Disasterology (perrentes)

chapter 8

In my life, I've made plenty of mistakes. One of them was thinking it was a good idea to dare Jaime to go to group in just his underwear, which he took one step further, and went naked. Another one was not talking to him sooner.
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May 18

One month. One month without Jack. One month of therapy and scrubs. One month of watching Tony. One month.

I sighed as I sat up in my bed. I looked at the clock on the wall across from my bed. It read 12:47 am. I guess it was another sleepless night for me.

I looked over at Jaime's sleeping form as I quietly got out of bed. He seemed so peaceful, but then again, when didn't he. Carefully, I walked across the cold, tiled floor and opened the door. I snuck quietly across the vacant corridors until I found myself at a familiar door. With shaking hands, I managed to pick the lock and slip outside.

I walked quickly to the tree in the center of the courtyard and plopped down at the base of it, between two roots. I pulled out a pack of cigarettes that I had Justin smuggle in, and lit one. As I inhaled the smoke, I closed my eyes and rested my head against the trunk of the tree. With only the occasional rustling of the tree branches, it was perfectly silent. I opened my eyes to see the moon shining faintly behind dark grey clouds. It would probably rain soon.

I put out my cigarette and closed my eyes again. I sighed in content. It was the moments like these that reminded me what life was like before all of this. Hell, it reminded me what it was like during, but not the bad parts. It felt like one of those nights where although sleepless, seemed like things weren't going to bad forever. In the long run, I didn't have enough of those nights. So, I when I felt this way I really liked to just sit and contemplate it. I wanted to stay feeling this way, I wanted to be frozen in this moment.

That perfect silence was interrupted when I heard the sounds of foot steps. The foot steps got closer until it was the sound of someone sitting down. Then I felt another hand brush mine. I opened my eyes, and looked to the side only to see Tony. I down looked at our hands with a small smile. He swiftly moved his hand away from mine and averted his gaze to his own hands.

"Y-you know it's not good for your lungs when you smoke," he spoke softly. He looked up for a moment as if to see how I would react.

I smiled slightly at him. We had occasionally seen each other out here on more than one occasion, but this was the first time he had ever spoken to me. "I don't mind all that much," I said with a small laugh.

I thought he was going to laugh too, but he just put his head against the trunk in a similar manner to mine. He looked as though he had something to say but was biting his tongue.

"How do you get out here?" I asked. It was something I had been wondering for quite some time. It was a simple enough question, but it did spark something in his eyes.

"I use the door. What do you do?" he said with a coy smile. I laughed. He made a joke, a lame joke, but a joke nonetheless.

We well fell into a comfortable silence. Even when rain started falling. We sat with each other comfortably and that was enough. I felt him shiver, so I scooted a little closer to him. Not too close, but close enough to say "hey I'm cold too." We still sat together though, regardless of how cold it was.

It wasn't until the first sign of lightning that we decided it was best to head inside. I stood up slowly and held my hand out to Tony. He looked up at me with fear in eyes. I knew why, but I couldn't help but wonder he seemed so scared. I didn't think about it too long as his cold hand grabbed onto mine. I was tempted to keep his hand in mine, but that would probably be more beneficial for me than him.

I walked over to the door, which I had left jimmied open with a rock, only to discover it was closed. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I looked back at Tony to see that he had the same expression I imagine I had. He stepped forward and tried to get the door unlocked, unsuccessfully.

"What do you think we should do?" I yelled to him over the thunder and rain. With a flash of lightning illuminating his face, I saw a look on his face I had never seen before. It was a look of fear and excitement. A look of mischief.

Before I even realized what was happening, Tony was grabbing a fairly large rock and throwing it at the window. It made only a minuscule crack, so he went to grab another. I just stood there in awe. I don't know why this whole situation felt completely unreal, it just did. I looked over to see Tony struggling to pick up a large rock, it was almost a bolder actually.

"Help me, idiot," he laughed. I laughed too as I went to go grab the other side.

Slowly, we hobbled back to the window with the giant rock between us. "On the count of three," one of us said. I don't quite remember that detail as we started swinging the rock back and forth.

"Three"

"Two"

"One"

As the rock collided with the window, glass flew in every direction. Most of it went inward, but there was the occasional piece that flew outward. One of those pieces had managed to lodge itself in my leg, but there was too much adrenaline in my system for me to have really noticed the faint pain.

We both stood in a silent daze of what we had done. That's when I noticed that the lights in the upper levels turning on. I nudged Tony to bring him back down to earth. Once he noticed, we both hastily crawled through the broken window.

I laughed, "See you tomorrow?"

He let out a small chuckle too, "yeah." That was the only exchange between us before we ran in opposite directions to get back to our rooms.

By the time I got back to mine, I noticed the amount of blood coming out of my leg. Quickly, I tore off a piece of cloth and tied it around my leg as a makeshift tourniquet. I hid the bloody piece of glass under my bed before laying down in my bed. I was still in my soaking t-shirt but that didn't seem to effect me.

I looked over at the clock. It read 3:17 am. The witching hour. Huh.

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"Did you hear that the storm sent a rock into the window by Dr. Gaskarth's office? Crazy isn't it?" Jaime laughed. We were on our way to the cafeteria for breakfast when Jaime decided to fill me in on the events of last nights storm.

"Must have been a strong storm," I added to the conversation. Not that I really needed to say anything, because Jaime would've continued talking regardless.

As predicted, Jaime continued to talk nonstop as we got our oatmeal from Jenna and not even when we sat down and started eating did he stop. I wasn't paying attention to what he was saying though, because Tony had just walked in with Austin. I smiled at Tony knowingly after the pair walked past and I overheard Austin talking about the broken window. I guess news travels fast around here.

When the two of them got their food, Austin walked ahead toward their normal table across the room. He didn't seem to notice that Tony had stopped walking until he was already there. Tony had stopped and say at a table two away from Jaime and I's. Austin walked back to him and sat with a confused expression. I didn't hear what he said, but I did see Tony look up and actually smile at me for the first time in daylight. That was progress. 

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No one ever suspected Tony and I to have caused the window to break. It was strange how no one even questioned how a thunder storm managed to fling a large rock twenty feet into a window. Maybe they knew though. Who knows? Who cares?  I personally never thought twice about it.