Disequilibrium

Part 3: Junior Year - Scene 2

Everywhere I go, the air is always tight as hell.

Casper's house isn't the same anymore; it's not the way it used to be. I'm sure the house never changed—it's been standing just as glorious as it had when he left. It's just us. I know it's just us. Our conversations are goddamn boring nowadays. They're so full of mundane comments that I feel like I'd rather be chewing my own fingers off than to be talking to him. How are you doing? Are you good? How was your day?The weather's nice. Let's watch a movie. Then we'd add our fake smiles and our fake laughs and our fake jokes to make our fake friendship look better than it really is.  It's been going on for the past week now.

Sickening.

Home isn't any better, either. Dad keeps trying to connect. Nichole keeps trying to help. I keep trying to find a way to last through the day without putting a goddamn gun to my head. I mean, some days it feels like the walls of the trailer are closing in like clothes left in the drier for too long. Shrinking, shrinking, and shrinking every minute. I can't eat, sleep, or even breathe without feeling like I'm going insane.

Dad steps inside the house and finds me at the kitchen. I'm not doing anything—just staring at the cupboards. I'm always staring. I can become the goddamn king of staring, I swear. He looks at me for a moment and shakes his head before walking from the doorway, shoes and all. He goes straight to the fridge.

"How's Nichole?" I ask. He didn't come home last night.

"She's good. She says hi." From the corner of my eye, Dad looks around the fridge before settling for a beer. He pops it open with his teeth. "What, are the cupboards interesting to you?"

"Not really."

"Then what the hell are you staring at? You're freaking me out."

I look at him then. He's leaning against one of the dining chairs, absently sipping his drink while watching me with worried eyes. We play a staring game for a while until he blinks first, sighing and shaking his head. He's a little drunk. I can tell. He never shakes his head this much unless he's drunk.

"You need to get out more, kid, and I don't mean to Casper's house. You need to go out with other friends and party and do hooligan shit you don't want me finding out about. That's what normal teenagers do, Holden. Not stay holed up in their rooms all day and stare at freakin' cupboards."

I shrug. "I go out."

"I said Casper doesn't count. You can't have one friend in this world, Holden. You're setting yourself up for disaster if you keep living like this. You need to get out there. I mean, it's summer." Dad eyes me a little before pointing his beer at me, almost spilling some on the floor. "You know what I think? I think you need a girlfriend."

A girlfriend, for Christ's sake. I end up laughing even though I shouldn't have, earning a weird look from Dad. Wrong reaction.

"I mean it," he says. "When I was your age, all the girls were falling for me. I swear it. In fact, my dad had to disconnect the line for a while because they wouldn't stop calling the house." He grins. "Your mother was the worst out of all of them. She'd call about three times a day on weekends then every day after school. It only stopped when I finally went out with her."

It pisses me off when he starts talking about his glory days.  He always gets this dazed smile on his face and longing in his eyes. People dreaming about what could've been always get that look on their faces. Regret mostly follows soon after.

"I was around your age when she told me, you know. Seventeen." He takes another swing from the bottle. "Imagine that. Being told you're going to be a dad at seventeen."