January

[There's something very disturbing about the thought of a cat drowning its grief in alcohol, Lucy.
Very cute picture though.

Oh yes. This post's also written from before, never posted.]

January

There was such thing as hate as first sight. Or perhaps that was too strong a word. It was, to be accurate, a feeling more along the lines of an almost irrepressible urge to punch the guy's face in. But, once again, 'almost' was the key word that signalled to him that his self control could and therefore probably would win.

Mike felt his fists unclench almost regretfully.

A foot away from him, Zach slid him a sideways glance, then nodded at the guy he was speaking to. "See you tomorrow," he said, and the guy smiled—no, smirked, really, and left.

"I don't like him," announced Mike.

Zach gave him another sideways glance. "You don't like a great many people."

"I really don't like him," insisted Mike. "It's one of those things you know…" he paused, "Okay, maybe you don't know. But I wanted to punch his face in."

"I’m glad you didn’t,” said Zach mildly.

Mike rolled his eyes. Really, Zach wouldn't know. For someone who was male and eighteen, Zach displayed an appalling lack of violent tendencies. "Who's he, anyway?"

"For your information," Mike rolled his eyes again. Zach was using that particular tone that he employed when he thought Mike was being bad-mannered. It managed to convey the feelings of You-Should-Act-More-Politely with every syllable. Mike didn't know how he does it. "His name's Gary and he was in my general psychology class."

"I feel sorry for his future victims," said Mike darkly. He had had bad experiences with psychologists before, and he thought he could guess very accurately what sort of psychologist that this Gary person would turn out to be.

Zach gave him a slightly disapproving frown, having, despite of his claims, not completely given up on the issue of courtesy with Mike yet. "Actually, I think he's an economy and business double-major. He's intelligent." He added unnecessarily.

"Whatever, I still don't like him," said Mike stubbornly.

Zach muttered something under his breath.

The next time he saw Gary was during lunch, unexpectedly. He'd been expecting to meet Zach for lunch…well, not so much 'meet' as dropping in on Zach's mind-numbingly predictable schedule. However, mind-numbing took on another meaning when he saw Nick and Zach eating lunch with the said Gary person. He was considering whether or not to just turn on his heels and walk out, paid lunch fee or no, when Nick saw him. Naturally everyone else saw him too, and there was nothing for him to do except to stay for lunch with the rest of them.

The lunch confirmed his initial dislike for Gary. The guy was rich, and snobby about it, he was shallow and his withering politeness could be as rude as Mike himself could be without pretence—and the guys did it for fun. He was prejudiced without being decisive, and experienced without being wise. It was easy to tell from Nick's expression that he didn't think so well of Gary either, and Mike found himself wondering just what had gotten into Zach for even conversing with this sort of person.

They didn't like him, even an idiot could figure that out and Gary, for all that he had considered himself to be at one time or another, was not an idiot.

He felt almost sorry for Zach, who was doubtlessly trying to help. He doubted, however, that Zach knew that his current state was a direct consequence resulting from a series of conscience decisions made by him. Idly he wondered if Zach would still be so interested if he told him that once, in the private school that he went to in Ontario, he'd gotten into trouble for picking a fight with the nerds. He won, of course, and because of his father's wealth he never got into serious problems either. His records were golden, untouchable. Sure it wasn't like that because of anything that he did, directly, but no one else knew that.

"…I wonder if the country would actually turn out to be a lot better if an economists's in charge of it," Zach was saying, thoughtfully. This geek in particular had a perchance for strange tangents.

"Sure," he answered with a loftiness that had become a second nature to him, "We'd have a lot less problems. 'Money is the ultimate source of joy,' I always say." Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the other two guys, Mike and Nick, exchange a look.

Good for them, like he'd care what they thought of him. He knew their types too: the fob and the punk-wannabe—no doubt that both of them were pretty enough so that there were girls both secretly and not-so-secretly stalking them. Their ego could be as every bit as bad as he could be—for different reasons, too. The hypocrites. He stabbed the green bean on his place viciously.

"I disagree," said Zach, carefully. "Though I'll admit that in today's world money ended up as pretty much the end of most of the happiness around there are things that still exist despite of it. I mean, if you want to get down to the idea of happiness itself, philosophically, it has very little to do with …monetary values."

Philosophically? That qualified as a word deserving to be made fun of, in Gary's rules.

"Well that's just very 'philosophical' of you." He replied, mimicking Zach's trace of British accent. Zach coloured faintly. "Also very idealistically impractical and geeky, just so you know."

"I'm going to go to class now," said the guy, Mike. He gave Nick a look. Gary wondered if they were always so unsubtle about it.

"Um, right. Class," mumbled Nick, getting up too.

"See you, Zach," said Mike, pointedly ignoring Gary, then left. Nick offered them—more at Zach than at him, Gary noticed—a weak sort of smile and left too, hurrying after Mike.

"Bye," said Zach, doing a reasonable job of maintaining the This-Doesn't-Bother-Me appearance. He turned to Gary, "I'm sorry, but—"

"Oh, I just remembered, I have a class too," said Gary. He did, but it was so easy that he usually opted to skip it and do something else instead. However, something here was bothering him and he rather thought he could use some of the teacher's boring lecture as background music while he sorted it out. "Bye Zach!"

"I don't like him," Nick confided to Zach, hoping that he wouldn't offend his friend. "I mean sometimes he just says things…that're …you know…" he made a vague hand motion.

Zach smiled wanly. "It's okay. Mike doesn't like him either. Most people don't."

He always knew his friends were a little strange, but this was bordering unexplainable. He stared at Zach.

"What can I say," said Zach with a quiet laugh. "I'm just masochistic that way."

“Um, right,” Nick mumbled, then looked down at where Zach’s sitting, leaning against one of the bookshelves. In a very secluded corner of the library. Where he’d been going to for most of the past week. “Zach, has anyone been bullying you?” He thought about it. “Do you want me to beat them up?”

“What?” Zach looked up at him, bewildered, then immediately amused. “No, no. I’m here for my term paper. This entire shelf,” he made an expansive gesture over his head and banged his hand against the edge of a shelf. “Ow. Is on psychology, dedicated to Freud. Though,” he continued, with slightly raised eyebrows, “I’m surprised you know what the word ‘bullying’ meant, let along offering a solution. A very violent solution. Honestly, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“I have hidden depths,” said Nick knowledgeably, ruffling Zach’s hair and cheerfully ignoring the accompanied muttering.

It took a bit more money to procure him a singles room in a college dorm, especially in the newest dormitory building, but then, money was never an issue for him and never would be, and for the down periods he experienced regularly, he considered every cent of that money well spent.

Gary laid in bed, ipod plugged into his ears, and stared listlessly at the ceiling. He waited for the questions to end because he knew they would always end, if he ignored them long enough.

Was it, or was it not his mother's fault, for instance? If she had been a little less philanthropically concerned about the others and little more concerned about her own kid none of this would've happened. He probably wouldn't even be at where he was right now. He'd be a lot happier, for one thing.

The woman deserved the divorce. Granted, the new lady wasn't exactly the top of the game, but she was pretty and she could talk which, surmised Gary, was probably all that the opposite gender was capable of, besides being overly and uselessly idealistic and philanthropically concerned about even more useless things.

The better part of him disagreed, but he had gotten so good at ignoring it that what it said never registered as more than a moral background noise.

With his left hand he worried the long scar on his right arm, rubbing the thumb across the puckered tissue, back and forth, back and forth. He would never like rock-climbing again. The fact that now he had an almost phobic fear of heights was also her fault.

It took him a few moments to realize that someone was knocking on the door. It took him a few moments longer for him to stop pretending that his ipod was on and decide to respond.

"BUSY!" He shouted, with just enough annoyance injected into it to make it sound genuine.

The knocking stopped.

"Gary," came Zach's voice, muffled by the door. "You're the one who called for a review session today, at this time, and the test is tomorrow. If you prefer not to—"

He yanked open the door. Zach, on the other side, took an involuntary step back before entering, tentatively. If he thought anything about the Armani clothing and the expensive gadgets lying around the room, he kept it to himself. "Quiz each other?" he suggested, holding up his notebook.

"Sure, let me get my notebook," muttered Gary. His cell phone went off. "Oh my f—" He fumbled for the phone. "Hey."

His father. Damn him for his sense of timing. There were a lot of things that he wanted to point out as his father ranted at him, but he was very conscience of the someone else who was in the room, watching him.

As if picking up his cue, Zach scribbled "I'll be in the lounge" on the last sheet of his notebook, showed it to Gary, and left quietly, closing the door behind him. Gary waited a few seconds and checked to see that Zach had actually left before turning his full attention to the phone in his hand.

It was always like this. Conversations between him and his father were always like this and would always end like this, with neither side satisfied. He shouldn't talk to people—he shouldn’t be near people after a down period, after a row with his father but, as always since the habit had formed, he picked the more reckless route and stormed into the lounge.

Zach looked at him, one eyebrow slightly raised by otherwise asking no questions.

"Okay," said Gary. "Study session time."

"Will you stop trying to get me to like him already!" demanded Mike, annoyed. "He's a snob and a bastard and I want nothing to do with him, which part of this don't you understand?"

"Understanding isn't part of the problem," said Zach, dryly, and Mike groaned at his literal interpretation of things. Zach paused, "Well, maybe it is, but not in the sense you mean."

"And what is the sense that I meant?" asked Mike with biting sarcasm.

Zach ignored him. "If I do recall correctly…" Mike snorted. Zach knew his own little memory tricks and did, on occasions, show off. "…If I remembered it right," repeated Zach, his tone going even drier, "When we first met, you are not exactly the gentleman either."

"I am," Mike reminded him, "Still no gentleman."

The corner of Zach's mouth twitched. "True, but you've gotten better about it." He paused again, then gave Mike the Serious Look, "You've changed, Michael, I don't know if you're aware of it or not…"

"Oh I am," muttered Mike. He often wondered when the changing would stop, if it ever would, and then where he'd end up. It was a worrying thought and one that he had tortured himself with, over and over again. "Believe me, I am."

"Right," said Zach amiably. "People change."

"What's your point?"

Zach hunched his shoulders. The movement filled Mike with foreboding because he only did that when he was about to say something that he thought Mike wouldn't like, and in most cases, he'd be right.

"It's just…" said Zach, finally, "We should be a bit more…sympathetic…"

Mike snorted. "Sympathy? For him? You must be kidding me."

"Don't assume that everything's rosy and perfect just because you can't see the problems," retorted Zach.

"What problems?" Mike bit out.

"Ever considered," began Zach with a sort of calmness that Mike knew, from experience, meant that he was annoyed. "The possibility that the reason you don't like him is because you see too much of yourself in him?"

Instinctive denial. Instincts for when he would not rather think about things, for when the nagging premonition told him that truth is a far-shot away from favourable. "Me? Look, this is going too far."

"Hardly, I was under the impression that we're going around in circles." Zach gave him a worried grin. "Give the guy a chance…he's got this entire…different personality built up, on top of something else that shows through…only occasionally…"

"Got him drunk, then psychoanalyzed him, have you?"

"No!" Zach looked horrified, then sheepish. "Well, I did took advantage of the time when he was mentally exhausted…. We had a study session for econ the other day, and ended up staying pretty late…"

"You can't stay up late," pointed out Mike. Very realistically, he thought.

"I'm actually not that bad, provided that I got enough sleep the day before." Said Zach, and sighed. "Well, that's that, I suppose…."

To say that the atmosphere was uncomfortable would be an understatement, but to give his friends (namely Mike) credit, no food had intentionally gone anywhere besides into mouths. It could, on many levels, be a lot worse.

Zach picked at his food and thought desperately of some way to continue the …nonexistent conversation. He tried not to sigh. As someone who more or less cruised along in other people's conversations, trying to maintain his conversation always took up considerable effort. Neither Mike nor Nick were about to jump in at any point, that was certain, and Zach, in the awkward seconds that marched past, found himself thinking about the weather.

"Right, I have to go. Class." Said Nick, and excused himself. Zach looked at Mike, silently reminding his friend that he knew his schedule and that he expected him to stay seated. Mike opened his mouth.

"So did your father ever get over the midwinter-plane-ride?" Zach asked blandly, performing the equivalent of kicking his friend under the table, except with words.

Mike glared at him. "I don't know," he said scornfully. "Hard to tell, see, since we're not on speaking terms."

"I thought he called you fairly recently," Zach lifted an eyebrow. He glanced at Gary out of the corner of his eye. The guy was definitely listening, at least.

"Yeah, we talked, but you know, there's this difference between talking and actually saying something?"

"But—"

Gary laughed. It wasn't a particularly happy sort of laugh, and for the lack of any other accurate emotionally descriptive words, it sounded bitter. However, it was still laughter, and Mike and Zach stared at him.

"Sorry, it's just…" he snorted, "I know how that goes. You're both talking and neither one's saying anything…"

"…and you end up going in circles and never really get anywhere." Finished Mike, slowly.

"Exactly," said Gary with another laugh. "Oh God oh God…my dad's hopeless."

Zach answered Mike's incredulous look with a blank one. Of all of his pet peeves, Mike hated the I-told-you-so statements the most.

"Chocolate?" offered Gary, digging out a very nicely wrapped bar from his backpack. "Chocolat de France, importé."

"Merci vraiment." Nick grinned and accepted a piece. "I missed some of the chocolates from back home, you know. France has the best chocolates."

Mike made a face. "Just because you're French doesn't mean that France's got the best of everything."

"Bulgarian chocolate's pretty good," said Gary. "Really good. Hmm, remind me, I'll get some next week."

"Gary, Nick's addicted to chocolate, I think," said Zach solemnly. "You really shouldn't encourage him."

"Don't listen to him," instructed Nick. "Besides, chocolate's good for you."

"Up to a certain amount, that is," muttered Zach.

"Addictions are fun," commented Mike, finishing off his piece of chocolate. "You really should try it sometimes, Zach."

"What, you don't think I'm insane enough as is?" Zach asked with mock surprise.

"Good point," conceded Mike. "What d'you think, Gary?"

"I find myself wondering why we're not all in an insane asylum," Gary grinned at Zach. "Maybe they haven't caught us yet."

"Maybe the world's insane," suggested Zach.

"We know it is," Mike reminded him.

"Oh, that's right," agreed Zach. "Well, jolly good."

Gary and Mike exchanged a look. Zach occasionally had very interesting relapses in his speech pattern. Between him and Nick, there wasn't a lot to choose from.

"So exactly what's insane?" prompted Nick.

"Everything," said Mike.

And that could be philosophically, if not politically, correct too.

[If it made it even more detailed it would've gone on...for ever and ever and ever, so I mostly shortened it in honor of reconstructive memory.]