Reach

I take a step forward, and another step back. I make sure my curly hair is well laid across the sides of my face. Cluck my collar and I open the door.

The cigarette smoke covers my face, the music inflates my body, the coloured lights blur my vision.

The life dim of excitement I've always lived will change tonight.

I look around and notice none of my friends are here. I recognize some of my classmates, stumbling with red eyes squeamishely poisoned with vodka.

My eyes roll around primitively analysing their unexplored environment, for threats or possible mates.

And there she was. My lungs fill with sweat and smoke concentrated air when I gasp stumbled by her beauty. Emily. She walks into the living room with a six pack weighting on her hand. She was wearing a hoodie. Everyone else was wearing flashy clothes but she was wearing a faded, pink, plain hoodie. She sees me and smiles. My brain releases pleasure chemicals. I try to smile back but she turns away too quickly.

I'm not one to take risks but this one was beyond simple probability of cause and effect and science. I didn't have to calculate the risk / reward ratio to plan and make this decision. My body started walking towards her on its own.

"Hey, Em, long time how's, uhhh your cat, how's life or whatever... so long... very long so so... do you want to uhh... Yeah"

I don't know what I said but she understood.

She took my arm and we started to dance slow, very slow to an ugly song that I would never listen to if I was alone.

Each second our bodies remained in friction, exchanging electrons and sweat and bacteria, I would feel this elevating high in my brain from the touch of her skin, and I'd feel my nose getting warmer like I'm smelling a nice perfume.

Our legs circle around each other's forming patterns all over the parquet. After two songs we float off the floor and touch the ceiling, moving in ways I didn't know we could.

But before I figured out a way to make the moment last forever, Emily suddenly feels out of my range. An intruding voice calls her name and rains on our parade.

"I'll be back" she says and disappears into a different part of the house to help her friend with something.

I take a breath absorbing the endorphins now flowing in my veins.

It's been ten minutes and she isn't back.

I go for a beer, and then two beers, converse with strangers, go for another beer, scroll through my phone, go for another, converse with strangers, my neurones lose tension, I feel my cells losing water. I can't find water. I turn around and pick up a bottle of vodka and plunge it down my throat. Two seconds, five seconds, ten seconds. The liquor makes its way through my body. I dance, pinch myself, pull my hair. Nothing makes sense, nothing works.

My delirious rollercoaster hits a wall when my phone buzzes and I fall back to earth.

It was a text from Lou. 'be there in five'. I was starting to think he wasn't going to show up at all.

What a relief

I text back, 'Sounds good'.

I could use some familiar company

I sit with myself on a couch where little people gathered and I start to think.

"Here it is, the night you thought something interesting would happen", I chuckle in irony and lift the unopened bottle of water I just found into the air as if I'm making a toast. "To living a boring life".

I relax myself across the sofa and familiar wonders breed in my head. I start to wonder how I am only conscious in only one body and not in others, considering that the functionality of my brain is chemically predesigned to function exactly the way it does without the necessity of a singular consciousness being a part of it such as what I consider as I...

It doesn't make sense..

  My thoughts eating away my sanity, I hear little crying sounds and notice that the girl next to me was weeping hanging her head with her fingers scratching her face.

I don't consider involving myself in other people's problems as being a smart move or in anyway beneficiary for myself in any circumstance but for some reason I always seem to let it get the best of me.

"Sorry to bother but are you okay? Do you need someone to talk to?", I lean in and hand her the water bottle I found.

She doesn't move, her face ducked into her palms she continues to cry.

"I don't know what you're going through but everything's gonna be okay, I'm here if you ne..-" before I finish my sentence I notice that a few other people are crying too and I start to look around. Some with their faces plunged into their hands, others hugging their knees, and more of them in the corners just standing with tears running down their faces.

"Why's everyone crying? What happened?", I leave my couch feeling immersed by the dark cloud hovering in the room. No one answers, no one even flinches. "What the hell is going on why's everybody crying!"

I head to the speaker and turn the volume down but it wasnt working,

why isnt it working??

I go for the cable and rip it off the wall, and finally shut down the music.

"Hey!", i turn my attention back to the room.

Did someone die?