Sense |Hardly| Graces |The Fools| [Spesh]

It was another bad month. Another bad week, another bad day. S---, it was just another bad year. As I stood there with my back against the wall, taking another drag from the wound up paper smoking between my second and third fingers, I couldn’t help but wish that my friends were still around. Some of them had decided to move elsewhere; others were just busy lying around somewhere in the district. Of course, we had a great number of hangouts during the school year, but to me, while they were extremely fun, it was more of a stress reliever. I always went there because I wanted to be away, to escape from the workload my parents kept piling on me during the school year. Plus, everyone had their own personality, even though we had all gotten along very well.

But they were too busy and I didn’t dare to try to reach them. Of course, I was just a block away from Pongo’s house and a street away from Mark’s and Will was pretty much around the corner, but I felt like being by myself, away from the shed and everything. I took a long drink from the bottle held in my left hand, laughing sourly at the fact that I looked like such a no-good slum person just standing there and drinking. I used to be the good girl, the one who would study as hard as possible and never drink and do drugs with my friends. Pressure soon caught up to me and the next thing I knew I was being pulled into the world I had been standing outside of. My friends had helped, even encouraged, me to take my first sip of alcohol, smoke my first cigarette and whatever stash we could sneak out under our family’s noses.

My parents eventually found out and when they did, they weren’t happy. They had sat me down and told me that if I continued hanging out with my friends, I was going to be just like them: useless, jobless, rotting away in ditches. I was barely listening to what they were saying, waiting for something of actual importance to be mentioned. I understood what they were saying, but hardly let it sink in; at that point, all I wanted was another drink. Well, I finally received the blunt end when they told me that I was going to be stuck in the house and that they were going to lock me in…let’s just say I was happy when the school year was over. But then they saw my grades and while they were not abysmal, they were convincing enough for my parents to decide that I needed additional schooling.

I never understood that concept, the one where people went to extra school. The only reason why people did horrible in class was because they were bored, and the reason why they were bored was because the class was boring and they weren’t learning anything new, which meant that additional schooling was only an opportunity for people to be even more bored. The logic just did not work. My throat was starting to burn and instinct drove me to bring the bottle to my lips once again, taking another long drink as the alcohol only made my throat burn some more. The herbs still rolled up between my fingers were useless at that point so I threw it to the ground and stomped on it, partially doing it just to release my anger.

I could see the people walking by me, staring at me, judging me. If they didn’t know who I was, I would just stare back and give them a glare. If they did know me…well, I still glared. Why was it any of their business what I was up to? I didn’t even care if they told my parents; my parents could go to hell for all I cared. They were pieces of ---- and if anything, my idiotic brothers were worse. They were ----ing living with their parents those stupid ----s. At that point, I was in a half-drunk state where I could still sense that there was movement, but what exactly was happening was not clear. I could see shapes moving ahead of me, but sound was being muffled by a screen placed over my ears.

“Where is that damn…ugh…keys. I again lost?” I knew there was something wrong with that sentence structure, but I dismissed it as my cluttered mind as I went through my pockets, trying to remember where I had left my keys. “----. ---- all those pocket people. Can’t ----ing understand them. What the—ugh. Give up.” My sober self would have been cringing just hearing how I was acting, but all the toxic chemicals running through my brain was making me feel dizzier by the second and mumbling like I had no grasp of my mind. Or maybe I did. At that point, who had control was hardly a concern of mine.

“Where the—could you at least—Ah ha!” I exclaimed as I finally found my keys, putting them back in the same pocket that I thought I had lost them from. Feeling horribly accomplished by finding my keys, I slumped back down until I was sitting on the concrete with the wall against my back. This was just a disaster.