TW: smoking and usage of the F slur

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Rat tat tat.

Feral drums their fingers impatiently against the glass again, unblinkingly staring through the frosted window panes.

Yes. Feral is a person. I think.

I stumble over my clothes still piled on the ground, my fingers slipping clumsily over the latch on the window frame.

As soon as I unlock it, Feral slips in through the small gap, tumbling into the room head over heels.

They lay splayed out on the wooden floor for a moment, before popping up to their feet almost weightlessly. "Hiya!" They grin, mouth open and displaying two uneven rows of off-white teeth and four razor sharp canines. They hardly reach five feet tall, several inches shorter than I am, with a wiry, thin frame and incredibly oversized clothes. Their weird, grey, despite they themself not looking a day over fourteen, hair was an absolute mess, per usual, short and choppy and sticking up in every possible direction, with two small, tight braids falling from above their sideburns halfway down their neck. Their eyes are wide and wild, a pale brown with the oddest yellow glow, like two flashlight beams had gotten trapped behind them. The corners of their lips drop the slightest as they look me over. "What happened to you?"

"Hey—" I say, kicking my school skirt beneath my dresser. "Nothing, really."

"You just launched a book across the room. Did that Penny lady give you shit again?" Feral asks, one of their untamed eyebrows disappearing into their hairline. "I can find out where she lives for ya—"

"I already know where she lives." I say, cutting them off and swatting at the side of their head. "And she always gives me shit, that's not the issue—"

Feral ducks under my hand, their face contorting in an aggravated snarl. "Oh it is definitely the issue, I'm gonna go beat her perty lil uptight ass—" They snark, starting for the door. Their fists clench tightly, knuckles already bruised from some unknown scuffle or accident, shoulders square as if they are winding up to swing at an invisible Penny.

"No—" I lunge, grabbing the scruff of their musty black and white (well, it probably used to be white) flannel. It feels very thin, and looks worn out and was even torn at some places like the elbows and the seam connecting the sleeve to the torso at their armpit. Several buttons either hang by an inch's worth of string, or are just gone completely. I see them wearing it a lot, always over a battered and stained shirt with odd designs on the chest. It was a classic Feral statement piece. "My parents are downstairs, you can't just march out—" I say as I drag Feral backwards. "Can we just get out of here?"

Feral shrugs off my hand before their grin instantly snaps back. They grab my wrist before I can stop them. "I got ya, man."

With a skip to their step, they hop back over to the open window, the October chill rattling the rickety pane. My wrist slips from their grasp, and they vault up onto the sill, crouched in the frame and heels lifted from the ground. They brace their hands on either side of themself, and their palms press sharply and flush against the wood to keep them steady. A wicked grin flashes across their face when they turn their head to look over their shoulder at me. I'm on the ground, throwing a pair of battered sneakers over my feet and leaving the laces undone. "Comin'?" They ask, before they're flinging themself from the ledge and out of sight.

It's contagious, and a smile splits across my own face before I'm following, hoisting myself into the window opening, the backs of my shoes still stuck beneath my heels. I look up and see Feral's own sneakers scraping against the gutter running up the side of the house by my window just before they're completely up and over the roof's edge.

I fit the toe of my shoe along the thin scrap of metal holding the gutter to the outside wall of the house, boosting myself off the ledge to grab onto another strip of metal several feet further up the gutter for my hands to hold on to.

The wind whips at my face, burning up any remnants of tears that could have possibly been left on my waterline. My hands sting with the chill of the metal, the gutter having been battered by the same wind all day. Still, I reach up, pulling myself to the next "rung" fastening the gutter to the wall, slowly making my way to the roof.

The roof of my house was flat, a square of desolate grey concrete with a ridge around its perimeter about six inches high and wide enough to sit on. Feral's already sitting down, on the side of the house facing the street. "What took ya so long?" They snicker, giggling at their own incredibly unfunny tease with a bark of a laugh.

I roll my eyes in response, trudging across the roof to sit next to them. It was still light out, but not for long as the evening approached. The days were getting shorter as we got deeper into autumn, and the sun was already edging towards the horizon line at barely five. "I'm sorry we can't all be as light and graceful as you are, Feral."

"Truly unfortunate." They reply, still wearing that same shit-eating grin.

"Truly." I deadpan.

They just flash their teeth even more, before sticking a hand into the pockets of their jeans, black, with two rips at the knees and fraying hems. From that pocket they pull a cardboard box about the size of their palm. "Here," Feral says, sliding out a cigarette and tossing me the rest of the half-empty pack labeled 'Satan's Breath', with a giant angry red face plastered over the front. "Some faggots for a faggot."

I catch the pack before it falls all the way off the roof, taking out my own. "For two faggots." I correct.

"For two." They agree, now pulling a box of matches from the same pocket. They strike one behind the ledge so that the wind doesn't blow the flame out, touching the fire to the end of the cigarette that was pinched between their index and middle finger. They hand me the matchbox and I do the same, shaking the match after to put out the flame.

Then I bring the cigarette to my lips, drawing in the smoke. It sears the back of my mouth, tumbling in plumes of pollute from the filter. As soon as I taste it, a sizzling energy sparks. From where an Adam's apple should rise on my throat, it crackles down my limbs with an addictive rush of adrenaline and warmth, like wildfire as if the match has lit me instead of the roll of paper and tobacco.

Slowly a stream of the thick, dirty smoke escapes from the part in my lips as I remove the cigarette, laced with real, flickering sparks. They're reminiscent of orange fireflies, dancing amongst one another before disappearing into the fold of muddled cloud that begins to trickle up towards the darkening sky.

"You still have to teach me how to do that." Feral says with a teasing edge to their voice, referring to the gleam of warmth from within the poison I let loose from my mouth. Smoke trails from between their own teeth, plain and grey and curdling.

I shrug. "Maybe sometime." It's a joke between us, now. I don't know how I do it. Neither do they. So it's a trick, a trick I'm not quite sure how I learned. Just as a magician is born with the knowledge of how to entertain his audience, even if he still has to learn his act, I suppose.

The sky is quickly turning purple and blue as dusk overtakes the city like the tide rolling in, waves of color dulling within minutes to darken overhead.

My cigarette is already out and dying on the concrete roof behind me. The satisfaction was already gone, the sudden rush of adrenaline disappearing with the warmth of the day.

Meanwhile, Feral lights their second, propping it between their lips. "Almost seventeen, huh?"

"Almost." I nod. I swing my legs, my heels hitting the building from where they dangle over the edge. I still haven't pulled the backs of my sneakers all the way up. "Just a couple more hours."

"D'ya graduate this year or the next? I can never remember." Feral asks, pulling their cigarette away from their mouth and letting it hang in their hand at their side.

"Next. One more year of this hell after this one." I sigh, leaning backwards. I hook my knees around the ledge, using my elbows to lower myself onto my back to the roof, staring at the sky. It's empty, completely void of any and all lights, except for the moon creeping its way across the expanse above us, above everything. But even the moon is hazed over.

I remember when I used to go to Ray's house every night after school, just a few years ago when sleepovers and playdates were still appropriate for my age. Sometimes when I stayed over for dinner I'd let myself become fascinated by Mr. Rosier's rants, the way he explained how detailed the sky used to be, how people even had jobs to study it and its very being. He had even lent me a textbook that one of these star observers had written, filled with pages upon pages of pictures and old photographs of the night sky before... everything. When it was impossible to look up and miss seeing a star, when real colors showed us glimpses of the galaxies that lay far beyond our atmosphere. When people used machines to look closer at the planets that orbited the sun, just like we did. I still dream of constellations every time I peer up, I imagine connecting the dots between worlds billions of miles away. An age where people used to worship the stars and their moon, because they were just that beautiful.

But that was thousands of years ago. Unreachable. Untouchable.

My father had burned that book when he found it.

And now we only have one thing of beauty to focus on. God and all of His glory.

Oh but God can't see us here. No, not in our little corner of the world that His all-seeing eyes graze over, a patch of insignificance only known to Him as a portion of the world He has conquered and rules. He doesn't know our names, our faces, our stories. Maybe He once did, like it was claimed over and over again in the lines of the Bible we're forced to read and memorize and learn. But He certainly does not now. If He did, we wouldn't be here. If He did, we wouldn't be subjected to tyrannical men drawing themselves at the point of the lopsided shape known as a family. If He did we wouldn't be drowning in doubt. And in fear.

Because He is a tyrant, sitting on His stupid throne in New Jerusalem, lavishing in His victory over the Devil even centuries later. It doesn't add up, it never has. I have searched the Bible through and through, read between the margins. But something still seems missing. This was not how it was supposed to end, it wasn't. It was supposed to be different.

But here we are, lying on a slab of a roof in a nothing little town in a huge, huge world that this God so hungrily calls His kingdom. It makes me want to scream, to scream and cry and sob about how unfair it all is, how much has been taken from us, from humanity. If only there was a way to take it back—

"Nev?" Feral's voice breaks through my train of thought, shattering the little images of rebellion, now disappearing as quickly as our stars had millennia ago.

"Hm?"

"I asked you a question."

"Eh... repeat it?" I ask.

"What're you gonna do once it's over?"

"School?"

"Yeah. That."

I pause. The void above me is still stationary, the blots of clouds almost nonexistent even with the night as their backdrop. "I'm not sure." I tell them, as I always do when they ask. "I never have been."

"Well ya still got a year to figure it out." They say with a small grunt of movement, shifting to lower themself down as I had, now laying beside me with their arms crossed over their stomach. Out of the corner of my eyes I watch their feet bob up and down as they kick them.

"That's what you said last year." I remark with a roll of my eyes, turning my face to fully look at them.

The corner of their lip twitches. "And what I said the year before that."

"You're just proving my point, dumbass."

They shrug. "Who said there was a point to prove?"

"I— whatever." I sigh again, hiding a smile as I turn once more to face the sky.

Maybe someday, in some world, I'll see the stars. In some world I'll escape this place and all the strings attached to it. Maybe someday I won't be seen as the disobedient little girl always losing her attention in class, or a nameless dot in the grand scheme of this broken, bleeding universe.

Maybe someday they'll say my name and it won't be a girl's name. It will be mine. And I will be me.

But someday isn't now. And the only thing to do until then is to survive the now. 

Somehow. 

——— 

helloooo! i finally return with an update for this-

i'm sorry it's been so long, as some of you know i've been more motivated for my other projects (if you haven't definitely go check out my esmp fics, The Majors Series, and my series of celestial stories) so this one took the backseat for a little while- but it's here now!

i hope y'all like it- i'm really proud of it, this chapter and the book in its entirety so far. votes, comments, questions, advice, and critiques (as long as they're of good nature-) are always appreciated and welcomed :D