[heredity and haste]

Herediatry and haste

       If Red hadn't have been so keenly focused  in the present moment he would have bumped directly intto fritz who had arubtly stopped. Chewy who had been talking to red didn't notice and did bump into him. He pushed fritz instinctively, quickly caught himself and caught fritz who had been thrown off balance. Chewy was always slightly more irritated before breakfast. Red glanced at the poster fritz had been looking at, realized it was a photo of a giraffe. Not a real one. A hand drawn giraffte. A crudely hand drawn giraffe. He got the slightest feeling of deja Vu. He wasn't sure what that feeling really was until later in chewys room when Frenchie told him the feeling of uncanny vertigo was called deja Vu.
       "It's because you've literally seen that exact same picture." Chewy had said from his usual seat on the couch. Fritz only stared at him puzzeled. Chewy scanned each of them and made his own puzzled expression.
       "It was on the wall by the band room yesterday, and before that it was right next to the bathroom by the science room."
      "The same picture?" Red asked skeptically.
      "Same one."
      "How can you tell?"
      Chewy only shurgged. "Why would you keep drawing the  picture everyday? That'd be stupid. Some asshole is just taking the same picture and putting it somewhere else everyday as a joke."
      Red considered this for a moment. "That's not  really funny."
      Chewy shrugged again. "I never said it was a good joke."
         On the way back to their room fritz had remained quiet. Brooding. As Red slid his key in fritz suddenly grabbed his arm.
         "What if it's more then 1?"
         "What?"
         "More then one person doing it?"
         "It still wouldn't be funny fritz."
        

   21:11. Red read the time again and made a mental note of it. He had time to make it to the student store and back. They were hazordly close to running out of toilet paper and paper plates, fritz refused to eat out of dishes or use conventinal silver ware. Red was wondering about this specific idiosycraticity when he noticed the rapid fuh fuh fuh of someones feet flutter through the grass  approaching him.
    Chewy quickly canceled his sprint and slid into an agreeable gait beside Red.
    When they walked into the store chewy immediatly made his way to the counter frenchie was currently serving 2 students at.
    Red had comes to term with the idea that he was bad with names and he was worse with faces. It wasnt for a lack of observation, he was just natually inclined to not realize a person was farmiliar. But when chewy, impatient, Walked from behind her towards the counter, placing himself beside her, she looked at him quizzically and and Red was again struck with the disorienting pang of deja vu. The taller girl buying the coffees wore thick frammed glasses and pushed them back up the bridge of her nose with her index and middle finger as if this was a defensive gesture and was trying to give her student credit visa to frenchie, who was preoccupied shooting daggers at chewy silently repreimanding him.
    "How hard is making posters, you need to be up all night?" Chewy said when the 2 girls had left.
    The deja vu setteled into a more comfortable feeling of recoginition. The brown hair held in a longbbushy ponytail by a faded purple, frenchie and fritz would have corrected his observation by asserting that the colour was actually indigo and was more bluish then purple. Red didnt care about the distinction of colours. But he had finally placed her as echo who was campening for a seat on student council or house council again, another distinction he didnt care about. Her posters had slowly become fixtures through the hallways the last week as did all the posters of students running to be elected into some counil or orgonozation.
    "Well some people just like to govern, i guess." Frenchie responded absently.
    Chewy shrugged. Red was paying for his items when chewy had his epiphany.
    He had been looking at frenchie, would periodically look at red and furrow his brow.
    "Say frenchie you and that tall girl are cousins arent yall."
    Therebwas no upward intonation of a question in his intonation. He was sure that he was simply stating a statement.
    "I've told you copycat was my sister. I keep telling you because everytime you see us together you ask that."
    "Oh."
    Red laughed and was about to ask frenchie what time he was getting off when chewy, grinning reminded them that Red had to be introduced to frenchie at least 4 times.
    "Your family just has some gentic disposition to have shitty memory recessive trait or something." He joked.
    "Well you inheriated a dominant asshole chromosone from your family." Red replied
    Chewy considered this still smiling.
    Chewy and frienchie were walking back later when chewy made a puzzeled expression, passed the remainder of his cigarette to frenchie and said "genes."
    "What?"
    "You inheriet traits from genes and shit."
    "Oh."
    Chewy seemed to drop the subject.
    "And being an asshole is a recessive trait." He laughed. Frenchie laughed too in spite of himself.

         "Fritz what happened to the radio?"
         Fritz didnt move on his spot on the couch. Well he kind of moved. It was more as if he quickly tensed up but because his natural disposition was so high strung he was able to suddendly regain his composure. He was playing with his hair.
         Red never found any show on the 6 channels that lapis offered to ever catch his attention and only listened to the radio sparingly. In truth he already found the radio broken and haphazoerdly hidden under fritzs bed. He didnt care that his cousin had broken it, but did care about finding out why. How it broke had been his concern intinally but that quickly became overshadowed by the why of the incident.
         "Itfellearlier."
         Red knew fritz was lying. He simply stared at fritz.
         "Idroppedit."fritz amended.
         Red's face remaind blank.
         "Ithrewitoffthecounter."he finally admitted.
         One of red eyebrows cocked.
         Fritz looked around the room for a place to set his eyes. He always avoided eye contact and red had learned long ago that eye contact wasnt a reliable way to read fritz. At least not by convential means. What really mattered was what fritz decided to look at while looking away from you.
         He was staring at the painting behind him using the reflection of the tv screen. You would actually conclude that fritz was looking at his own reflection and this misconception would be a completly astute observation. But Red grew up defending fritzs perculier behavior patrerns and saw the picture with a corrected lense.
         There was a pheonix, all elegent, all ember, feirce scarlet against a gray backdrop. That was the painting on the wall behind the couch fritz was staring at.
         "On purpose." Red prodded.
         Fritz shrugged. "Icangetfrenchietoletmeborrowhis?"
         Red shook his head and went to the bedroom leaving fritz in the front. He had a low threshold for fritzs erratic explinations and even lower for fritzs contrived solutions to problems that wouldnt need to be solved if he had simply not acted out on a whim. His head ached.

        Frenchie was the first to notice chewy had, at some point in between making it into the hallway of the campus and the cafeteria for breakfast, disappared. Red shrugged and fritz only looked betqeen them. They were nearly finished eating when chewy made it to the table, without a tray.
        "I told you guys, its the same drawing someone just moves it, its by the bandroom now."
        Chewy saw the visible confusion spread to each of them like an urban legend. This perplexed him Tand they all sat there for a second saying nothing when fudge turned from his table and asked for one of their milk.
        "Fuck off fudge." Chewy said absently.
        "Oh the giraffe?" Frenchie asked. An unsettled look passed across his face, and was gone as quickly as it appeared.
        "Oh." Red and fritz said in unison. Kind of. Reds oh overlapped with fritzs who had remarked his expression in a fraction of time it had taken red.
        "FUDGE PUT THE MILK BACK!" an campus attendant screamed arubtly.
        "Yeah the stupid girrafe drawing." Chewy said mostly for himself. "Oh let me see the flashcards." He said looking back at the table behind him where Blink was calling fudge an asshole for being an asshole.

         It was always just cold enough to be uncomfortable, but not to really need a jacket. Fritz kept asking if others felt as cold until echo called him anemic lanconically. They were ealking back to blue house. Fritz yawned.

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