ohdittoh
still kicking :)
DONNA CAIN CAMUS
Theodore did not seem to be able to handle cigarettes yet, which told Donna all that he needed to know: Theo had never smoked one before, had probably done nothing of the sort. Donna had surmised as much from his clean-cut appearance, though he had to admit that, given the few things he did know about him (the fact that he was a Bridger and his past romantic(?) partner), there was still a part of him that didn’t quite expect that.
He eyed Theo at his coughing fits, but he made no comment about them. It happened when you were first getting used to them. Nothing about their taste or their odor was pleasant. They were harsh on your throat and your sinuses, and your mouth tasted of cigarettes until you brushed your teeth, though Donna hardly realized this fact, seeing as he smoked at regular intervals throughout the day.
He’d had much the same reaction his first time trying cigarettes, though the day seemed so long ago.
Donna didn’t remember how old he was— twelve? Thirteen? It was somewhere in there. He was in middle school, at the least. He was skipping class, which was a habit that had begun circa last week and would become a routine. Hunkered outside, seated beneath a window, he watched cars drive by and felt a mortal fear within himself: what if he got caught? He was okay with everyone knowing that he was gone— though he was easy to miss— but if they found him, would they drag him back and force him to sit through another class from hell? He couldn’t focus with the other boys from the football team kicking at the back of his seat or calling him uncreative, painful insults. He always got picked to answer, and he never knew the answers, and then everyone laughed at him, and the kicking got worse. He was sick of it, finally— was beginning to realize that it was all pointless, but only barely.
He’d sighed, kicked his legs out across the grass, and pulled at the button on his polo shirt. It was formal, neatly-pressed. There wasn’t a hair on his head that was out of place. Black leather belt, khakis, polished shoes. As a Camus, the son of a rich businessman, he had to constantly look his best, constantly hold his head up high. His head was lowered then, though, sunken to his chest as the birds twittered and time crawled by.
He was grounded from his phone for this reason or that reason. It was probably something small, something that Chelsea wouldn’t’ve gotten in trouble for, something that anyone else in the whole damn family could’ve gotten away with besides him. What it was specifically, though, was too hazy in Donna’s memory.
But the longer he’d sat there, eyes closed, listening to the birds and waiting for the bell that signified the next class, which would make him wait for the bell that signified the one after that, the more that he could pick up on. Someone’s footsteps echoed off of the right side of the building. Somewhere down the road, an engine revved loudly.
And some people, somewhere, were talking.
Donna’d opened his eyes and peeked around, keeping his head low so that no one saw him through the windows. He had not yet learned that he didn’t need to be so careful, so he tiptoed, pressed himself against the wall, made his way down to where the noises were coming from.
He’d immediately recognized them, though he could not see their faces in his memory. They were there, leaning against the wall beside the band room, cigarettes poised between their lips. They’d stared at him for a moment, disgusted expressions on his face, and they’d told him to go away.
But he’d stayed. ”You’re smoking?” he’d asked.
”State the fucking obvious, Camus,” answered one of them. ”You come to bust us, Raptor Rat? Surprise: you’re skipping, too.”
His heart was beating out of his chest, and he was afraid. He couldn’t recall now what he was afraid of— probably something superficial about someone somehow finding him, someone somehow ratting him out, someone somehow giving a fuck about him for any other reason than that he was soiling his record and thereby soiling the family name or some shit like that.
And Donna had stared at them for a long moment, and he’d realized for the first real time what he was doing— skipping class, which he’d sworn he’d never do, and moving about so that no one found him.
He’d given them some warning— some half-hearted “you’re going to die of lung cancer” or something to that effect— and they’d pulled out a box and told him to come over. They held the box out for him, just offering the sixth- or seventh-grader the cigarette, waiting for him to make his decision, and he’d decided.
He was already skipping, so there wasn’t much worse that could happen to him.
He considered this to be the start of the end— the start of his realizations, the start off him realizing his realizations.
And when he’d taken his first puff, he’d hacked for a few minutes, and his lungs and throat burned, and he’d clutched at his throat and thrown the cigarette to the ground. He’d stomped it out and asked how they hadn’t died, to which they laughed and said that you got used to it.
You did get used to it.
Now, he couldn’t remember how the rest of that interaction had gone. It was fuzzy as was, and the trail of fuzziness seemed to stop at that moment.
Theodore seemed to be slightly more resilient than young DC Camus, though; he didn’t throw down his cigarette, instead taking another puff, though that one made him cough as well.
Donna was not impressed at that, but he was something near it.
He leaned his head back against the cold metal bar as the autumn air nipped at his nose, and he poised the cigarette between his lips again.
Then, Theo spoke. "In my hundreds of hours spent contemplating existentialism, nihilism, nominalism, physical science, the mind, and language..not once have I or anyone else properly defined or put anything into terms that really matter."
Donna’s pale, dead eyes flicked to Theo as he exhaled smoke and tapped his cigarette to dispel some of its ash.
"You speak the cynical, angry blather any jaded teenager on the street could offer me,” Theo said. “It is a waste of time finding the why and the how of anything, yes, but to simply reject the search and waste time wallowing in your own angst instead?" He turned up his nose in what seemed to be disgust.
“What about it?” Donna asked in his low monotone.
"You are fortunate to be able to sit here, shirk everything, and tell me why your life and my life has no meaning,” Theo continued. “You live cozied up in your mansion, rotting away with drugs paid for with your family's riches without a worry for where you end up the next day because you do not need to worry. You live in an ignorant, uncaring stasis." He coughed. “I let myself slip and I ended up here in this shithole town in this godforsaken country working overtime seven days a week because if I did not..." He trailed off, and Donna stared at Theo blankly, no emotions behind or in his empty eyes.
“I need water,” Theo said finally.
Donna took an inhale from his cigarette, and he blew the smoke into the wind. He gestured with a slight nod of his head to a ditch to the side of the bleachers, then looked to Theo’s face. “That’s all there is,” he said. Stagnated frog shit water. If he wanted a drink, that’s all Donna had to offer. “Unless you’d like some of the Jack from my backseat…in which case.” He pulled his keys from his pocket, carelessly tossing them at Theo. They fell short— just in front of the other boy’s feet.
There was a reason why Donna was a benchwarmer.
“You’ll get used to it.” He breathed in another breath, then exhaled the cloud of smoke. “The taste. The smoke. How it dries everything up. How it burns. It never feels nice, but you get used to it, Theodore.”
He quieted a moment, leaning his head once more against the steel of the bleachers. “If you didn’t, then what…?” There was no curiosity behind his voice. It was more of a statement, said for no reason except to allow him to think aloud. “The only difference between you and me, Theo, is that I got all my shit handed to me. I’ve had my fucking life handed to me on a silver platter.” He pressed his heels into the gravel. “My father’s a rich businessman who assigned me my track of life from the second I was even conceived and even before then. My mother’s a housewife who sits her ass on the couch all day and sobs over daytime television. They’ve set my whole family up for life. My elder sister’s a whore going through graduate school who robs men for all that they have and leaves them with fucking nothing. She’s gotten pregnant a couple of times, but that was solved right away with Dad’s money.”
He took another breath of his cigarette. The breath he let out was slower, in far less of a hurry somehow than even the ones before were. “My brother…” A flicker of jealously passed across his face, so brief that it could’ve easily been missed or mistaken for a pain of some sort. When he spoke again, his dull, unemotional voice was tinged with a certain bitterness. “Chelsea…is everyone’s fucking dream. Football captain…has straight As, is a fucking celloist and violinist. Does as he’s told. Barks when they say bark, rolls over when they say roll over. Perfect…”
He breathed out a long sigh. “My sister is…sweet. Kind, if a bit wild. My mother is hard on her, for no reason that I see. She’s smart, and pretty, and everyone’s jealous of her, too…” He closed his eyes. “I’ve got all that. But I got the balls or the privilege or the money or the time to waste and to sit here, tell you that all of this shit is pointless, when you’ve been working so goddamn hard for it all your whole life or some shit like that. When everything you’ve done for probably your whole fucking life— everything everyone around you has done— is try and get to where I am. Doesn’t seem right, does it…?”
By now, his cigarette was growing small.
“That’s something I never understood. Why…I’ve gotten handed all this shit, but why I can’t use any of it. Why I can just sit here and waste away, ruin all of the fucking ‘potential’ I have, no matter how hard I claw and try to use it.” He looked at Theo. “Why are you where you are and not me? There’s no answer to that.” Another breath, in and out, and smoke. “I didn’t pick to be where I am. You didn’t pick to be where you are. But that’s just it. It doesn’t make sense. There is no reason to it. There is no reason to…anything.”
He sighed softly. “You’re right. I don’t have to care. I live in blissful ignorance of what it’s like to claw your way up in this world. I’ve not seen the bottom. I’ve not seen nothing but the best and the top.” He inclined his head slightly. “But that doesn’t mean fucking anything…” He turned his pale eyes to Theo. “Does it…?”
He breathed in another breath from his cigarette. “Being rich doesn’t suddenly give life meaning. It doesn’t suddenly make you worth something. Just because you’re at the top doesn’t mean you’re any fucking better than the scum of the earth. Sure, you’re told all of your issues are fixed when you don’t have to worry about your money. It’s always fucking money. It’s always fucking status. If you were richer, if more people revered you, then you’d be happy, then it’d all have reason. But that’s where I am. By no choice of my fucking own, by nothing that I ever did, I’m at the top…and it’s miserable, and it’s pointless, and I realize— I fucking see it.”
He dug at the gravel again. “I tried doing what they wanted. Tried…sitting in class, polishing my shoes, shoving every inkling of doubt and every syllable of a question back into the back of my mind. I fucking shut up, I sat down, I tried to do what they asked. I could never do it good enough— good enough to make them happy— but when I didn’t do what they wanted, they tried to whip me back into line. Not because my trying was anything useful, but because my not trying hurt them. Did shit to them. Threatened them. Showed what a ‘failure’ they were as parents and teachers. But it doesn’t work. It doesn’t make anything worth anything.”
He looked to Theo. He stared at him for a long moment, the deadness of his eyes boring into his skin. “So I stopped. And now here I am, killing myself every second. It might seem like I’ve got nothing to fucking lose, but I don’t know what comes next. I’m living from breath to breath, that’s how it feels. And I don’t care what comes now or after or what happened seconds ago or what’s going to happen years from now, or if I’m even going to be alive years from now.” He breathed out, dropping the cigarette butt to the ground and pulling out the pack to get another one. “If I died, I’d be doing them a favor.”
He poised a cigarette between his lips, and he put the lighter to the end. He breathed in a breath, and then exhaled it, easily.
“And I don’t give a fuck anymore,” he said. “And no one else should, either. Not you, not me. You’re up at the top or you’re trying to claw your way up, it’s all pointless in the end. And when you realize it, it’s hard to swallow. You cough, you hack, your body doesn’t want to accept it, your mind fucking fights it because it's the opposite of what you've heard all of your life, because it's not what they've fed you and told you and it's not what you've believed this whole fucking time, but…”
He breathed in from his cigarette, and he let out a long breath of smoke.
“You get used to it, Theodore. It never gets pleasant, it never gets easier, but you get used to it.”
He eyed Theo at his coughing fits, but he made no comment about them. It happened when you were first getting used to them. Nothing about their taste or their odor was pleasant. They were harsh on your throat and your sinuses, and your mouth tasted of cigarettes until you brushed your teeth, though Donna hardly realized this fact, seeing as he smoked at regular intervals throughout the day.
He’d had much the same reaction his first time trying cigarettes, though the day seemed so long ago.
Donna didn’t remember how old he was— twelve? Thirteen? It was somewhere in there. He was in middle school, at the least. He was skipping class, which was a habit that had begun circa last week and would become a routine. Hunkered outside, seated beneath a window, he watched cars drive by and felt a mortal fear within himself: what if he got caught? He was okay with everyone knowing that he was gone— though he was easy to miss— but if they found him, would they drag him back and force him to sit through another class from hell? He couldn’t focus with the other boys from the football team kicking at the back of his seat or calling him uncreative, painful insults. He always got picked to answer, and he never knew the answers, and then everyone laughed at him, and the kicking got worse. He was sick of it, finally— was beginning to realize that it was all pointless, but only barely.
He’d sighed, kicked his legs out across the grass, and pulled at the button on his polo shirt. It was formal, neatly-pressed. There wasn’t a hair on his head that was out of place. Black leather belt, khakis, polished shoes. As a Camus, the son of a rich businessman, he had to constantly look his best, constantly hold his head up high. His head was lowered then, though, sunken to his chest as the birds twittered and time crawled by.
He was grounded from his phone for this reason or that reason. It was probably something small, something that Chelsea wouldn’t’ve gotten in trouble for, something that anyone else in the whole damn family could’ve gotten away with besides him. What it was specifically, though, was too hazy in Donna’s memory.
But the longer he’d sat there, eyes closed, listening to the birds and waiting for the bell that signified the next class, which would make him wait for the bell that signified the one after that, the more that he could pick up on. Someone’s footsteps echoed off of the right side of the building. Somewhere down the road, an engine revved loudly.
And some people, somewhere, were talking.
Donna’d opened his eyes and peeked around, keeping his head low so that no one saw him through the windows. He had not yet learned that he didn’t need to be so careful, so he tiptoed, pressed himself against the wall, made his way down to where the noises were coming from.
He’d immediately recognized them, though he could not see their faces in his memory. They were there, leaning against the wall beside the band room, cigarettes poised between their lips. They’d stared at him for a moment, disgusted expressions on his face, and they’d told him to go away.
But he’d stayed. ”You’re smoking?” he’d asked.
”State the fucking obvious, Camus,” answered one of them. ”You come to bust us, Raptor Rat? Surprise: you’re skipping, too.”
His heart was beating out of his chest, and he was afraid. He couldn’t recall now what he was afraid of— probably something superficial about someone somehow finding him, someone somehow ratting him out, someone somehow giving a fuck about him for any other reason than that he was soiling his record and thereby soiling the family name or some shit like that.
And Donna had stared at them for a long moment, and he’d realized for the first real time what he was doing— skipping class, which he’d sworn he’d never do, and moving about so that no one found him.
He’d given them some warning— some half-hearted “you’re going to die of lung cancer” or something to that effect— and they’d pulled out a box and told him to come over. They held the box out for him, just offering the sixth- or seventh-grader the cigarette, waiting for him to make his decision, and he’d decided.
He was already skipping, so there wasn’t much worse that could happen to him.
He considered this to be the start of the end— the start of his realizations, the start off him realizing his realizations.
And when he’d taken his first puff, he’d hacked for a few minutes, and his lungs and throat burned, and he’d clutched at his throat and thrown the cigarette to the ground. He’d stomped it out and asked how they hadn’t died, to which they laughed and said that you got used to it.
You did get used to it.
Now, he couldn’t remember how the rest of that interaction had gone. It was fuzzy as was, and the trail of fuzziness seemed to stop at that moment.
Theodore seemed to be slightly more resilient than young DC Camus, though; he didn’t throw down his cigarette, instead taking another puff, though that one made him cough as well.
Donna was not impressed at that, but he was something near it.
He leaned his head back against the cold metal bar as the autumn air nipped at his nose, and he poised the cigarette between his lips again.
Then, Theo spoke. "In my hundreds of hours spent contemplating existentialism, nihilism, nominalism, physical science, the mind, and language..not once have I or anyone else properly defined or put anything into terms that really matter."
Donna’s pale, dead eyes flicked to Theo as he exhaled smoke and tapped his cigarette to dispel some of its ash.
"You speak the cynical, angry blather any jaded teenager on the street could offer me,” Theo said. “It is a waste of time finding the why and the how of anything, yes, but to simply reject the search and waste time wallowing in your own angst instead?" He turned up his nose in what seemed to be disgust.
“What about it?” Donna asked in his low monotone.
"You are fortunate to be able to sit here, shirk everything, and tell me why your life and my life has no meaning,” Theo continued. “You live cozied up in your mansion, rotting away with drugs paid for with your family's riches without a worry for where you end up the next day because you do not need to worry. You live in an ignorant, uncaring stasis." He coughed. “I let myself slip and I ended up here in this shithole town in this godforsaken country working overtime seven days a week because if I did not..." He trailed off, and Donna stared at Theo blankly, no emotions behind or in his empty eyes.
“I need water,” Theo said finally.
Donna took an inhale from his cigarette, and he blew the smoke into the wind. He gestured with a slight nod of his head to a ditch to the side of the bleachers, then looked to Theo’s face. “That’s all there is,” he said. Stagnated frog shit water. If he wanted a drink, that’s all Donna had to offer. “Unless you’d like some of the Jack from my backseat…in which case.” He pulled his keys from his pocket, carelessly tossing them at Theo. They fell short— just in front of the other boy’s feet.
There was a reason why Donna was a benchwarmer.
“You’ll get used to it.” He breathed in another breath, then exhaled the cloud of smoke. “The taste. The smoke. How it dries everything up. How it burns. It never feels nice, but you get used to it, Theodore.”
He quieted a moment, leaning his head once more against the steel of the bleachers. “If you didn’t, then what…?” There was no curiosity behind his voice. It was more of a statement, said for no reason except to allow him to think aloud. “The only difference between you and me, Theo, is that I got all my shit handed to me. I’ve had my fucking life handed to me on a silver platter.” He pressed his heels into the gravel. “My father’s a rich businessman who assigned me my track of life from the second I was even conceived and even before then. My mother’s a housewife who sits her ass on the couch all day and sobs over daytime television. They’ve set my whole family up for life. My elder sister’s a whore going through graduate school who robs men for all that they have and leaves them with fucking nothing. She’s gotten pregnant a couple of times, but that was solved right away with Dad’s money.”
He took another breath of his cigarette. The breath he let out was slower, in far less of a hurry somehow than even the ones before were. “My brother…” A flicker of jealously passed across his face, so brief that it could’ve easily been missed or mistaken for a pain of some sort. When he spoke again, his dull, unemotional voice was tinged with a certain bitterness. “Chelsea…is everyone’s fucking dream. Football captain…has straight As, is a fucking celloist and violinist. Does as he’s told. Barks when they say bark, rolls over when they say roll over. Perfect…”
He breathed out a long sigh. “My sister is…sweet. Kind, if a bit wild. My mother is hard on her, for no reason that I see. She’s smart, and pretty, and everyone’s jealous of her, too…” He closed his eyes. “I’ve got all that. But I got the balls or the privilege or the money or the time to waste and to sit here, tell you that all of this shit is pointless, when you’ve been working so goddamn hard for it all your whole life or some shit like that. When everything you’ve done for probably your whole fucking life— everything everyone around you has done— is try and get to where I am. Doesn’t seem right, does it…?”
By now, his cigarette was growing small.
“That’s something I never understood. Why…I’ve gotten handed all this shit, but why I can’t use any of it. Why I can just sit here and waste away, ruin all of the fucking ‘potential’ I have, no matter how hard I claw and try to use it.” He looked at Theo. “Why are you where you are and not me? There’s no answer to that.” Another breath, in and out, and smoke. “I didn’t pick to be where I am. You didn’t pick to be where you are. But that’s just it. It doesn’t make sense. There is no reason to it. There is no reason to…anything.”
He sighed softly. “You’re right. I don’t have to care. I live in blissful ignorance of what it’s like to claw your way up in this world. I’ve not seen the bottom. I’ve not seen nothing but the best and the top.” He inclined his head slightly. “But that doesn’t mean fucking anything…” He turned his pale eyes to Theo. “Does it…?”
He breathed in another breath from his cigarette. “Being rich doesn’t suddenly give life meaning. It doesn’t suddenly make you worth something. Just because you’re at the top doesn’t mean you’re any fucking better than the scum of the earth. Sure, you’re told all of your issues are fixed when you don’t have to worry about your money. It’s always fucking money. It’s always fucking status. If you were richer, if more people revered you, then you’d be happy, then it’d all have reason. But that’s where I am. By no choice of my fucking own, by nothing that I ever did, I’m at the top…and it’s miserable, and it’s pointless, and I realize— I fucking see it.”
He dug at the gravel again. “I tried doing what they wanted. Tried…sitting in class, polishing my shoes, shoving every inkling of doubt and every syllable of a question back into the back of my mind. I fucking shut up, I sat down, I tried to do what they asked. I could never do it good enough— good enough to make them happy— but when I didn’t do what they wanted, they tried to whip me back into line. Not because my trying was anything useful, but because my not trying hurt them. Did shit to them. Threatened them. Showed what a ‘failure’ they were as parents and teachers. But it doesn’t work. It doesn’t make anything worth anything.”
He looked to Theo. He stared at him for a long moment, the deadness of his eyes boring into his skin. “So I stopped. And now here I am, killing myself every second. It might seem like I’ve got nothing to fucking lose, but I don’t know what comes next. I’m living from breath to breath, that’s how it feels. And I don’t care what comes now or after or what happened seconds ago or what’s going to happen years from now, or if I’m even going to be alive years from now.” He breathed out, dropping the cigarette butt to the ground and pulling out the pack to get another one. “If I died, I’d be doing them a favor.”
He poised a cigarette between his lips, and he put the lighter to the end. He breathed in a breath, and then exhaled it, easily.
“And I don’t give a fuck anymore,” he said. “And no one else should, either. Not you, not me. You’re up at the top or you’re trying to claw your way up, it’s all pointless in the end. And when you realize it, it’s hard to swallow. You cough, you hack, your body doesn’t want to accept it, your mind fucking fights it because it's the opposite of what you've heard all of your life, because it's not what they've fed you and told you and it's not what you've believed this whole fucking time, but…”
He breathed in from his cigarette, and he let out a long breath of smoke.
“You get used to it, Theodore. It never gets pleasant, it never gets easier, but you get used to it.”
mood
high & ...?
location
the cafeteria
outfit
sweatshirt & sweatpants
high & ...?
location
the cafeteria
outfit
sweatshirt & sweatpants
playing...
fuck up
fuck up
by gabriel black
mentions
mer
interactions
theo
tags
hery
mer
interactions
theo
tags
hery
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