Melodies

It was incredibly depressing to watch Kell and Jamie both. I didn't know Jamie that well, but it was still awful everytime I saw him. He was skeletal, with this exhausted, dead look in his eyes all the time. He was covered in bruises and he was always freezing. He just looked completely drained.

Kell didn't look much better. He lost a fair amount of weight after Jamie's trip to the emergency room. He wasn't sleeping, he wasn't eating, he wasn't functioning as he should have been. He was tired and bitchy and miserable, and I couldn't make it any better.

As everything dragged on, I began to notice that it was actually affecting me more than I'd thought. I began smoking more, I cut class and didn't keep up with schoolwork. I was mostly too wound up and jumpy to keep still or focus. I was all over the place except for when I was sleeping. When I slept, I was dead. I slept for hours and hours, so much that I was late for school and meeting people and work.

It was an issue that I was asleep all the time while Kell was constantly awake. We spent time together physically, but we didn't talk as much. We tried to avoid the sensitive subjects: Jamie, insomnia, hypersomnia, the pills Kell kept with him all the time, the pot I smoked with Alex and Ashton on the weekends. It was okay at first, but tension built up. It wasn't long before the attempts to not discuss these things fell through.

Kell was with me while my mom was at work. We'd planned on having our own little slumber party to get caught up on homework together, and to be together without a huge shadow hanging over our heads. It began snowing around eight, and it was already dark outside, it being the beginning of February. We were in the kitchen at the table, with books and paper and pencils in front of us. I was catching up on Trig while Kell finished something for English on his laptop.

He looked tired, but more relaxed than he usually did, for whatever reason. He was dressed for comfort, in yoga pants and a hoodie. His hair was messy, but clean. He looked put together enough for someone as emotionally up-heaved as he had been since January.

We worked until eleven. I had three Trig assignments left to finish, but I decided they could wait. Kell had finished everything, as he'd been mostly keeping up with his homework. He was scrolling through tumblr when I finally shut my textbook and turned my calculator off.

He looked at the stapled papers in front of me, and I looked at the image on his screen. It was a picture of a girl, laughing and holding a lit blunt. Kell followed my gaze to look at the picture with me. We were quiet for a moment.

"Is that what it feels like? Does it really make you happy like that?"

I took a minute to answer. "It feels nice. But it can't keep you happy all the time." I paused. "How do your pills make you feel?"

"Warm. Oblivious."

"Are you going to keep using them?"

He was very still and very quiet for a few minutes. I didn't dare push him to answer before he was ready.

"I don't know. Probably not. I'm running out of them. I got them when I had surgery over the summer. I don't know how to get anymore."

"You'll feel weird without them."

"I only take them when I can't handle what's going on."

"Do they help you sleep, at least?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I guess they're good for that, then. But I don't think you should try to get anymore once they run out."

"I won't."

"Good."

He scrolled through tumblr for a few more minutes, something playing quietly from his laptop speakers, before he turned to look at me with an intense look of curiosity and something else I couldn't quite place.

"Sydney..."

He struggled to make himself finish his question.

"...can we fuck?"