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Jan. 26th, 2005 03:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doyleTitle: 28:06:42:12
Author: Doyle
Rating: PG
Pairing: hints at Dawn/Kit
Summary: Very belated Secret Santa thingie for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hermionesviolin
After the first two drags Cassie’s decided she hates smoking; but then, she knew she would, just like she knows her future doesn’t include lung cancer or emphysema. All those worthless periods of Health class, she thinks; she’s never going to have a drug problem or a teen pregnancy, never even going to worry about her GPA or whether anyone will ask her to the prom. She keeps thinking about the time she wasted learning all the things she’ll never need to know, from driver’s ed to quadratic equations. So much time, wasted hours flying away from her like a movie time-lapse, pages falling from the calendar, clock hands spinning like aeroplane engines.
It’d make her angry, but she’s past the anger now. She’s working on wry acceptance. By the end of the week she should be almost up to self-deprecating humour, if she had till the end of the week.
“Since when do you cut class, anyway?” Kit looks at her with almost total disinterest, as if she’s only marginally more entertaining than the guys running on the other side of the bleachers.
This is the first conversation they’ve ever had. She’s been keeping track of these things, first times and last times. “Guess I realized none of it really matters.”
Kit shrugs. “Whatever.”
They’re supposed to be in European History and halfway through the hour Mrs. Leeman is going to be called to Principal Wood’s office for the cops to tell her that her son’s dead, so Cassie figures there’s no point going to class. She sucks thoughtfully on the cigarette, blowing the smoke around more than she inhales it, and wonders whether the crash has happened yet.
Kit’s staring out at the track like she’s not really seeing it, hand moving mechanically to her mouth and then down, flicking the ash onto the dirt. Her lipstick’s left a plum-coloured smudge around her cigarette. Barely there. Cassie can’t look away from it.
“What’s your problem?” Kit says, crossing her arms, edging backwards.
“I don’t know anything about you,” Cassie says, because it’s the truth. “I was just thinking about it. I don’t know your last name, or what classes you’re in, or whether that guy you’re always with is your boyfriend.”
She actually laughs. “Carlos? What, are you high?” Total shutdown, just friends for real, not the way she and Mike are just friends.
Mike will in be History right now, centre back row, beside her empty place. Mrs. Leeman will be talking about the Black Death, and maybe she’s wondering where Cassie and Kit are, or thinking about what she’s going to eat for lunch, or maybe she’s already crying in the Principal’s office.
The flashes can come on slow or fast, single-frame blips of static or full surround-sound; this one’s somewhere in the middle. Kit and a crying girl standing on a porch, and Kit reaches out –
The pictures get confused in her head, bleeding into one another and losing coherency. Oh, she thinks, this must happen after I’m already dead. No wonder it’s fuzzy.
“Better go to lunch,” Kit says, as the bell rings in the distance.
They’re never going to talk to each other again, Cassie knows. “Your other friend,” she says, “pretty, long brown hair…?”
“Dawn,” Kit says, and this time the guards are all back in place, no just friends here. “Yeah, what?”
Cassie’s thought about time. The future. She’s thought about whether she can change things, whether she should, and she’s decided that nothing she does makes a difference to how things turn out.
Principal Wood will be showing Mrs. Leeman to her car, offering to drive her home.
“You should tell her,” she says. “Even if she freaks. So what?”
“What the hell do you know about anything?”
“I know life’s short.” She shrugs. “You never think it will be, but it’s way too short.”
Kit looks mad, but she doesn’t hit her, just like Cassie knew she wouldn’t, and she doesn’t say anything else. She turns and runs back to the school, and Cassie stays where she is. She’s thinking about the world ending, about a car going off the road, about the crunch of metal and the smell of gasoline, and the dashboard clock with the face cracked, hands stopped.
Author: Doyle
Rating: PG
Pairing: hints at Dawn/Kit
Summary: Very belated Secret Santa thingie for
hermionesviolinAfter the first two drags Cassie’s decided she hates smoking; but then, she knew she would, just like she knows her future doesn’t include lung cancer or emphysema. All those worthless periods of Health class, she thinks; she’s never going to have a drug problem or a teen pregnancy, never even going to worry about her GPA or whether anyone will ask her to the prom. She keeps thinking about the time she wasted learning all the things she’ll never need to know, from driver’s ed to quadratic equations. So much time, wasted hours flying away from her like a movie time-lapse, pages falling from the calendar, clock hands spinning like aeroplane engines.
It’d make her angry, but she’s past the anger now. She’s working on wry acceptance. By the end of the week she should be almost up to self-deprecating humour, if she had till the end of the week.
“Since when do you cut class, anyway?” Kit looks at her with almost total disinterest, as if she’s only marginally more entertaining than the guys running on the other side of the bleachers.
This is the first conversation they’ve ever had. She’s been keeping track of these things, first times and last times. “Guess I realized none of it really matters.”
Kit shrugs. “Whatever.”
They’re supposed to be in European History and halfway through the hour Mrs. Leeman is going to be called to Principal Wood’s office for the cops to tell her that her son’s dead, so Cassie figures there’s no point going to class. She sucks thoughtfully on the cigarette, blowing the smoke around more than she inhales it, and wonders whether the crash has happened yet.
Kit’s staring out at the track like she’s not really seeing it, hand moving mechanically to her mouth and then down, flicking the ash onto the dirt. Her lipstick’s left a plum-coloured smudge around her cigarette. Barely there. Cassie can’t look away from it.
“What’s your problem?” Kit says, crossing her arms, edging backwards.
“I don’t know anything about you,” Cassie says, because it’s the truth. “I was just thinking about it. I don’t know your last name, or what classes you’re in, or whether that guy you’re always with is your boyfriend.”
She actually laughs. “Carlos? What, are you high?” Total shutdown, just friends for real, not the way she and Mike are just friends.
Mike will in be History right now, centre back row, beside her empty place. Mrs. Leeman will be talking about the Black Death, and maybe she’s wondering where Cassie and Kit are, or thinking about what she’s going to eat for lunch, or maybe she’s already crying in the Principal’s office.
The flashes can come on slow or fast, single-frame blips of static or full surround-sound; this one’s somewhere in the middle. Kit and a crying girl standing on a porch, and Kit reaches out –
The pictures get confused in her head, bleeding into one another and losing coherency. Oh, she thinks, this must happen after I’m already dead. No wonder it’s fuzzy.
“Better go to lunch,” Kit says, as the bell rings in the distance.
They’re never going to talk to each other again, Cassie knows. “Your other friend,” she says, “pretty, long brown hair…?”
“Dawn,” Kit says, and this time the guards are all back in place, no just friends here. “Yeah, what?”
Cassie’s thought about time. The future. She’s thought about whether she can change things, whether she should, and she’s decided that nothing she does makes a difference to how things turn out.
Principal Wood will be showing Mrs. Leeman to her car, offering to drive her home.
“You should tell her,” she says. “Even if she freaks. So what?”
“What the hell do you know about anything?”
“I know life’s short.” She shrugs. “You never think it will be, but it’s way too short.”
Kit looks mad, but she doesn’t hit her, just like Cassie knew she wouldn’t, and she doesn’t say anything else. She turns and runs back to the school, and Cassie stays where she is. She’s thinking about the world ending, about a car going off the road, about the crunch of metal and the smell of gasoline, and the dashboard clock with the face cracked, hands stopped.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2005-01-26 03:23 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-01-26 03:27 am (UTC)*hates brain*
no subject
on 2005-01-26 03:29 am (UTC)