Salt Pillars

Chapter 6

Jen

The day moved slowly and Jen began to feel an itch — a subtle nagging that started deep within her stomach as rising anxiety that made her want to rip out her hair, and scream, and smash the windows with a chair, and scream louder, and claw her own eyes out with her finger nails.

This feeling had been building up in her for a couple of months now. It would come and go on a whim — sometimes as a muted voice like someone talking through a wall, and other times it was a hammer smashing glass behind her eyes. Today it was the hammer.

It began with Cole; not that his words bothered her, because they didn't — she couldn't give a crap less what a D-bag like Cole thought of her, it was just that lately, any stress was a trigger.

She sat in second period trying to focus on the lecture, but the teacher's voice faded deeper and deeper behind her minds own screams. Whore, Slut, WHORE! SLUT! BITCH! CUNT! WHOOOOORE!

As her headphones blasted music into her ears to drown out the thoughts, she looked down at her desk. Etched onto it in deep pencil was a pot leaf and below that someone had written "fag" in red ink with a simple drawing of an oversized penis going into a characters mouth then bursting through the back of its skull in an explosion of bone and brain fragments, and below that someone wrote Mr. Ashmead sucks cocks; Mr. Ashmead being the English teacher that was currently standing in front of the room lecturing.

Jen couldn't care right now — she wanted to care, but she wanted a bottle full of cyanide even more. Although the past was far away, the future was even further, and she felt the weight of her memories as strongly as if they were happening to her now. She removed a small blue pill from her purse and cupped it in her hand. The moment that she felt confident that nobody was looking, she tossed it into her mouth and swallowed it dry.

A finger tapped her shoulder, breaking her thoughts grip and almost startling her. She pulled one of her earphones out then leaned her head back.

"Jen," the boy's voice from behind her whispered.

"Whaaaat?" she replied in a throaty tone trying to sound annoyed but wasn't. She knew the boy behind her, Darren, and kind of thought he was cool. He was easy to talk to and had a confidence that seemed unusual for high school boys. He wasn't some super trendy jock, or some coked out G-kid; He seemed like more of a new age hippie or raver type.

"Mr. Ashmead is wearing his lucky pants today," Darren said.

Jen hadn't noticed until this moment that he was, in fact, wearing his "lucky pants." What they referred to as Mr. Ashmead's 'lucky pants' were his slacks that were too short at the ankles, so they would be lucky for a man in the event of a flashflood.

Jen failed to hold back a burst of unexpected laughter, so she placed her hand over her mouth and sank low into her chair.

"Thanks jerk," she whispered back.

"What'd I do? I'm just making the observation."

He continued, "Are you gonna cut out during home room again?"

"I was planning on it," she replied.

"I just got some really good bud...Do you wanna smoke?" He asked.

Jen didn't really like getting high at school, it made her feel paranoid and socially awkward, but she didn't want him to think she was lame either. "Just name the place." she replied.

After class she met Joe for lunch and they sat at their usual table off toward the corner of the dining hall. The tables were cheap fold-outs with plastic chairs. Jen positioned herself next to Joe who was poking at his fish sticks with a look of puzzlement on his face.