Fuse

"I didn't fall in love with you, Mickey. You just set my heart on fire."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?! Bullshit, Aria--so what, is that good or bad then?"

"It's exactly what it sounds like."

I snap the phone shut and hang my head, but the Xanax has me too chill to cry. Why? There was nothing left for her in me anyway. This was just a final sweeping, a last clearing of the dust.

I smoke a quarter and touch the unopened box of my things she left with Andro for the first time since I picked them up three months ago.

She's washed all my shirts, so nothing smells like her. Still, I promptly tuck them all underneath my arm, head out to the alley, douse them in rubbing alcohol and leave the fire to the wind to put out.

At the bottom of the box, beneath CDs and pipes, is a copy of our sophomore US History textbook. I shake it, and my suspicions of it being hollowed out are confirmed. I open it and even though she still glints in the light, Maggie now has scars, too; scratches and beat parts of the barrel down the handle.



It'll look like I did it because of her. She no longer commands any of my attention, but she is stained with so much trouble that I could just do without her. Worse than any amount of negativity is this sad indifference. No, all she is responsible for is helping me realize something: the human mind is not special, and love is a chemical reaction. I will feel the heartache and the heart attacks again, for some other beautiful girl, at some point. And then I won't. That's it.
And frankly, I can't fucking deal with that.



From where I'm sitting, working through the fifth blunt, waiting for the tab to kick in, I have a perfect view of both buildings.

The fuse is rigged so that the Arts Building across the street goes first. The first round in each building goes off on the bottom floor, "to shake it up a little before you tear it down," Jason explained. That being so, there will be quite a bit of time between buildings going down.

It cuts through a corridor back in the main Building, and heads straight into the connecting bridge leading into the P.E. Building, next door. When asked why he set it up in such a runaround way, I am left a bit in awe at the depth of Jason Scheff's mind,
"The only way they'll be able to get in would be through either the Arts or P.E. doors, Main doors get chained shut at night. Get a good spot in a Science department classroom and you can watch the buildings fall. You can see the rescue team get sealed off. They'll figure it out pretty quick that it's all connected and won't break into the Main Building on a two-thirds chance they won't find you. You can watch yourself succeed this time." And he says it which such sincerity, I'm sorry I didn't get to know him better.

I feel my jaw lock up and I spin the barrel and sing to pass the time. I hear several muffled explosions and look out the window to see fire spit through the glass walls of the front of the Arts Building.

Blunt Ten tastes slightly different, and I vaguely wonder what strain it is, but Auggie gave me so many that I'm just doubling them up and chain-smoking them like an eighth grader with a pack of cigarettes.

The acid makes the fire brighter, clearer, and I feel the explosions rumble through my skin. They've stopped for now, and so the fuse has to cross the Main Building, down a flight of stairs, and wrap around almost a whole floor before the P.E. tanks go off. So I settle back against the wall, taking in the imperfections in the paint, because they will not exist in an hour.

I look around the room and am flooded with another memory attack, the first in months. The Bio lab becomes my homeroom again, flooded with freshman faces, their voices clear as two years ago.

Mr. Betlow was childhood friends with Andro's homeroom teacher, so they'd just inform each other if one of us showed up in either class. Mine had an outstanding majority of girls, and so Andro's ego drove him there more often than not to pierce hearts with a smile.

"Mickey, Mickey!"

Ari didn't care what her teacher knew or didn't know, and showed up to tell those girls gross things about Andro that you'd only learn from sleeping next to him for a week.

"Mickey? MICKEY!"

As I cough out smoke, the classroom becomes fuzzy and out of focus, and I'm not sure what catches my eye from outside the thick glass window in the door.

Fuck, Auggie--he wouldn't really have sent Dro here, not after I told him what I was doing, would he?

The freshman fade away, but I can still hear the class talking at a low volume in the back of my head, and the walls breathe heavily. I look outside and realize how much time I spent in the memory when the second of the four rings of tanks go off in the P.E. Building.

A knocking on the door's window snaps me back around to see Aria sealed in hell with me.