caught in the act {chime}

Sometimes all you do is think about how small you are. In a crowd, in school, when you can't quite reach the jam on the top shelf. Which is an odd thought to think, especially in your head, because you've never been small. Always tall, always brash, opinionated and dying to let everybody know what you think and how you feel. (The thinking and feeling part, at least, when you were smaller and the world was a little less heavy on your shoulders.) Red hair stands out in a crowd and you're hardly every in school, and there's nothing in your kitchen that standing on your tip-toes or on a stool can't reach.

But lately you've been thinking a lot about things and even more-so about the fact that you keep a lot of those thoughts to yourself. At school (when you can be bothered to drag yourself out of the house and find your way into a seat in a classroom) you sit quietly and slowly sink into a lull, letting the teacher's voice become a dull drone that stretches across the room and warps their words into tired, barely audible words. Screeches of the bell pull you out of that zombie-like state and snap you up like a rubber band, out of the door in half a second. Blink and you'll miss her, they say. You sit and stare and do nothing but think for hours on end, and sometimes it's only the sharp voices of others that cut through the comforting barrier you've cocooned yourself in that pull you out of your trance. "I'm fine," you say with a smile. "Just thinking, that's all."

'Just thinking' is a lot better than 'Just sitting on the roof talking to stars' or 'Just lying in my bed contemplating the meaning of life and whether or not we have a purpose here on the ground' so they tend to leave you be. (You thought about how someone told you once that they thought the stars were pinpricks in the sky where heaven leaked out onto the Earth. You quite liked that thought, even if religion seemed silly to you and you'd lost all faith in everything.) Lately you've been getting 'better' - or so you thought, for if you Aunt really did think you were finally seeing the light of day (quite literally) you wouldn't be up here, on the roof of the therapists, throwing pebbles at people and hiding from one boy who seems to have discovered your little secret.

"You may as well come out, now. Game’s over."

You laugh, staying as still as the ground beneath you that had refused to swallow you up earlier today. Oh how you've missed this - the mischief, the laughter, the rush of adrenaline that doesn't come from throwing yourself off of high buildings. Watching people's reactions, messing with them, having the tables turned so that now you are the one playing with people's minds instead of having yours prodded and examined and declared not-quite-right. A twisted type of joy leaves your body through laughter, but it's the closest thing to genuine happiness you've experienced in weeks and you'll be damned if anybody wrenches that away from you before you've had your fun.

"Not so fast" you call from concealment, pinning your body against the roof's warm tiles. This is fun, so much fun, an odd and familiar feeling that bubbles through your limbs and takes you back to days when things were a little easier. Challenge beckons the stranger, competitiveness rising by the second.

"How about a new game. Come and find me, and you win. Fall?"

Well, let's hope to the skies above us that he's like you, Lia Irvine, and gets back up again - or the poor boy will be sleeping not under the stars but under the earth instead.

"I win."

so i've been thinking lately
that i should try to grow up
maybe start to show up on time
but let's be real here, it's not the way we work
so why waste the sunshine?