Alex loves to eat (![]() ![]() @ 2016-06-09 09:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | character: alex jiang, location: kitsune dorm |
Narrative: Because Running Away is the Answer to Everything
WHO: Alex Jiang
WHEN: Jun 9. early, early morning.
WHERE: Kitsune dorms, Alex's room
Alex exhaled slowly and stared at the ceiling of his dorm room. If he turned his head and looked at his alarm clock, he'd know that only five minutes passed and not the hour that it felt like. A lot of nights were spent like this. It wasn't until he heard about how Barclay used to have this stuff that would help prevent dreams that he managed to get decent nights of sleep. Alex vaguely remembered hearing about how nightmares haunted students before a number of them were abducted. It was a good thing he had some cash to spare to buy that because it bought him some much needed nights of sleep. The dreamless sleep wasn't too bad, though when Alex went into the spirit world, it felt strange and weird to him. Like he didn't connect to it the same way. It was all in his head, but a lot of things were running through his head. Ignoring the clock, Alex reached out and grabbed his cell phone from where he had it charging. The screen lit up and he sorted through emails. He purchased the ticket to China the other day. Or, he told his parents to buy him the ticket and they did. No questions asked. No offers or demands to accompany him. They bought it, sent him the confirmation email, and then gave him the number of a reliable cab company he could call for a ride home when he returned. Ever since his grandfather stepped into his life, Alex became increasingly aware of the emptiness of his home. His parents always gave him what he wanted, but they were relatively uninvolved. He wasn't raised by nannies, and pictures of him filled their home, but he came to realize it was just for show. The gifts they showered him with were distractions from bigger problems he never realized were there, and was only now coming to see. But even then he had yet to grasp the full picture. Strange how an old man kicking Alex's ass could put things in perspective. Alex had numerous friends growing up, but he also had bullies to counteract. People pushed him around because he was small, and so Alex adapted to make it a pain for them. He grew a large personality to make up for his size, and people seemed to respond well to that most of the time. He had no adult figures to cling to though, and while he grew up with people he called his friends, time away at St. Margaret's exposed truths he wasn't ready to face. The fact that all of his friends from back home saw him as a novelty. When he returned, all they wanted to do was have him DJ their parties or provide some sort of entertainment. Nobody wanted to talk about things that meant something to him beyond music. The "How are you?" and "What's up?" were not meant to receive honest answers. He was supposed to either provide a funny story or simply say, "I'm fine." He wasn't fine. He hadn't been fine for a while. And Alex began to paint those of his friends he made at St. Margaret's with the same colors. Perhaps he was jealous of those he'd previously trespassed against. They had people to give them an emotional buoy, and Alex's chief source of emotional help died the previous summer. At first Alex was fine with the old man dying. His grandpa said he would visit, but as problems began to stack up for Alex, the young shaman realized that he needed his grandfather more than just occasionally. He'd attempted to reach out to Mr. Cavanaugh, but the guy was just too damn logical. Mr. Cavanaugh and others wanted someone whose emotions were tangled in a torrid storm of confusion and frustration to be objective. Objective? Alex tried that from time to time, but he couldn't access that part of his brain when it felt like people spent more time attacking what he did instead of addressing the fact that things happened to him too. Like somewhere in the mix of others' problems, Alex's ended up eclipsed. His problems weren't as bad as others, so he should just get over it. Move on. Let it go. Davian had noticed that Alex was out of his usual behavior. But that was a can of worms Alex was currently pretending didn't exist. Davian was the first friend Alex made at the school, but it might be the first real friend Alex ever made in his life. He was the only person Alex ever talked to about his grandfather dying, even if it was a brief conversation. Now Davian was starting to change his life. Alex had seen other friendships unravel and sometimes it took the smallest of steps for one person to eventually let a friendship fade into obscurity. Something as trivial as quitting pot. Unlike Davian who tended to ignore problems (or forget about them entirely), Alex became absorbed by them when they hit a little too close. Smoking pot on the surface was pretty trivial to people, and so it was easy for them to write it off as Alex overreacting. But Alex saw it as the first step leading down the road to Davian walking away and deciding that his life was better without some punk-ass kid from California with rich parents. Wasn't that easy though? It wasn't the first time people looked at his upbringing and decided they knew everything about him. His actions and big personality often seemed to confirm these assumptions. But it was easy to do that when no efforts were made to delve deeper. He remembered the old English teacher saying that the only artists that could exist were the ones who came from hard lives. The ones who had to start at the bottom and work their way up. Everyone loved an underdog. The starving artist. The person who scrimped and saved and made themselves out of nothing to rise above it. The American dream. And here was this kid from California whose parents could afford to buy him all the gear he needed, but couldn't seem to realize that maybe buying him things wasn't how parenting actually worked. Maybe in the end that's what Davian saw Alex as. He could quit pot because it wasn't that big of a deal. It was just pot. But it wasn't. And then Davian quit smoking and all other drugs. Alex could be resentful of Ambriel, and at first he focused his rage at the angel. It was his fault. He was the one who couldn't seem to get that stick out of his ass, and he knew Davian would do whatever he wanted if he asked. But the more Alex thought about it, the more he realized how angry he was at Davian. Davian had the choice and he could've said no, but he didn't. And even if Ambriel never asked Davian to drop Alex, the shaman believed that one day Davian would. He was going to shed the things that didn't matter, and Davian would look back on his life and his friendship with Alex and decide that he put too much effort into some brat. He'd decide that Alex wasn't giving back enough, and he didn't need that in his life. So he'd walk away. Alex did what he felt would protect him, because the raw feelings of abandonment from his grandfather's death were there. The old man—that fucking old man—screwed everything up. Alex felt hollow inside and doubted everyone around him. His grandfather showed him what someone who actually cared did, and then he just . . . he died. And he knew he was going to die, and yet he did it anyway. So Alex was angry at Davian and especially at his grandfather. To protect himself from feeling that even more empty, Alex pushed Davian out and told him to get lost. Before Alex came to rely on him too much. Everyone else got the typical treatment from Alex. The barbed jab or snarky response to a dumb question. For as tired as he was, he did a pretty good job of pretending he was fine. Some people suspected things, but Alex dismissed it. They didn't need to know because as soon as he started being honest, they probably would stop listening. Or they'd tell him he was being a brat and he needed to get over himself. There were bigger problems in the world. The flight would leave at eight in the morning a few days after classes ended. It would be a very long flight since China, after all, was on the other side of the world. He'd fly into Guangzhou Baiyun airport, and there a couple of his grandfather's old friends would greet him. They would take him to where the old man lived before coming to stay with his loser family in California because he couldn't take care of himself anymore. These people would probably help him more with what he could do. As much as St. Margaret's tried, they could only do so much with his abilities. He needed experienced shaman to show him what to do. Alex turned the phone off and set it back on his nightstand. The room felt extra dark now as his eyes attempted to adjust from staring at the bright phone. He didn't know why he was going to China. He said he wanted to see it because of his grandfather and to learn more about being a shaman, but maybe it was something else. Maybe Alex wanted to see if the place was worth staying for longer than just the summer. Hell, he could go there and shave his head or whatever and hit gongs and just walk away. He'd be remembered as that kid who almost killed the dragon. The kid who deserved everything that came to him. If they even bothered to remember him at all. Maybe as an afterthought of something: "Yeah, remember that Alex kid? What an ass." Turning to his side, the numbers on the clock read 4:31 A.M. It'd been 10 minutes since he last looked at it. Bringing his blanket over his head, Alex closed his eyes and willed sleep to come. Less than a week and he'd be gone for the summer. Maybe forever. |