Have Kids, Then We'll Talk

I blow a kiss Cassie’s way as we depart on her floor of the posh building and I climb out the window to reach my bedroom through the fire escape route. That way I enter the premises unnoticed and tonight, that is very much needed. As I fish it out of my pocket on the rickety, rusty steps that snake around the outer wall of the skyscraper, my Sidekick reads four a.m. Not bad for a girls’ night out. Well, I always end up meeting the sunrise on my way home after going out with Cass and Madie. It would always give me a reason to smile afterwards, unlike the most of my other escapades.

Nothing was expected of me when I was with them, nothing was demanded, no one had to act, I didn’t have to act, for that matter. Everything would flow more natural than with anyone else, and I know for a fact none of them wants to fuck me for the sake of it (though Mads says some weird-ass shit when she’s drunk). I chuckle a bit and start moving over the steps insecurely, barely managing not to fall down headfirst into the solid concrete. Did the fucking wind just have to pick up again?

Upon reaching the safety of my balcony, I sigh with ginormous relief and slump into the nearest chair, blowing stray strands of hair off my face. The night is bright for a change, the moon’s right there and I can actually see the stars from up here – the slightest hints of silver peer out from behind the heavy mass of smog and glimmer down onto this concrete shackled city I now call home.

I’m not sad, I’m not, I’m just… melancholic.

Who’d ever say, eh? Charlie McCracken, dreamily gazing up at the distant stars and wondering…

Wondering if she’ll ever find someone who will make her heart skip a beat or two, or at least make her feel like there’s a higher purpose to the words “I love you” than getting laid. Meeting someone who’d give up everything for me and ask nothing in return until I’m ready to give it. Would it be so bad to have that romance Mr. Way used to sing about?

I actually want love to fuck me up so badly, so deeply that I actually get to feel my heart shattering inside my chest, to have it erase this fucking self-satisfied, fake smirk off my face. I want it to be desperate and dirty and needy and painful… I don’t wanna end up like my mother, I don’t wanna end up like Bert, I don’t wanna lead the existence I’m leading now.

Or maybe I just need pot.

Ugh. I had guys saying all sorts of bullshit to get me in bed, but it would be nice to have someone actually mean these things. And I know it’s part my fault – who in the world would swear to take every and each star off the sky and pin them into my hair and actually mean it when they know who I am and whose genes I carry around?

I mentally slap myself silly and stand up, taking off my favorite black woolen dress in the process. My whole body trembles in the cold air and I enter my room, kicking off the yellow chucks I’ve been wearing. Now left in a pair of black tights and an equally colored bra, I walk over to the bathroom mirror to take a look at my features.

Fucking awesome.

My eyes are already puffy and all that ugly shit. God knows how I’ll look in three hours. Whose idea was going out ‘till four fucking a.m. on the day before the dreaded Monday – the first in the line of the boring school days for this year? I’m far from regretting it, but dammit, how am I supposed to get good grades if I look like crap? I have to start paying more attention to my health, too.

With that thought still lingering somewhere in my head, I stroll over to my bed cabinet and open a fresh pack of Marlboro Lights and light one up, inhaling its toxins greedily as I sit down to get rid of the itching tights. No one said I should start paying more attention to it right now.

Now that I come to think of it, Cass and Mads are all I have left. In these rare depressive moments in my life, I always reach that conclusion. I’ll always have Aiden and Dan. God knows that whatever Aiden and I have is too fucked to be relied on and Dan… well, he’s Dan, one of those guys whom you can always turn to and trust to, the light of every party and exactly because of that, I don’t wanna be serious around him, like, ever. Jay… Well—

I really do need to get over myself.

So…

I try thinking about the awesome time we had tonight, instead.

Mads is always grounded, I’m afraid I’ll have to accept that as one of those sad facts of life, like that there are illiterate people in the world. And it would be oh, so very wrong of us not to go rescue her. That was the case tonight.

I don’t need rescuing. I sneak out. Each and every time. Like he’d fucking care, that big baby Be—my father is. Says I’m becoming too much like my mother and stares at me with those huge fucking blue eyes and makes me feel guilty for having fun and then to top it all off he grounds me!? I really wouldn’t fucking mind if he gave two fucks about it. He tells me I’m grounded and then they ALL leave for the night leaving me home alone and… Yeah, I leave then, too. He’d stay and check if he cared.

Shopping, coffees, hair salons, walks and then Central Park and the dingy clubs with small, anonymous demo bands performing, everything was just so… laid back while we all bitched about our parents. Everything was out there, among us, trust, friendship, love, eternity and loyalty… I prayed to God that I never manage to ruin it.

I exit the shower, not even aware of the decision to take one and towel my body and hair before returning to my room. I don’t know if the three apes I live with are home or not and if they see the light or not and, with this weird, designated feeling, I realize that I don’t even care. I slip into one of Ber—Dad’s old band t-shirts and sit on my bed, logging onto Myspace for a quick second before I’m off to bed.

There’s nothing there bar a few hyper comments from Dan, a sexual innuendo from Aiden and a kiss goodnight from Mads and Cass along with the links to the latest tabloid headlines involving our names. I close my laptop with a sigh and shuffle on the bed, intent on falling asleep, even for an hour.

Only if my head would clear out.

I wonder whether I’d stop thinking if I dyed my hair blonde.

Cass would so kill me if she could hear this.