ACHING BLUE (emo love story)

2

(Song of the chapter: "You Won't Know" - Brand New.)

We wind up at Nessy's house. It's small and white, single-story, with blue shutters and a rocking chair on the front porch. But we don't enter through the front door. We round to the back of the house and climb in through Nessy's bedroom window like three bugs crawling under a door to escape the cold.

Nessy's room is a mess. There are clothes everywhere on the floor, pictures, and posters covering every square inch of her walls, fairy lights hung up haphazardly, tapestries tacked to the ceiling, a guitar in one corner with an amp beside it, and cups littering her nightstand. I tentatively take a seat on the foot of her bed, she in her computer chair, and Lane stretched out on a bean bag chair on the floor. I am no longer high and neither are they.

"You guys wanna watch a really fucked-up movie?" Nessy asks after a few minutes of everyone staring down at their phones. I noticed that Lane was messaging someone on Kik, and worried they were talking about me.

"What movie?" Lane and I say at the same time, then giggle.

"American History X. This guy totally bashes this other dude's head in. It's sick!" She scrambles to grab the DVD and put it in the player without awaiting further approval from us.

And so we spend the next two hours watching the redemption story of a neo-nazi, and I find myself looking away during the scene Nessy'd been talking about, unable to stomach it. After it was over, Nessy says she wants a cigarette and Lane agrees and so we all go out on the back porch. I let Nessy light my first American Spirit for me and take a deep drag from it, letting the smoke fill my lungs, hoping it'd make me light as air and I can float away from here, from everyone I'd ever known, into a new world. But when I exhale, I find that I am still sitting in a plastic lawn chair on her back porch, the cigarette between my fingers the closest thing I have to warmth on the October night.

Out there on the porch, they ask me about my own school, and I tell them it was totally boring. I say, "I'm the only one like me there. It's on a nicer side of town, I think, so most of the kids' parents belong to a country club and drive Mercedes. I'm so lonely!" I complain, ashing on the porch below me.

"That's why you're going to talk to your dad tomorrow about transferring," Nessy instructs, looking hard into my eyes with her brown ones. Our eyes are nearly the same shade of brown, hers a little darker. I nod, take a drag, exhale.

"What happened to your mom?" Lane quizzes me, smoke making their voice raw.

"She... she died last month. C-car accident," I say, my throat closing up and tears in my eyes. "She was my best friend." I sniffle, wiping my eyes.

"Don't cry, little dove," Lane coos, getting up and coming over to wrap me in their arms. It is unexpected, this hug, from the person that I assumed liked me least in the group, but I find myself melting into their embrace nevertheless. They hold me while I sob for a good five minutes, rocking me and petting my black hair. Finally, I calm down and they let me go, retreating back to their seat and their cigarette.

"These burn forever," I muse, looking down at my own cigarette. We've been outside for nearly fifteen minutes and mine is barely three-quarters of the way to the filter.

"I know, that's what's so great about them," Nessy says, exhaling smoke that flies right in my face. "My older brother gets them for me. He's twenty-two and lives in Ralville."

"Where's that?" I ask. Lane is looking from one of us to the other and back again as they smoke.

"Oh, it's just the next town over. He couldn't take it when our stepdad died last January. Booked it out of town as soon as he found a place, but not so far that he couldn't still come to get me if I need him to. I'm thinking of moving in with him over the summer. You could come with if you wanted." 

Somehow she senses that I am running from something by being out so late on a Friday night. We are all only fourteen, after all, and it is well after midnight. Still, my phone hasn't pinged once since I'd told my dad I was leaving to go to the park hours and hours ago. I figure he's drunk himself to sleep on the couch again -- a good thing for me, meaning he won't be able to cause me any harm while passed out.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'd like to." I say, more to myself than her. My cigarette is near the filter, one drag left, and I greedily take it. Nessy and Lane's are already out. I stamp mine out under my shoe and stand, walking back inside with them.

"Lane's mom will be here to pick them up soon," Nessy says once we are back in her cluttered room. "But you can spend the night if you want, Kyra."

I am so grateful that she says that I nearly start crying again. "But I don't have pajamas," I say, knowing none of Nessy's will fit me. I'm half her size.

"You can sleep in one of my big t-shirts, it'll be fine," Nessy brushes my concern away.

"Okay..." I say, still a little unsure. My dad will be freaking out come tomorrow morning. I decide to text him: Hey Dad, ran into some friends at the park and they invited me over for a sleepover so I took them up on it. I'll be home tomorrow. Love you! and it calms me down a little bit.

A car horn honks out front and we all jump, and Lane stands up, gathers their bag, and hugs us bye before leaving, promising Nessy they'll see her tomorrow. Then it's just us in her musky, messy room, sitting side by side on her full-size bed.

"Have you ever been to Warped Tour?" Nessy asks, turning her head to look at me fully. I smile, probably the most animated I've been in hours, and nod vigorously.

"I went last year and met Of Mice & Men!" I exclaim, pulling out my phone to show her the photos.

"No way! They're one of my favorites, though my absolute favorite is A Day to Remember. What was it like? I've never gotten to meet a band there. I nearly met Bring Me the Horizon the year before last, but got to their merch tent just when the thing you had to buy to meet them sold out." She makes a little pouty face that I find adorable.

We go through our respective pictures from Warped Tours we've been to and then Nessy gets up to press play on her playlist on Spotify. Brand New blasts from the speakers and I nearly faint because they're my all-time favorite band, and it's my favorite song by them. 

She turns on a little lamp on her bedside table that shoots stars and nebulas across the ceiling and we lie there in her bed, listening to music and watching the beam until we fall asleep.

A/N: In case you haven't noticed, this story is set around 2013.