.  I lay down and it’s better, stare up at the ceiling with all the colors burning bright into my eyes.  When I close them I stare into endless blackness and feel dizzy and sick.  When I open my eyes it burns.
Shit, man, I should stop.  But it’s so easy.  Like, it’s always there.
My thoughts drift through that dizzy blackness and that’s the worst bit.  The way that one idea connects to another and everything is in color and so definitely real.  Like I think of the wall and then I think of brick and then I think of stone and like how everything is like stone.  When I move I wanna puke.  It’d be funny puking in Daniel’s bed.  I’d laugh.
THURSDAY
Lunchtime.  Me, Daniel and Pete hang out with a bunch of people outside near this wall.  It’s cold out but we stay outside.  We’ve been hanging there almost every day since the beginning of school and we weren’t gonna stop just because of the seasons.  As lunchtime wears on people pile outside and form into shifting circles, wander around bored.  Lost.
I dunno what’s wrong with me now.  A few weeks ago I used to be able to walk up to one of those circles and get straight into the flow of everything.  I’d joke with everyone, laugh, then move on to some more people.  Now… now, man I walk up and people look at me then quickly turn away.  I say people’s names and they barely notice me.  I feel like I’m nothing, a gust of air invisible and light.  Maybe it’s the weed.
I wandered around the site a while, killing time before next lesson.  Everyone was in the same circles they were in the day before and they look just as blocked and unfriendly.  Those unfamiliar faces all knitted up into one familiar blue tinted mess.
Shit!  What happening?  What the hell is wrong with me?
I walked to this empty part of school where there are trees and you can look around and there’s not a building in sight.  I like it except that it’s cold and the wind hits you fiercer that when you’re in school.  I looked up.  The sky was gray and patchy, heavy with rain and wind.  On the ground those fallen leaves blew and crackled.  On the ground I looked up.
Up into the heavens wishing for something more.
Up to the sky hoping for the clouds to crack and for the rain to come.
Up to the blue, screaming, crying at it to unwind itself from me.  The blue that wrapped the cold sky.  Whose cold fingers held me and shivered.  The blue that turned eyes away from me.  The blue that blew the litter across the patchy grass, the blue that chilled the air and ripped the leaves from the trees.  I screamed and I screamed and pleaded to that blue.
Up into the gray of the autumn clouds that clenched parts of the still summer sky.  The gray that I knew was here and would come and would stay as long as I lived.  For I was marked.  What the hell had happened?  It was all going so well…
FRIDAY
Nearly shaking as I leave the last lesson of the day.  Tired sheets of school dropped off, that blurry roar of the weekend descending once more.  Oh yeah.  I can nearly taste it, the dark of the night and the clash of faces and names I will soon forget.
Everyone rushes out.
Yeah… breathe in and you can taste the static on the air, like all this tension building over the week, building as classes wore on, building as boring lunchtimes came and went, building as the week slipped away.  Building to what?  To this, a throng of students rushing for the exits.
I saw my friend Daniel looking lost, standing in the middle of the canteen, heavy and dusty and dark.  Pete and a bunch of our friends were walking away from him towards the exit.
“Where are they going?”
Daniel shrugged, then turned walking towards them.  “I dunno.  Somewhere.  They’re taking the car.”
“Oh, what?” I counted four people in front of us.  Five seats in the car.
“Yeah, man.  They were about to go but I waited for you.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, you got the weed.”
Our friends were walking slowly so we caught up with them quickly.  They kinda half turned to say hello, then turned around again.  I swear their eyes were cold and hard.  I swear their voices empty when they spoke to us.  Me and Daniel tagged along back until I pulled him away.
“Fuck it,” I said.  Because I knew they didn’t want me around.  Fuck it because I was tired of caring, because I was tired of reaching out and always going back in.  I said goodbye and they smiled and waved and said that we’d all meet up sometime in the night.  Yeah, fuck it.  If they don’t want me then they won’t have me and I should just hang out with people who do.  You know?
“What are we gonna do?” Daniel asked.
We went to my neighbour’s house.  Halfway there I convinced myself that it was Daniel that they were trying to get rid of.  He was loud and coarse and laughed at all the wrong times.  He was warm like fire is, jumping and licking and clinging with fingers so hot and ashen.  Must be Daniel.  Dick.
Smoked a few cones with my neighbor and then we all split.  My neighbour was going to some party.  I had to go into the town center where I had promised some people I would help distribute leaflets or some shit like that.  I regretted it then.  Not just because I had to do something but because…  I dunno.  I guess it’s because I kinda had to believe and I wasn’t really in the mood.  No, no, it was that I had to be cheerful inside and blind.  Then I was cold and I could see everything laid out in front of me on a grided sheet.  Maybe it was just that it ws freezing and I didn’ particularly wanna hang around outside.
But I went anyway, got there late.  The people didn’t seen to mind, they just smiled and waved.  I didn’t.
“How long are you gonna be?” Daniel asked.
I shrugged.  “I dunno.  Why?”
“Cause it’s boring.”
I didn’t say anything.
“So how long?”
“An hour, maybe.  I’m not sure.”
“Ah, shit,” He looked down at his feet as if in thought but we both knew what would happen next.  “I’ll see you later,” he started to walk off.
“Wait, where are you going?”
“To the park.”
“To smoke weed?” As we were leaving my neighbour’s Daniel had stuck the pot in his pocket.
“What else?”
“Shit.  Wait for me to finish this.”
He thrashed his head around.  “No, man.  I’m going.”
“Fuck you,” I said.  “It’s as much mine as it is yours.”
“Nah,” he said, “I put in ten bucks more than you.”
“Ten bucks?  Ten fucking bucks!  That doesn’t give you full control of the weed now does it?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll save some for you.”  The way he said some made it sound like he would come back with a pinch.
“Why do you have to act like such a dick all the time?”
“You’re the dick.”
“How am I being a dick?  I have to do this.  You know that I have to do this.  Just wait is all I’m saying.”
“Arse-rooting-donkey-bandit.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It’s what you are.”
“You are just so fucking…  you are so…  We’re SEVENTEEN, man.  What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m going now.”
“Fuck you!”
He turned and started to walk away.
“Fucking hell,” I said.  “You always do this, man.  You claim the weed and because of that you decide everything that we do.  Fuck.  I scored it.  Without me you wouldn’t ever get any.”
“I can buy weed myself.”
“Yeah right.”
“Yeah.”
I felt something bubble up inside me.  I wanted to yell, crash my fists against his stubborn chest, something.  But I stopped myself, cooled down, somehow got Daniel to sit down.  But he was like that all night, messy and loud and as reasonable as stone.  Hogging the weed, getting his red eyes even redder, his watery speech thickening, slurring together.
I bumped into Harris and his friends and we just hung out for a while.  Went to a park and all smoked weed.  I scored his friends some and in the night we were laughing and passing the joints.  In the night the time dribbled by.
The night was cold and black.
After a while Harris and his friends left and me and Daniel wandered around the center.  My last bus left in ten minutes or something and we were just rounding off the night.  We walked to this park to smoke the last of the buds and bumped into our friends, who were waiting for Pete.  We waited with them but Daniel got pissed off after a while and left.  Round the corner Pete appeared.
I scored him some weed and we all piled into the shed behind his house.  It was midnight and we were all sure we woke everyone in the house (which we did).  Everyone drank except for me and Pete.  Soon we were all high and laughing.  Everything felt briefly right.  Someone picked up a guitar and started to play, we wandered the streets smoking, watching the smoke rise up to the blanket sky and the pinprick stars.  The air was cold with wind and heavy with voices.
We all talked about nothing all night.
And we talked about nothing which as the night wore on we realized was everything.  Music played.  Like, the stars shivered and for a moment it looked like the dark of the sky would melt and merge with the dark of the earth.  It looked like the lines between everything got blurred.  Became one.  I stared up.
“The night sky isn’t black.  It’s deep deep blue.”
But it was nothing!  Nothing!  It was all in my head, all in my thoughts.  It had no meaning.  I had fun and laughed and for a second felt accepted but deep down inside I felt the same.  And I felt nothing!  I guess that’s the secret, that everything feels the same no matter what happens.  Or maybe it’s the pot.  Maybe it’s screwing with my head.  I dunno.  I don’t care anymore, because somehow I’ve shaken that blues and that’s all that matters.

Description
SUNDAY
When I lay in bed the sun barges in and hits me white in the eyes.  I blink a few times.  My arms are sprawled out either side of me.  I curl then uncurl my fingers, the tips are throbbing and everything else is numb.  Pulses of electricity through ice.
I closed my eyes and stared into darkness, trying to empty my mind.  Trying to forget all the things that I had learned.  Forget all the thoughts that spun then dropped down tunnels of my memory.  Like: a picture flashed on a wall for one moment, ghostly, composed of light.  Like: a bundle of printed pages in a plastic bag, no cover, look closely, black letters, unread.  Like: a circle of darkness curving downwards towards a pinprick of light that, no matter how fast, how far you go stays the same size, painfully far away.
I gave up, got up, walked to the phone, dialed someone up.
“Hello?”  The voice came through the phone.
“Yeah, man?”
“Oh yeah, hey.  What’s up?”
“Dunno.  Trying to take a nap but couldn’t get to sleep.  You know?”
“Yeah, I’m exhausted.”
“What you up to?”
“Nothing much.”
“Yeah, man.  Sundays.”
“I’m so fucking beat.  I dunno.  I just feel tired.  And dirty.  Like there’s this dirt covering my skin.  Shit, when I swallow it hurts.  I have all these bruises going up and down my body.  What happened?  Like, up and down my arms there’s scratches and shit.”
“Yeah, man, I didn’t see you too much.  You disappeared for a while, man.”
“Like how long?”
“I dunno.  A few hours.”
“Shit.  Where did I go?”
“I dunno.  The shops I guess.”
“Shit.  I don’t remember that…” and awkward pause, our minds winding around blurred memories, “…so how do you feel?”
“Shit.”
“Yeah?”
“Not just beat but…  things feel like they’re changing and I don’t like it.  I mean not just the seasons or anything like that but…  I just can’t put my finger on it.  You know?  Like, last night some people who I used to talk to loads, just, like, walked past me and didn’t even say a word.  Like not even hello or anything.”
“Maybe they were just drunk.”
“Yeah, but it’s not just that it’s…  all these little things piling up on me.”
He paused.  “It’s all in your head, man.”
“What?”
“It’s all just a reflection of what’s going on inside.  If you change that, you change everything.  You know?”
“No, man.  Not really.”
“Okay.  It’s in your attitude.  What you put out.  You think that things are going to be strange and awkward so they are.  Yeah?  Simple.”
“But it isn’t like that.  You can do that for something big, something definite.  But…  the problem is that I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong.  So I can’t change it.  I don’t know what there is to change.”
“You sure there’s even something wrong?”
I paused, ran everything through my mind.  “Yeah.  It’s wrong.  There’s plenty of stuff wrong.”
“You can’t expect everything to be right.”
“But…  with big things there’s a focus.  Some gravity that forces everything together.  Right now… everything’s like dust.  Separate and pulling apart.”
“It’s all on the inside.  Everything.”
“Yeah…” My body was so heavy, my body was so heavy that it sunk into my chair, numb, my body so numb that it lifted up light into the air.  I closed my eyes and thought about things for a while.  Sometimes I’d twitch, flinch, I’d-
“Man?” my friend asked.
“Yeah?”
“I gotta go.  Got some shit to do.”
“Yeah.  Me too I guess.”
“See you at school.”
“Yeah, man.  Tomorrow.”
“Later,” he said and the dial tone filled my ears with a souvenir of icy blackness.
MONDAY
Morning and the gutters were filled with a dusting of red, crackling leaves.  When the wind blew they flew in little spirals and circles, tracing patterns in the dry air.  Armies of formless figures left home for work, blurred outlines.  In cars.  On the street.  Clutching briefcases, with bags slung over shoulders.  They made their way in the sluggish morning, all the excitement of the weekend washing off, leaving an embarrassed, hollow ache.
School moves slow on a Monday morning.  We clunk down empty hallways staring though empty eyes at empty faces.  We don’t notice much.  We lurch into classrooms and sit in our seats (like every other day) talk about what’s been happening (like every other day).  We let out groans and rub our eyes and stare down into our books wishing for just a few more hours wrapped up in warm, wishing for another day of weekend where we could tune out and lose ourselves (like every other day).
Monday stretches out empty and flat.  Nothing happens and nothing gets done.  By the end of Monday I’m so bored all I can think of is a blank white sheet of paper, and rest, blackness, this ache sinking underneath my skin and into my blood.
TUESDAY
“Yeah… but really, what’s wrong?” some girl I was talking to asked.
I shrugged.  She was sat in a circle with all her friends, me standing hunched over them.  It was afternoon and briefly warm.  “You see, that’s the problem… I can’t put my finger on it.  Like, it’s just this feeling.  Like maybe I’ve drifted away.  Lost the plot.”
“What plot?”
“I dunno but… but that’s the point.  I feel left out.  Like now, this lunchtime I’ve just been so bored.  Like, I go up and I talk to people and they… I dunno.  They just act different.  I look and I can tell that I’m not really wanted.  You know?”
I looked down at the grass, one last violent green before the winter.  The trees were all pretty much bare, tracing black fingers like bones across the sky.  Litter was spread across the field, dots of colored plastic printed with labels and logos.  When the wind blew it picked them up and carried them like leaves.
“Poor Brendan,” she said then looked up.  “I’m sure nothing’s really wrong.  You’re fun to be around.  Like, you’re just so excited about everything.  So much energy.”
“But that was before.  I’m not anymore.  I’m bleak and empty.””
She looked into the empty sky.  “Maybe it’s just the seasons.”
“Yeah, maybe.  Maybe I’m just in a bad mood,” and smiled and laughed.  Looked into the sky and all it’s endless blue, this cold air like breath against my skin.  “Sometimes… sometimes I don’t know.”
“Don’t be sad.”
“You can’t just say that.”  I looked down at my feet.  Tried to name the feeling I was feeling.  It’s colored dark blue with an outline of green.  It smells the way things do when it rains for too long.  It’s off balance and it’s surface shimmers.  Look in and it rises and falls, reflects back light.  When you reach down to touch it you only touch empty air, or else a slight cold mist.
She said something which I didn’t hear and I just nodded.
WEDNESDAY
Oh man.  What the hell?  The TV’s on, so loud and noisy just turn it down turn it off already because there’s nothing on and I don’t wanna watch this crap.
“Turn it off,” I said.
“It’s my house,” Daniel said.
“There’s nothing on.  It’s boring.”
“I gave you weed.”
“Stop being such a dick.  It’s crap just watching you watch TV.”
Pete spoke up.  “Yeah, this is boring.”
“Yeah,” I repeated and Daniel struggled up reluctantly.  We were all sat on Daniel’s bed in Daniel’s messy room after school, doing nothing, letting our vision get blurry.  That’s it.  Silence now.  Man, my mouth feels so dry and fuzzy, like, man, I feel mashed.  Like tired like my head is fuzzy, man.  I lay down and it’s better, stare up at the ceiling with all the colors burning bright into my eyes.  When I close them I stare into endless blackness and feel dizzy and sick.  When I open my eyes it burns.
Shit, man, I should stop.  But it’s so easy.  Like, it’s always there.
My thoughts drift through that dizzy blackness and that’s the worst bit.  The way that one idea connects to another and everything is in color and so definitely real.  Like I think of the wall and then I think of brick and then I think of stone and like how everything is like stone.  When I move I wanna puke.  It’d be funny puking in Daniel’s bed.  I’d laugh.
THURSDAY
Lunchtime.  Me, Daniel and Pete hang out with a bunch of people outside near this wall.  It’s cold out but we stay outside.  We’ve been hanging there almost every day since the beginning of school and we weren’t gonna stop just because of the seasons.  As lunchtime wears on people pile outside and form into shifting circles, wander around bored.  Lost.
I dunno what’s wrong with me now.  A few weeks ago I used to be able to walk up to one of those circles and get straight into the flow of everything.  I’d joke with everyone, laugh, then move on to some more people.  Now… now, man I walk up and people look at me then quickly turn away.  I say people’s names and they barely notice me.  I feel like I’m nothing, a gust of air invisible and light.  Maybe it’s the weed.
I wandered around the site a while, killing time before next lesson.  Everyone was in the same circles they were in the day before and they look just as blocked and unfriendly.  Those unfamiliar faces all knitted up into one familiar blue tinted mess.
Shit!  What happening?  What the hell is wrong with me?
I walked to this empty part of school where there are trees and you can look around and there’s not a building in sight.  I like it except that it’s cold and the wind hits you fiercer that when you’re in school.  I looked up.  The sky was gray and patchy, heavy with rain and wind.  On the ground those fallen leaves blew and crackled.  On the ground I looked up.
Up into the heavens wishing for something more.
Up to the sky hoping for the clouds to crack and for the rain to come.
Up to the blue, screaming, crying at it to unwind itself from me.  The blue that wrapped the cold sky.  Whose cold fingers held me and shivered.  The blue that turned eyes away from me.  The blue that blew the litter across the patchy grass, the blue that chilled the air and ripped the leaves from the trees.  I screamed and I screamed and pleaded to that blue.
Up into the gray of the autumn clouds that clenched parts of the still summer sky.  The gray that I knew was here and would come and would stay as long as I lived.  For I was marked.  What the hell had happened?  It was all going so well…
FRIDAY
Nearly shaking as I leave the last lesson of the day.  Tired sheets of school dropped off, that blurry roar of the weekend descending once more.  Oh yeah.  I can nearly taste it, the dark of the night and the clash of faces and names I will soon forget.
Everyone rushes out.
Yeah… breathe in and you can taste the static on the air, like all this tension building over the week, building as classes wore on, building as boring lunchtimes came and went, building as the week slipped away.  Building to what?  To this, a throng of students rushing for the exits.
I saw my friend Daniel looking lost, standing in the middle of the canteen, heavy and dusty and dark.  Pete and a bunch of our friends were walking away from him towards the exit.
“Where are they going?”
Daniel shrugged, then turned walking towards them.  “I dunno.  Somewhere.  They’re taking the car.”
“Oh, what?” I counted four people in front of us.  Five seats in the car.
“Yeah, man.  They were about to go but I waited for you.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, you got the weed.”
Our friends were walking slowly so we caught up with them quickly.  They kinda half turned to say hello, then turned around again.  I swear their eyes were cold and hard.  I swear their voices empty when they spoke to us.  Me and Daniel tagged along back until I pulled him away.
“Fuck it,” I said.  Because I knew they didn’t want me around.  Fuck it because I was tired of caring, because I was tired of reaching out and always going back in.  I said goodbye and they smiled and waved and said that we’d all meet up sometime in the night.  Yeah, fuck it.  If they don’t want me then they won’t have me and I should just hang out with people who do.  You know?
“What are we gonna do?” Daniel asked.
We went to my neighbour’s house.  Halfway there I convinced myself that it was Daniel that they were trying to get rid of.  He was loud and coarse and laughed at all the wrong times.  He was warm like fire is, jumping and licking and clinging with fingers so hot and ashen.  Must be Daniel.  Dick.
Smoked a few cones with my neighbor and then we all split.  My neighbour was going to some party.  I had to go into the town center where I had promised some people I would help distribute leaflets or some shit like that.  I regretted it then.  Not just because I had to do something but because…  I dunno.  I guess it’s because I kinda had to believe and I wasn’t really in the mood.  No, no, it was that I had to be cheerful inside and blind.  Then I was cold and I could see everything laid out in front of me on a grided sheet.  Maybe it was just that it ws freezing and I didn’ particularly wanna hang around outside.
But I went anyway, got there late.  The people didn’t seen to mind, they just smiled and waved.  I didn’t.
“How long are you gonna be?” Daniel asked.
I shrugged.  “I dunno.  Why?”
“Cause it’s boring.”
I didn’t say anything.
“So how long?”
“An hour, maybe.  I’m not sure.”
“Ah, shit,” He looked down at his feet as if in thought but we both knew what would happen next.  “I’ll see you later,” he started to walk off.
“Wait, where are you going?”
“To the park.”
“To smoke weed?” As we were leaving my neighbour’s Daniel had stuck the pot in his pocket.
“What else?”
“Shit.  Wait for me to finish this.”
He thrashed his head around.  “No, man.  I’m going.”
“Fuck you,” I said.  “It’s as much mine as it is yours.”
“Nah,” he said, “I put in ten bucks more than you.”
“Ten bucks?  Ten fucking bucks!  That doesn’t give you full control of the weed now does it?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll save some for you.”  The way he said some made it sound like he would come back with a pinch.
“Why do you have to act like such a dick all the time?”
“You’re the dick.”
“How am I being a dick?  I have to do this.  You know that I have to do this.  Just wait is all I’m saying.”
“Arse-rooting-donkey-bandit.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It’s what you are.”
“You are just so fucking…  you are so…  We’re SEVENTEEN, man.  What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m going now.”
“Fuck you!”
He turned and started to walk away.
“Fucking hell,” I said.  “You always do this, man.  You claim the weed and because of that you decide everything that we do.  Fuck.  I scored it.  Without me you wouldn’t ever get any.”
“I can buy weed myself.”
“Yeah right.”
“Yeah.”
I felt something bubble up inside me.  I wanted to yell, crash my fists against his stubborn chest, something.  But I stopped myself, cooled down, somehow got Daniel to sit down.  But he was like that all night, messy and loud and as reasonable as stone.  Hogging the weed, getting his red eyes even redder, his watery speech thickening, slurring together.
I bumped into Harris and his friends and we just hung out for a while.  Went to a park and all smoked weed.  I scored his friends some and in the night we were laughing and passing the joints.  In the night the time dribbled by.
The night was cold and black.
After a while Harris and his friends left and me and Daniel wandered around the center.  My last bus left in ten minutes or something and we were just rounding off the night.  We walked to this park to smoke the last of the buds and bumped into our friends, who were waiting for Pete.  We waited with them but Daniel got pissed off after a while and left.  Round the corner Pete appeared.
I scored him some weed and we all piled into the shed behind his house.  It was midnight and we were all sure we woke everyone in the house (which we did).  Everyone drank except for me and Pete.  Soon we were all high and laughing.  Everything felt briefly right.  Someone picked up a guitar and started to play, we wandered the streets smoking, watching the smoke rise up to the blanket sky and the pinprick stars.  The air was cold with wind and heavy with voices.
We all talked about nothing all night.
And we talked about nothing which as the night wore on we realized was everything.  Music played.  Like, the stars shivered and for a moment it looked like the dark of the sky would melt and merge with the dark of the earth.  It looked like the lines between everything got blurred.  Became one.  I stared up.
“The night sky isn’t black.  It’s deep deep blue.”
But it was nothing!  Nothing!  It was all in my head, all in my thoughts.  It had no meaning.  I had fun and laughed and for a second felt accepted but deep down inside I felt the same.  And I felt nothing!  I guess that’s the secret, that everything feels the same no matter what happens.  Or maybe it’s the pot.  Maybe it’s screwing with my head.  I dunno.  I don’t care anymore, because somehow I’ve shaken that blues and that’s all that matters.