Memories Cycle 2 - WINNER ANNOUNCED

Senior year is supposed to be great, right? The prom, the easy classes, the coveted seats on the bus, and a Varsities positions on the sport teams. Coaches coming down from the big colleges and universities for some last minute scouting or to ensure their junior picks were still on top of their A-game.

Except Kai was on a mission to self-destruct. Worse, still, he wasn't telling me why.

Kai was doing everything but sitting down to talk to me. He was partying hard, drinking, crashing on every couch but his own. I could hardly catch a glimpse of his truck before he was peeling out of the parking lot. A few cheerleaders were asking me if he was okay. They knew that where I usually was, Kai wasn't far behind.

Except now he was. Or rather, I was being left behind.

I decided to have it out with him, on probably the worst day of the year. The forecast was calling for thunderstorms and heavy rain at tropical storm was set to bypass us off to the south. I knew Kai hated thunderstorms. He probably was too busy huddling in his bed to want to talk but I had to have this out. I used my spare key to let myself into his tiny apartment. I must have startled him upon entering. He was standing at the kitchen sink when I entered. He spun around and dropped a baggie. Tiny white flecks flew in all directions.

Then the lights went out and the darkness rolled over us like a blanket.

Kai cursed.

I fished my cellphone out of my pocket and quickly scrolled to my flashlight app. I had a nasty knot in my stomach and my fears grew as I shone the light over the white flecks on the ground. Dozens of tiny white pills littered the kitchen floor. At first I thought they were aspirin but then I saw the baggie, the circles under his eyes, the sweat running down the side of his face as I shone the light directly on him.
Kai dropped to his knees and started sweeping the pills into a pile. "Its not what you think!"

My face flushed with heat. Parts disbelief, fear, and anger boiled up inside me. "Then explain this to me, please! You've been blowing me off, avoiding me to hangout out with those apes you call friends and somehow you've got a baggie of a hundred little pills laying around the house. YES tell me how this isn't what I'm thinking!"

"They're not mine," he fumbled the pills into the bag.

"Oh, yeah, I'm not convinced! Tell me you're not dumb enough to use drugs, Kai, tell me a lie if you have too because I need to believe its the truth, that I knew you better than this."

"I'm telling the truth," he said, lifting a hand to shade his eyes from my cellphone light. "Get that light off me!"

I flung the cellphone into the refrigerator where it hit with a thud and the light went out, plunging us into darkness for all of a second. Then the kitchenette lit up with the first flash of lightning. Startled, Kai lunged to his feet, dropping the pills again.

I rushed at him, pushing him back until he was pinned against the wall. "Whose are they, Kai! You told me you were done destroying yourself! You told me you'd never do anything to hurt me, but obviously you've been lying!"

Kai shook his head vigorously, not even struggling from my grip. "They're Jordan's, I swear." He mentioned one guys from his basketball team. Everyone knew Jordan peddled drugs out of his locker. " I took it off of him, like three weeks ago when they were doing random locker checks and I put them in my car to hide them. I told him he was a f/ool. But I'm the bigger one for keeping them for him. I was just getting rid of it. I was going to dilute them and rinse them down the sink."

I narrowed my eyes at him. At this very moment, when a storm was barreling toward us he just so happened to be disposing of his teammates drug paraphernalia. " It took you three weeks? Why?" Why did it take so long for you get rid of them?

Kai's eyes slid away from me in the dark. Lightning flashed and lit up the kitchenette and the side of his face. He flinched away from it. "I-I thought about it."

"About what?" My throat was dry. Sandpaper.

"About swallowing them. His face crumbled as the tears flowed. "All of them."

I could feel my heart cracking in half. My mind hideously fed me an image of Leo: the golden boy, my golden boy and Leo, found dead after the storm, lips blue, eyes wide and pupils blown. So much potential nothing more than muscle and sinew, lying on the cold linoleum floor.

It took me a few seconds to realize he was still talking, his voice like so much broken glass. "My dad called to tell me mom has breast cancer. Its spread and the chemo she's been undergoing for four months isn't doing shit. Its terminal." His teeth were gritted, as if he could hold back the pain behind them. "Jesus, I'm so weak. This shouldn't be about me. I just--I just hurt so much Teo and I just wanted to make it stop. I wanted it all to stop. They didn't even have the decency to let me know until she's on her death bed. "

It clicked with me then, the booze, the avoidance, the missed calls. Kai was running from his past as well as his future. My leo was crashing, and just as he did everything full tilt he was doing this in grand fashion. I'd had no idea things had gone so far. "What changed your mind?" I whispered, at the same time mortified I had the audacity to ask.

His shaking hand touched my cheek. "You. Life might be s/hit sometimes but you always shovel me out and clean me up. You show me every day that life's worth living. You see me when no one else does. His eyes lowered until they were almost shut. "I'm sorry I'm such a basket/case. If you want end it with me I understand."

I punched his arm hard enough to make him wince and grab his bicep. "Ow."

"Shut up, you idiot. I'm not going anywhere. Except maybe to the guidance counselor with you. I want you speaking to someone and apparently, I'm not enough."

Kai gave me a panicked look. "No you're enough Teo, that's why I was flushing this s/hit down the drain. You're the little voice in the back of my head telling me that I'm worth it, that things aren't so bad they can't be dealt with."

I nodded. My heart was still cracked, but I felt like it could still beat and maybe with time, with the healing of my leo it would start to heal as well. I made a move to take Kai's hand, with the intention to sooth over some of the hurt he felt about his mother and fractured family, but then. a particularly loud crack of thunder fairly shook the windows. Kai started to bolt for cover. I grabbed him, and pulled him back into my chest. My hand rested over his racing heart.

"Shhhh...Kai, I have you. I've got you, babe. I'm not going to let anything happen to you," I whispered soothingly to him. "We'll figure this all out together."

We always would.

~Teo

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