they wish they were us | conan gray

27. paint thinner

a/n: someone dies btw(I ll shut up about it)

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When Ashley was seven, all her plants for a science project had died. She wasn't devasted on the loss. It was a small school project after all. She remembers herself drinking orange juice on the table for breakfast every morning as her plants slowly wilted away. They changed color and turned paler, their leaves weren't as flamboyant and were drooping lower day by day. The stalk of the plant was being crushed underneath the weight.

Her dad had told her she'd forgotten to water them. She had watered them though she didn't reach the window sill properly. She told him that. He had shaken his head and told her that perhaps she had watered them far too much. The pores in the roots that breathe and take in nitrogen had, mostly likely, been blocked because of too much water.

"You're not a science teacher," she had told him. She vividly remembers her dad scrunching his face and laughing at her comeback.

That night her dad had sat down with her on the dingy kitchen table to examine what had happened to her plants. Ashley had been munching on crackers and stocking her belly on peanut butter. The room had smelled like paint thinner because her parents were painting the house again. The smell choked her so she would breathe through her mouth. If it got too bad, she'd use nose plugs.

She had watered them enough but they were kept right in front of the heater. They were unable to sustain in such temperature. Her dad had gotten her new seeds the next day.

That was the first time her dad had told her about change in ecosystem, how one small change can set off a series of them until your reality splits into different paths like cracks on a glass.

Even with his daughter being only seven, he'd talk to her seriously. The things usually sounded silly but not so much when she grew up.

Right now, there is a name flashing on her phone screen. Someone has died. Someone she would recognise anywhere, even with eyes closed. She can tell who they are by scent alone, by the way his feet strike the ground.

She could have stopped it.

The phone drops onto her bed and she rubs her chest. Her throat is constricting and there is a reason. It hasn't happened in years. She had felt this when her grandma had died. They'd gotten her diagnosed for cancer too late.

"He is d-dead...?" Conan croaks, half questioning, half certain.

Her vision blurs.

Every time she sees something go horribly wrong, something fixable that shouldn't have happened, she smells it again. The atrocious choking smell of paint thinner. (a/n: I m sorry but paint thinner sounds so funny in this context. It was peanut butter at first but then I thought lord that sounds satirical and no one would take it seriously)

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>6 hours ago<

"I have been meaning to talk to you about something," she begins, stirring the coffee in her cup with an ice popsicle stick. The milk smells like it is days away from rotting. The coffee beans she had selected seemed fresh but even the best ones were wrinkled like grainy little peas.

Conan looks up from his own cup where he seemed to be pushing aside the residue over the milk. His lips parted and eyes glassy, he nods for her to go on. "No, we're not having any kids."

"Shut up," she rolls her eyes, stifling a laugh. Conan has a knack for making distracting jokes. It's how their friendship works, she guesses. This way they never run out of things to talk about. The jokes balance out their issues, work as a coping mechanism and the sadder they get, the more they laugh about it. "So about you having a boyfriend now..."