{ make my heart s h a k e } finn & kit

[tick 12a / calla]

Anxiety is the sound of lockers slamming, metal grinding against metal like a pair of weapons clashing. Footsteps echoing, stampeding through the halls, crashing against the walls like thunder. Voices ring on a loop track, tinny recordings of parties and weekend plans on playback until the tape runs out, spilling to the floor in glossy memories and dark shadows.

Standing in the cacophony of noise, fumbling with a lock, it takes three tries for the code to finally break, 7-31-17 illegibly smudged on a palm in cheap blue ink. Paper-bound books and dog-eared pages fall from the wall to my arms in a cascade.

The ones I actually need are at the back and I guess that's just life or something.

Already counting down the hours, minutes, seconds until the day is over and classes haven't even started yet.

It's already been the morning to end all mornings, Liza had to leave early, rushing out of the house with some throwaway line, leaving a trail of chaos in her wake because no one fixes problems like she does and somehow I still don't know how to tie a tie. A halfhearted knot, some kind of hand-me-down noose, and I can feel myself standing out in the sea of class. Shoes three sizes too big, all thanks to Walt, newspaper crammed in the toes and a hole in the sleeve of my sweater, ( "you're such a worrier" )
worn away by idle fingers.

( A playback loop of shiny new books and cashmere, of healthy lungs and grand empty rooms. )

The bell rings, sound cutting through the air like a gunshot. Fight or flight kicking in because I'm gonna be late and shoot shoot shoot s h i t -

The locker slams shut, crumpling Modern Medicinal Treatments and their Advantages, and I guess I can't bring myself to care anymore. Because everything used to be pressed into folders, sorted numerically then alphabetically, preciously preserved in plastic for later, whenever later was.

And then it all sort of shifted, changed like the seasons, summer to fall, and the leaves molted like lab reports and essay papers, floating down to litter the floorboards.

But the bell's gone and the locker door is still shut tight, paper trapped between the cheap metal so I just let it be. Rushing down the hall, frantic, because time seems to go funny when you're in a hurry and first period waits for no one.

My shoulder hits something solid, feet slipping on linoleum floors, moving like a slow motion film, grainy and a little blurred around the edges. Tripping over my feet again and again, a busted vinyl that won't stop skipping and who thought newspaper was a good idea?

Papers fly everywhere, a startled flock of birds taking flight and then falling like snowflakes, a lens flares and it's enough to make my vision white.

( Dante used to throw paper airplanes at me, folded up notebook paper that he tore out sheet by sheet.
I still don't know if he wanted a landing strip or a target. )

Down on the floor, shuffling the papers together because these are the ones that I actually need. Fluorescent lights flicker overheat, keeping time with a heartbeat and a "sorry, sorry, sorry" said with my head down.

♡     ♡     ♡

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

K    I    T     L    A    N    G    L   E   Y

► ► ►

Summer ends to sand demons curled into my clothes, my hair turning three shades lighter, creamsicle sunsets melting a lot earlier into the treelines at night. There’s still grass in my shoes, the sun in the air like perfume – but vacation’s dead. That's what Hazel said yesterday when she collapsed onto the couch with an armful of new textbooks, covers nice and glossy, but she's already penciling doom into their spines.

These days she keeps saying I’m just a freakin’ awful teenager, no sense of rebellion whatsoever; sixteen, and there’s only three more years for me to realize that adolescence is overrated or something and that our youth is just a big government scam.

High school is just like a Dyson sphere she tells me – analogy of all her conspiracy pseudoscience-y stuff.

Guys roll up the cuffs of their sleeves, ties loose, vacation clinging onto their fingertips on the steps of school. And the teachers are all inside, patrolling down the halls, dress code handy to straighten them up from the summer nights of whatever rumours that have been running through the mill lately. “Hot tea,” Hazel likes to say.

My collar feels stiff, ironed, outgrew another uniform with two inches at my ankles – mom says I’m a beanstalk. But I’m still the baby.

Docking my bike a moment later – barely a minute early because I guess I’m just cursed with being a heavy sleeper and having a knack for throwing my clock across the room – there’s an arm reaching from behind me to lean on the handlebar, the scent of strawberry bootlaces tangled in her hair. She smiles, a dimple in her cheek.

Girls always smell nice.

“Hi Kit, how was your vacation?”

Long, full of cherry popsicles, kicking a ball in the backyard with Hazel, bothering Clover over her medical studies as she’d poured over a million different terms like a nerd, stuff with long names like methemoglobinemia and all the layman terms we use – Blue Baby. I remember all the sundowns with my bike, pedaling a path with no handlebars, crickets chirping in jars, and butterfly nets in the backyard full of stubborn weeds.

“It was good Sonya--”

Except the bell interrupts. The sound forms a swarm of students for the front doors, and I swear I nearly die in the tide. Teachers hand out detention slips like they’re playing cards, and nobody wants to be left behind in the sterile hallway after the bell tolls for easy picking. Pouring into the school at the last second, just as the fifth ring sounds, unfolding a wrinkled timetable to remind myself the room number for Organic Chemistry Laboratory and – ah h  h crap.

Something hits me in the back, and I trip, a million papers scattering from the force like dandelion seeds in the wind. It’s quick; a blink later and I lose balance, air rushing from my lungs, hitting the floor hard enough so that I’m sure I’ve got a bruised tailbone or something crazy because...ow. Oh man.

There’s an eyeful of red hair in my line of vision before I finally pull myself up, reaching for the wall for steadiness – and there’s a whole entire boy opposite to me a moment later, trying to shove his binder of stuff back together again like trying to mend a bunch of broken eggshells, but there’s nothing keeping the yolk from leaking.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

My ears are ringing. He’s still on the floor, scraping together all the loose pages, so I bend down too.

“Hey, it’s okay –” I guess it's my fault too. I collect some of the papers at my feet, stacking them into a neat pile “– here.”

I give him my hand.

“Are you alright? You're not hurt?”