‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ folie à deux ☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙
"folie à deux is french for, 'madness of two'." that's what calum told the boy in his creative writing class, when he asked. the golden-locked boy sitting behind him leaned forward, too close for comfort, reading a few lines from calum's laptop. "it's- it's not the best, i still have to revise it, you know?"
"if it's any consolation, i really like it. i write fiction, so poetry is not my forte. is it yours?"
"poetry is, but small talk isn't." and with that, calum turned his body away from the boy and continued to write.
if it were any other person who so obnoxiously read calum's work (without permission), his own, personal work, calum would've took stood up and sat somewhere else. but calum stayed put. not because the stranger reading his poem didn't bother him, but because he liked how he smelled. like vanilla and raspberry and the summertime. cream soda. maybe it was stupid, but calum's mama always told him to listen to his gut and his gut told him to sit near the boy.
he heard the blond's voice again. "hey, can i borrow a pencil?"
without turning his head to look back at him, calum shook his head. "i don't have one."
he heard a quiet 'hm' from behind him. "do you wanna borrow my pencil?"
"okay." calum already had a pencil.
a few seconds later, those terribly slow seconds where calum almost froze up on the spot, fingers resting on the keyboard, he saw a fair-skinned hand on the side of his peripheral vision. the blond held out a mechanical pencil and a small piece of paper. reluctantly, calum took both, mumbling a "thank you" in the process. he held the pencil between his index fingers and as his eyes scanned the piece of paper - it had the blond's phone number written on it, and a small message, in messy, boyish handwriting: teach me how to write poetry sometime.
☆☆☆
"i just don't see the point in going to college for something that won't make me happy," calum said, walking side by side to his girlfriend, sadie. they held hands, loosely, like they always did, but it felt different now from when they held hands as 16 year olds. calum was 19 now, sadie 18.
they'd started dating in calum's junior year and sadie's sophomore year of high school. it was the whole expected routine - girl crushes on boy, girl and boy go out, girl and boy fall in love, and, as calum's dad put it when talking about his mom, the rest is history. (in retrospect, it all seemed so simple, so laid out for calum - you get a long-term girlfriend, you marry the long-term girlfriend, long-term girlfriend becomes wife with two and a half kids. and that was fine with calum. it was fine. it was easy. it was what he was supposed to want - it's what he wanted, wasn't it?)
calum tried so hard to be the type of boyfriend who went off to college but still stayed in touch with his partner. sadie meant a lot to me, calum thought to himself. she still does, of course she does. if it's not broken, why fix it?
"we'll skype each other every day" they both agreed on. "we can switch off each month visiting each other." but eventually, the skype calls got repetitive. and the plane tickets got expensive. and they saw each other's faces less and less, talked less and less. (one night, calum realized the amount he and sadie talked post-graduation and during high school didn't differ much from each other. back then, it was the same 'how are you's, but instead, they talked about english class instead of how he was adjusting to college.)
"but will creative writing pay the bills?" sadie raised an eyebrow, her old red chucks silent against the pavement. "i doubt all law majors want to be law majors. but it works. it's what everyone does. you just gotta bullshit your way through the four years until you walk out with a degree."
"it's four years of stress and then an additional 5 years in debt struggling to pay off student loans."
under her breath, calum heard sadie mumble, "you'd be broke either way, cal. i don't wanna see you in 10 years on the side of the road with a typewriter and a tin can filled with pennies and cigarette residue."
she talks as if she'll still be in my life in 10 years, calum thought to himself.
calum then broke his hand away from sadie's to throw out the cigarette hanging between his lips. "i find it funny how you fly all the way from sydney just to lecture me on my education choices. it's my future, not yours."
"but it's a future i'm in too."
calum stayed silent, biting his tongue as they finally arrived at the front porch of his apartment. he shuffled through his bag in search of keys to unlock the door, his mouth still not speaking a word back.
"calum," he heard sadie say, a bit louder this time. "it's a future i'm in too, right?"
"i..." the boy found himself getting choked up, his eyes glued to his hands clutching his keys instead of at his girlfriend. he couldn't do it. what the hell was happening? calum couldn't look at sadie straight in the eyes and reassure her she'd be in his future. he'd never stopped to think about it before, but it dawned on him just then that maybe there could be a future without her. his mind was telling him, say yes! this is what your life has to be! but his gut was telling him, do you even really love her?
he didn't.
and then calum couldn't hear his mind anymore. only his gut. and his gut made up some lame excuse, a rushed, blurry one that he didn't look sadie in the eyes during either. but a minute later, he could see his girlfriend march away from him, back into the cold london air.
he could hear his heart skip a beat out of pure weariness and, almost a liberation.
it took a moment for calum to catch his breath. tension-filled situations often resulted in a switch in his body going to panic mode. it was ironic, how he thought his panic and anxiety attacks would effortlessly lessen when he moved away from his hometown, right in the midst of one.
and then calum felt a short vibration in his pocket, from his phone. with frigid hands, he took his phone out and checked the screen - it was a text notification, from an unknown number. it read:
hi!
this is luke hemmings, from your creative writing class with mr. beeson. i got your # from one of your friends, in case you'd lost mine
and finally, the last message:
(the one who gave you the pencil)
‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾ folie à deux ☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙
