No Halo

It was strangely cold when for a Tuesday in early September. Everyone one on campus was sporting long sleeve shirts or sweaters. The sorority girls and frat boys walked around in their house windbreakers. Professors look extra annoyed as they scurried through groups of kids, their papers messily hanging in their arms as they sipped at their large coffees. It was almost comical how quickly the feel of the campus changed with a twenty degree drop in the temperature. No one seemed as social, the glow everyone normally had was gone, and the coffee line was the longest I had ever seen it.

I truly felt bad for the baristas working that day, it must have been a deep level of hell dealing with that many cranky, sleep deprived, poor college students. Instead of waiting on the long line for the Starbucks, I pulled my crewneck a little closer to my body, crossed my arms tightly against my chest, and started heading toward the music building.

Step by step, I let the cool air and vacant walkways morph my mood. I was starting to feel it again, the pick at my skin, the tick in my brain, the quickening of my heart beat. I started to think about everyone who wasn’t here, all of the people I couldn’t text and talk to anymore.

It was in that moment, that I decided to visit everyone today. I had made it a weekly duty of mine to put flowers on my sisters grave, but as I thought about the others, I felt guilty for not dressing their tombstones like I did for her. They were just as close to me as she was, but for some reason their absence didn’t sting like hers did.

The weather had a strangle-hold on me. The cold rattled my bones and the lack of sun and smiles from others clouded my brain. To say I was a little out of it was putting it lightly. I could have been hit by a truck and I would try to keep walking like nothing had even happened.

When I reached the front doors of the small coffee shop, I unhooked my hands from the straps of my backpack and pulled a door open. Stepping inside, I pulled myself up to the front counter and looked up at the familiar boy scrolling through his cell phone.

Normally I would snatch his phone from him and do some idiotic thing, but as soon as the thought came into my brain, it left. I was too tired to be an asshole to him today, as much as I loved it.

“Weather getting to you too?” Dylan asked as he grabbed a large coffee cup and started moving behind the counter, his eyes shifting from the coffee cup to me a few times. Watching him move, I tried to think of something to say, something to make him think I was okay, but by the time I had come up with a few words, he slid me my coffee and looked into my eyes. “Cameron, you good?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted as I took the coffee and brought it to my lips. “It’s a weird day.”


“I get off at five, if you need me.” Dylan whispered as his eyes scanned the cafe, pausing at a couple of tables where students were camped out with books and their laptops. “I’ll practice the tambourine if you want to do some acoustic shit at my place. I know that always makes you feel better.”

I smiled at the boy, a genuine smile that radiated from deep within my heart. Through everything that had gone in my life, and I mean everything Dylan had been constantly there holding me up. He was the boy who helped me to the nurse when I would fall on the playground, he was the hand I held when I had to get shots or blood drawn, and he was the shoulder I cried on when I started losing people.

He pushed me to get help. He pushed me to be a better person, and I could never thank him enough for that.

“Are you going to invite Sky?” I asked as I wiggled my eyebrows at him. As a blush lit up on the boys cheeks, he shushed me and then gabbed my coffee and took a long sip.

“Don’t make me blush like that you, shorty.”


“You guys have a date night, okay? Tell him I said hi, send me a selfie, I have… I want to visit some people.” I winced as I watched Dylan's eyes hold mine, the bright green specs holding so much care and sadness that it almost reduced me to a crying heap on the floor. Instead, I sucked in a deep breath, let my pride hold me together, and forced a smile.

Leaning over the counter, Dylan gave me a tight hug, a kiss on the cheek and then leaned back, his big eyes still holding those same emotions. “Just… text me a little, okay?”


“Fine.” I sent him a smile and rolled my eyes as I walked over to the front doors and sent him a wave, thanking him for the coffee as I headed into the music building, my head still reeling with faces of people I hadn’t seen in years.

The walk over to building where I had my history class was a blur. One by one the buildings morphed into another. People passes by like streaks of color on a painting. The sky hung over me, all of the clouds hanging still as if someone had stopped the Earth from spinning. I couldn’t hear my feet shuffling against the cement, I couldn’t see the faces walking by me, and I had no idea someone was calling my name until a large hand clamped on my shoulder and shook my entire body.

Gasping, I whipped my head to the side and went to swing my arm up from my side and press my knuckles into the strangers face when my eyes fell into two big pools of hazel. Blinking a few times, I pushed all of the surging anger down into the pit of my stomach and let out a long sigh.

“I was about to deck you, Sanders.” I huffed as I looked down at my coffee and noticed a few brown pools of liquid, probably a result of being shaken so hard. “What’s the deal?”

Matt looked at me as if I was from another planet. His song facial features were swimming with worry as he leaned in toward me a little and inspected my eyes. If I wasn’t in such a funk, I would have melted right there in the middle of this badly done asphalt path. The swirl of colors in that man’s eyes was the most beautiful sight in the world and it made my knees weak.

“I’ve been calling your name for the last two minutes.”


“Oh, like, from where?” I was going to pull the bad hearing card from playing music without ear plugs in so much, but by the look in his eyes, I knew this was going to be a pressing, dragged out, conversation. I guess it was the professor in him, or maybe just because he was a man.—who knows.

“Right next to you.” He said slowly, his eyes scanning over me a few times before he let out a huff. “What’s going on?”


I shrugged my shoulder as I took a big sip of my coffee. Pulling it from my lips, I adjusted my backpack a little and jerked my head toward the building where we had our class. “Just the weather.”


Matt didn’t accept that answer, but he didn’t press on any further. Instead, he gave my shoulder a tight squeeze, nodded his head, and then quietly walked next to me as we entered the building and headed down the hall. As soon as we got to the classroom, he turned to me and pressed his lips into a straight line.

“You can talk to me.”


“Yeah, maybe,” I shot him a quick smile as I ducked passed him and pushed the door to the classroom open, not bothering to let my eyes focus on anything but my seat in the back of the class. Once I was situated with my text book and notebook out, I leaned back in my seat, grabbed my black pen and let the next hour and a half of listening to Matt speak about history fill the empty void in my brain.

Once the lecture was over, I had three pages of notes. I had scribbled down words he said and wrote down. My handwriting was a swirling mess and as I looked over them, I couldn’t read a damn word or even have the brain power to try to make out what sentence fragment related to which topic. It was as if my body was on auto-pilot for the last hour and a half and I had just crashed back down into the runway.

Matt dismissed the class and rambled on about what chapter we needed to read for Thursday’s class. Shuffling all of my things together, I dropped them into my book bag and zipped it up. Slinging it over my shoulder, grabbed my coffee and went to head out of the classroom when I heard his voice.

“Cam, hang back.”

Fuck, was all I repeated as I stopped mid step, my body aching as I thought about the words that were going to flow out of his mouth.

Since the first class, Matt and I had become a constant in the pre and post class minutes. Before class we usually bumped into each other getting coffee or smoking, after we had a farewell cigarette and then we parted ways until next class. Though all of this, we talked a lot. I told him about my tattoos and my thesis. He told me about his ‘golden days’ when he was in a band. I told him about the band I had, the dumb shows we played and the idiotic things we did.

When we spoke, it felt like I was talking to a life-long friend. There were a few times where I even had to pause and straight out ask him if he had heard the story before. This usually made him laugh, a sight that I couldn’t get enough of. He had these dimples that formed in his cheeks when he smiled. Perfectly round little indents that accented his beautiful smile and his bright shimmering eyes.

Yes, I had a massive crush on Matt, but that wasn’t something I was willing to admit to anyone aside form myself. From what I could tell, he was either in his late twenties or early thirties, and it was a fact, at least in my brain, that he wouldn’t be interested in some twenty-three year old clawing her way through the last year of college.

Plus, it had only been three classes. Once things picked up and my thesis and tests started coming up, I’m sure this relationship would fade away along with the school-girl crush.

“You’re doing it again,” his voice pulled me from my thoughts and roughly threw me back into the current situation. It kind of felt like falling into a bed of dense cement. “You just… leave, I don’t-“


“I’m fine,” I said a little too quickly for his liking. When I noticed the stern look in his eyes, I ran a hand down my face and huffed. “Relax, dad, I’m a little off from the weather. I’m going to head out, take a walk, and I’ll be back to busting your balls on Thursday, okay Sanders?”

Matt frowned at me. It wasn’t something I enjoyed.

“Cut the shit, Sanders.” I snapped, anger swirling in my stomach. “I don’t need this.”


“Oh?” He said in a tone that made my saliva taste sour.

Why the fuck was he doing this?


“I can have a bad day.” I snapped, my eyes narrowing as he stood up and crossed his ams against his chest.


“And is it so horrible that I care?” HIs words sliced through me.


“Yeah,” I wanted to stop myself from speaking, but his tone, that fucking tone was driving me up the wall. Who did he think he was talking to me like that? How does he think that I just need to open up to him like that? “I’ve talked to you for maybe a half hour in total since the first day of school. I’ve essentially known you for three days. You’ve got a lot of fucking balls to think you're entitled to pick at my brain.”


“So what, we aren't friends? I can’t worry about you?” Matt lifted an eyebrow a little bit of hurt swimming in his eyes.

All of his mixed up emotions eventually pushed me over the edge. Throat burning, my brain started to rip itself to shreds as I clenched my first and pressed it into my side.

I snapped.


“No, we aren’t fucking friends, Matt. You’re my professor, I’m your student, and that’s fucking it.” The hurt smothering his features was enough to make me throw up, but I held it in. “I’m barely holding it together today, I don’t fucking need this.” I ended in a scream and without a second glance walked through the door and slammed it shut behind me.

Ignoring the eyes on me in the hallway, I put my head down, sipped my coffee and made a b-line through campus and across town until I reached the cemetery. Rubbing my eyes with my sleeve, I walked down three aisles and passed five headstones until I reached hers.

Dropping into the grass, I pulled my knees to my chest and pressed my chin into my knees.

“I really wish you were here,” I whispered into the air as my eyes traced over her name, “I really need big sister advice right now.”