BAD HABITS || CARL GRIMES

four

ANGER flushed over my fathers face as I followed him outside, dragging my feet behind him. We walk towards Graces house, and nobody is standing around any longer, it's like it was forgotten just like that.

"Why Carl?" my dad asks as he stops right in front of the window Grace escaped from.

"Why what?" I sneer.

"Lighting a house on fire, with your friend and a stranger in it, that's too far!" he shouts at me.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" I ask, confused as to why I was being accused of this after I saved the girl.

"I can get past you smoking your lungs out, and drinking until your liver fails, I could even get past marijuana if you could find it, going over the wall. I can look past that for the most part, but lighting a damn house on-"

"I didn't light the fucking house on fire!" I stammer at him.

"Then who did?" he demands rudely, clearly not believing me.

"I don't fucking know Dad! But I saw the smoke and came running, I saw Grace and ran her to the infirmary. I don't know what idiot pulled this shit but it wasn't me!" I shout in his face.

"Don't yell at me" he says calmly.

I let out a couple of laughs at his statement then compose myself, seeing his face become red with anger.

"Then don't accuse me of burning down a fucking house" I scoff before walking off, back towards the infirmary.

I breathe in the cold air as I approach the infirmary. My hand reaches out and grips the handle swinging the door open and I walk in, coming face to face with Jack.

"Woah what happ-"

"Joint. Now" I say seriously, interrupting him before he could ask anymore questions.

"Okay. Just let me help Emilia get Grace back to the house" he says.

"They can't sleep there, it was literally in flames earlier" I sputter.

"The top part of the house is fine, good enough for now".

"Just let me take her and meet me there with some joints Jack" I say calmly before walking over to her bed.

Grace locks eyes with me as I hover over the side of her bed and look down at her.

"I'm going to carry you back"

"Wow, helping me out a whole three times in less than a week" she laughs.

"I'll let it slide" I chuckle. "We can just blame it on a rough couple of days".

Denise walks over to her and hands her a little orange bottle filled a quarter of the way with little oval shaped pills that are supposed to take away her pain, but I know just as much as she does pain isn't just physical.

"I can walk" Grace tells me, snapping me out of my thoughts.

"Doesn't look like it" I snap back at her, my voice low.

"As long as you help hold me up" She explains as she swings her legs over the side of the bed.

"Fine" I tell her, just wanting to feel the relaxation from the high I crave.

I wrap my arm around her waist and slowly help her rise to her feet, her face twist and turns in pain, her eyebrows scrunched together and her mouth twisted into a knot.