Status: because why not, ydg?
Empty Garden
five
Little Johnny was a friend of mine from middle school. One of those friends who you’re close to all the way up to the end of eighth grade, but you part ways after that and something happens. Adolescence gets a hold of you and the summer, it changes you.
After that, we nodded at each other in the hallways sometimes when he actually showed up to school. Sometimes we’d go smoke a cigarette together during lunch, run in to each other at parties.
Little Johnny was a fucked up kid, or at least he became one. He got heavy in to heroin, quit going to school. He tried to hang himself once, but failed. His cheeks got all sunken in, the bones in his face all sharp and angular. His eyes buried themselves deep in the sockets and he always had these scabs on his lips from picking at them. He had a huge scar on his left arm from an abscess caused by missing the vein. His skin was gray and his hair was thin.
We all counted down the days until Little Johnny overdosed and died. None of us would be very sad, we thought. It became kind of a game.
Instead Little Johnny got hit by a bus while he was stone cold sober.
No one was laughing anymore.
After that, we nodded at each other in the hallways sometimes when he actually showed up to school. Sometimes we’d go smoke a cigarette together during lunch, run in to each other at parties.
Little Johnny was a fucked up kid, or at least he became one. He got heavy in to heroin, quit going to school. He tried to hang himself once, but failed. His cheeks got all sunken in, the bones in his face all sharp and angular. His eyes buried themselves deep in the sockets and he always had these scabs on his lips from picking at them. He had a huge scar on his left arm from an abscess caused by missing the vein. His skin was gray and his hair was thin.
We all counted down the days until Little Johnny overdosed and died. None of us would be very sad, we thought. It became kind of a game.
Instead Little Johnny got hit by a bus while he was stone cold sober.
No one was laughing anymore.