Drunk Without Cause

One.

Date/time/country in which you started this?

As much as he wished he was, Nessa wasn't the best at remembering things. He adored learning, and the idea of remembering, but whenever it came down to actually retaining information, he found that he wasn't very good at it.

There was a lot that was lost and unrecovered in his busy head. Maybe that was why he liked learning so much. Because every time he learned something new, he forgot it. It caused him to have an endless thirst for knowledge, always trying to replenish the depleting supply. Like sand through fingertips.

The rest of the school week was spent trying to remember where everything was. It wasn't easy. He had already achieved six tardies. According to the school handbook, you're only allowed three tardies for every quarter or else you get a detention. He doubled that in one week.

No one approached the overall-clad boy, allowing him to remain invisible. He sat alone at lunch and stayed silent during lectures. As much as he would have liked to know someone, he didn't. Except Kiwi.

But there was one problem: Nessa couldn't remember where Kiwi said that he could find him. He remembered Kiwi asking if he wanted to sit with his friends at lunch, and he remembered Kiwi talking about which classes he had, but he couldn't remember what the classes actually were. Or where he sat at lunch. So he carried on and pretended that he hadn't forgotten.

There were the occasional stares from the other students, but he was used to people looking at him. Nessa didn't mind the fact that no one was talking to him much. He liked observation more than participation. Instead, he simply spent the week just taking in his surroundings and studying the way everyone acted.

He wasn't surprised to see that more than one fight broke out already, or that students very obviously got high in the bathrooms. He even watched someone vape during class and somehow not get caught. It smelt of fruit.

As the final bell on the final day of the school week sounded throughout the speakers, Nessa gratefully stood up from his seat and allowed himself to get lost within the crowd of rowdy students. Everyone was loud and excited for the weekend, discussing their plans.

Nessa watched curiously as people pushed passed, all seeming to know every detail of these halls. There were a few things that Nessa had picked up on. Like the locker in the east wing that had sharpie on it saying, drug dogs: don't sniff my locker. Or how one of the bathroom stalls had a conversation etched into it about what to do if you're a cis man on your period. Those were the easier things for Nessa to remember. Not that any of it was helpful.

He didn't stop at his locker. He hadn't been using it at all since he forgot the combination. His bag was slung over his shoulder as he continued towards the exit. When he finally got outside, it was utterly beautiful.

Beautiful was a relative term. Nessa thought everything was beautiful. He thought the questionable locker addressing the drug dogs was beautiful. He thought the conversation written on the bathroom stall was beautiful. He even thought the number of tiles in the school's office was beautiful.

There was simply too much to life to not adore it all. Everything was so abstract and convoluted that there was too much going on to just discard it. So that was why Nessa found beauty in everything. What was the point in living if you don't recognize the world you're living in?

Everything except maybe himself. That was one thing that Nessa could never decide on. Was he beautiful? So many people told him that he was. People would kill for such natural beauty, someone had once told him. Thinking about it sent a loose shiver down his spine. The person who told him that was talking about his face, they weren't talking about him. Nessa suspected that if it was entirely about him and not his face, he would be the only thing in this world that was ugly.