Cassie // Mitchel Cave

8.

Cassie's POV
[1st Person]

"You can't tour with us for ever, you know."

I know, I know, I know. No, let me forget.

I remember one time I started to count my hair. I was sitting in the storage room and couldn't see, so I let single strings of my hair fall through my hand, and I began to count them until the voices in my head finally shut up.

I was thirteen.

I can't remember much about my childhood, though that's not true.
I wish I couldn't remember much about my childhood.

Having a photographic memory was hell, and it burned. I couldn't close my eyes without seeing everything; I couldn't control my mind.
It was like a broken faucet, and the water just kept going.

I was scared of sleep and scared of remembering. That's why I tried to keep my mind going as much as possible. I always tried to think, think of the weather, and think of the stars.

I always needed to think so much information at once, so, so much.

So many tears—how many are too many?
How much can a human heart break until it's not fixable? Until you're holding bloody shards of something that used to be and think to yourself, could I have done more?

The answer is simple—really, no.
There's nothing to keep something from breaking, especially if it has been broken long before you even set your eyes on it.

How could you love something so fragile and broken? How could you look at something unrepairable and still give it a chance? Why not look for something perfectly fine? Why wait for someone to stand up when you could easily start running with others?

People always tell you to live in the present, but that would mean I'd have to stop thinking, that'd mean I'd let her win.
I can't let her win.

A photographic memory is useless, it remembers the past, the past is useless.
It happened, and it will never happen again. Why would you need it?

But then why again? Why do you need air, why food, why water, why, why, why?

But there's one time when my memory is blurry, like a badly taken photo, and it doesn't hurt as much.

I inhale, and everyone around me claps, and I smile, I smile.

Then I stumble back and laugh. Fuck her.

Mitchel's POV
[1st Person]

"You can't tour with us for ever, you know."

Why, why, why, why? Why couldn't she? Why did I say it? She could, of course.
Everyone loves her, and we have enough space, so why?

But then I looked into her eyes, her light blue eyes like the sky on a perfect sunny spring day, though every time I looked into them, I saw a storm, a storm she was fighting.

a storm no one really knew about, not even herself.

"Yoo, why're you looking all sad and shit Come dance with me," Christian said, pulling me with him into the middle of the living room and beginning to dance, not really to the beat of the song.

I laughed and took the cigarette from his hands—not that he noticed anyway.

I brought it to my mouth and sucked in a deep breath.
When I exhaled, it felt like all the fog in my mind came out with the smoke. It felt good.

"'Veryonee lesss play spin 'he bottle." Jesse giggled from the corner of the room, and Kras joined him, almost tumbling into his lap.

Everyone sat down in a circle except for me. I made my way out the front door, watched the moon, and exhaled the smoke. My thoughts would eventually clear.

My mind was always blurry and was always wrong.

Like a layer of fog was constantly covering it—never clear, always blurred.
The only thing that helped clear it was the cigarette between my fingers and the powder stains on my Nikes.

I've always tried to live in the past in some way, always trying to remember clearly.