User blog:SodaCat/Millstone - cromulent

Note: I don't like to interrupt Millstone with author's notes, but I figured this was important. Millstone occurs in the same timeline in which Jason Griffith is killed, it's an alternate universe to all my other fanfiction works.


 * crom·u·lent
 * kɹɑmjələnt
 * adjective
 * appearing legitimate but actually being spurious

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62 days before

October 31st, 2007

Wednesday

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Not a lot different happened between then and Halloween. I mean yeah, we still hung out and went to class and ate and slept and shit, but I guess it’s not really all that noteworthy. My time with Wade took a big blow, mainly ‘cause I didn’t see him without Lainey unless we were in our dorm at night and even then he sometimes snuck her in. Not even to get laid or anything, all they did was talk or play on the arcade machine. I was gettin’ real sick of Lainey.

It came as no surprise to me when on Halloween he gave me some half-assed excuse on why he couldn’t pregame with me and the guys and why it’d be a lot better if he just went to go pick up—you guessed it—Lainey. Tired of hearing anything even remotely related to her at that point, I just shrugged it off and let him run off with his dumb cheap cologne.

That’s pretty much how I ended up alone in the boy’s dorm on Halloween of 2007. I mean, not alone, just without my best bud. It was me and the guys, even Russell had come down for the occasion. I gotta say, I was shocked when they said he was graduatin’ last year, but he said Hopkins had a hand in it, or something. I don’t know. That’s a story for another time.

We had kicked out all the geeks and nerds and losers from the dorm, which was mainly just… well, nerds. That and a couple middle schoolers, and some freshmen. After that was done we just hung out in the common room, managed to hook up the T.V. to some horror movie I don’t remember the name of and snack on some chips and beam colas. I was wearin’ a Ghostface mask I’d found last summer when they cleaned out Griffith’s dorm. Yeah, after… yeah.

Anyway, there we sat, me and the guys. I was on the floor with Davis—somehow I always ended up next to him if Wade wasn’t there—while Ethan and Trent crowded on the couch with Russell. Troy’d gotten creeped out and gone off to play on the arcade machine, even though he said he wasn’t scared. Baby.

I woulda been havin’ a nice time if it weren’t for Trent screaming every time some sort of jump scare popped up. Watching movies with that kid was like puttin’ on the Saw movies for a group of toddlers. He screamed just like a little girl.

“Trent, I’m warning you, if you don’t shut your trap I’ll shove my fist down it,” I told him after his eightieth scream. He replied with a real neat flip of the bird. Nothin’ like a real, honest friendship.

A couple minutes later, right when I could just feel Trent about to screech again (I swear, my bones whispered to me, they were all ‘c’mon Tom, brace yourself, it’s gonna happen and it’s gonna be the worse one yet man, he’s gonna scream like a little girl and he might piss himself and it’ll run down his leg onto your good shirt man, brace yourself’) the light flips on and we’re all distracted by Wade’s voice booming from behind us. At least Trent didn’t get to scream.

“Yo, yo, yo, guys,” he says, all casual and of course he’s got his arm draped over Lainey’s shoulders. And then I realize he’s wearin’ mouse ears and so is she but she’s also got a red bow on her head paired with a red dress that’s got white polka dots on it and I realize they’re fucking Mickey and Minnie Mouse. I could feel myself getting lightheaded.

“Haha, nice costume, Wade,” Russell says from the couch, and it took a little bit not to roll my eyes at that. Yeah, I was doing my best to get rid of the ‘she-stole-my-best-friend’ jealousy, but I mean come on. Couples costumes? Where was the Wade I knew?

But Wade just grinned, and Lainey beamed, and reached for the hand that wasn’t set around her shoulders. “Thanks! We thought it’d be super cute,” she chirped in her sweet little girl voice. It was like when you get some dessert at a restaurant, and it’s super sweet? Like, so sweet it kinda makes your eyes hurt a little and if you keep eating it you’ll get a headache, and honestly it just kinda makes you a little bit sick. But you keep eating it ‘cause I mean, when the hell are you gonna get dessert this sweet at home? But then you don’t enjoy it and kinda have to swear off sweets for a bit ‘cause it made you sick. Yeah?

“You look like a wimp,” Troy mumbled loud enough for her and Wade to hear. Lainey kinda looked down at her shoes like she’d just gotten kicked, and it peeved Wade off plenty.

“Piss off, Miller,” he spat.

Troy looked like he wanted to answer Wade for that one, but just as he was about to Trent hopped over the backrest of the couch and wormed his way in between Wade and Lainey, throwin’ his arm around both of them and launching into some long fit about how he loved their costumes, mainly aimed at Lainey. I couldn’t tell if he was hitting on her or just trying to keep the peace.

Wade kinda broke away from it to get a soda, and I recognized the face he had. He was still pissed at Troy for insulting him; my best bet was that he felt like a wimp too, but on some stronger level he wanted to keep Lainey happy. Even if it did mean catering to her stupid girly choices and costumes. I remember calming down at that thought; wasn’t right to be pissed at him. He was just too in love with her, that was all.

I hopped up and made my way to him, grabbing a beam cola for myself. “Hey dude, you good?”

He gave me a tight smile. “I’m okay,” he answered. He was trying. He was trying to be in a better mood. Maybe it was for me or maybe it was for Lainey, but it meant a lot.

“You gonna be good headin’ out with your girl? You know how these things get on Halloween…” I pointed out to him, rubbin’ the back of my neck. This was dangerous territory now. Wade didn’t like having his decisions questioned, not even by me. Even the most nonchalant approach could set him off, and the last thing I wanted was him stompin’ off in the other direction.

But he just nodded, turned so he was watching Trent talk Lainey’s ear off. “Yeah. She says she’s cool with it. I mean, it’d be cool if we could just not get in any fights…” he said, trailing off. I think he caught wind of the look I was giving him, ‘cause Wade not gettin’ into fights was crazier than a hen with a full set of teeth. “At least until I drop her off back at her house when her curfew hits.”

Alright, that made sense. I nodded, and after a bit of prodding, we got Russell to start leading us all out.

We wouldn’t be going far, just around campus. That was where the fun was, anyway. I mean, there was more stuff going on around town; the greaseballs and dropouts and Griffith’s kids would be partying it up in Coventry, and the Preps probably had some sort of classy ‘get-together’ either in their frat house or in Old Bullworth Vale. But our real interest was on campus.

It was all to us, basically. Even if the Preps were on campus, they wouldn’t be leaving their frat house. The greasers and punks were out, that only left us, the jocks, the nerdlings, and the other losers. But the jocks always partied on the football field—one of ‘em had a birthday or something—and the rest of them were no threat to us. Hell, they were the entertainment.

Halloween’s usually a blur to me, and this time was no exception. I don’t even remember how, but I had an egg carton shoved into my hands within seconds of leaving the dorm, a carton that ended up smashed entirely upside Melvin O’Connor’s back. And as he ran off wailing about his costume, I reached out to high-five Wade only to realize he was five feet away from me.

He was walkin’ with Lainey, holding her hand and pointing at something in the opposite direction of us, but she was looking over his shoulder straight at me with wide eyes. Scared. Something told me Wade hadn’t prepared her for how our Halloweens usually went down.

Even though it pissed me off a little bit, I decided to cool it with the pranks and fighting, mainly for Wade’s sake. I’ll say it again, it ain’t right for your best friend to screw up the only decent relationship you’ve ever had in your life. I wasn’t gonna do that to Wade.

But it wasn’t enough. I could calm myself down, sure, but that still left five other guys to run around wild. Russell was handing out wedgies as if they were blessings and he was the Pope, and the rest of them were going wild with some firecrackers Davis had found while he himself messed around with the slingshot he’d found last spring after Hopkins took his.

We’d gotten around to the library and by that point, it looked like Wade was trying to calm down Lainey who looked like she’d seen a ghost. We kept on past a Volcano 4000 that nobody was standing around—everybody knew better than to get near those things—when suddenly Wade went down.

“You deserve it, bully!” A voice to the tune of Donald fuckin’ Anderson screamed out from behind us. He was holdin’ one of ‘em fancy potato guns the nerds had built. He’d hit Wade with a fucking potato.

To say it was a mistake would be a terrible understatement. He was alone, for starters, and he picked the one of us with the worst temper to hit.

Wade was making an effort not to fight or anything for Lainey, but I swear, when I saw his eyes as he stood from that potatoing, they were red. “I’LL BREAK EVERY BONE IN YOUR SCRAWNY LITTLE BODY, CHUMP!” he roared and launched himself at the nerd.

Anderson went down instantly, and Wade went with him. All I could see was a blur of fists pounding down on the kid, and then sneakers hitting pavement while the other guys ran up to help Wade beat up this 92-pound kid. I glanced at Lainey, but I figured I’d rather be the guy who helped out when his best friend got hit than the guy who hung back to shrug at his best friend’s girl.

“When I’m done with you, your jaw is gonna be wired shut! And you’ll be eating through a straw!” Wade screamed at the kid, all of us punching and kicking and snarling and glaring. There wasn’t a lot of room, and I touched the kid maybe twice. We backed up once he was done fightin’ back and just left him there, on the concrete, crying for his ma.

The guys head off, high fiving and laughing, but I hung back a little bit. Lainey wasn’t standing where she had been; she was trailing off in a speedwalk with Wade just barely managing to catch up to her. He grabbed her arm but she tore it from him and they broke out into a heated discussion I couldn’t hear.

My ma taught me to pick the times I wanna listen in and I knew this wasn’t one of ‘em. So I walked along with the guys, trying to keep my eyes off Wade and his girl.

It was a good plan for a couple paces, and then I felt a hand grab my arm and suddenly I was being pulled back into the shadows.

“Man, what the hell?” I asked Wade. But then I quit it, ‘cause he looked spooked. “Are you okay? What happened?”

He just shrugged, blue eyes wide and scared and running wild, reminding me of fish when you try and catch ‘em with a net from their bowl. “I think me and Lainey just broke up…” he whispered.

And so it begins.