Young blood

I watched him as he pored over the contents of his notebook, his eyebrows furrowing in mild distaste of what he had written. I knew it didn’t matter though. He would make an A. He always did. I felt a slight twinge of envy as he took his last sip of coffee and stuck his pencil behind his ear. He looked across the table at me and yawned.

“Alright Pepper,” he said “I think I’m gonna call it a night.”

I looked at the clock. It was 2:00. We had been sitting in the library since 6:00 that evening. It was the first time we had both been motivated enough to do any kind of real schoolwork, or rather, I had been motivated to do schoolwork. Casper was content to sit with me in the library the entire time and talk my ear off, so that it was almost impossible for me to get anything done. He had started his paper an hour ago and was already finished. He slung his nearly empty backpack over his shoulder.

“You coming?” he asked as he put on his headphones.

I thought about my report. It wasn’t at all what I wanted to turn in yet. I decided to stay an extra hour.

“You go. I’ll catch up with you in a little while.”

“Alright, but I’m warning you now that I’m eating the rest of your pizza and I won’t feel bad about it either.” He flashed a cheeky smile and headed to the elevator.

The cheeky smile stayed in the back of my mind as I scanned my paper for grammer mistakes. His smile always made me think he was up to something. His demeanor and posture would tell you the same. He bounced back and forth between activities and I would frequently walk in on him doing obscure things with glue and bits of paper and random objects. If anyone asked him what he was doing, he would simply ignore him or her until he was finished. Days later, some stranger would find an extrvagant and pointless bauble in front of their door with a note from Caspar entailing how “bored I was” or how “I knew you were needing one of these for months”. He would wait until they got home and then take pictures of their faces. He was a curious boy with a curious grin.

The girls loved him. They were attracted to his wiry frame and his fitted jeans. They loved his band t-shirts and how his green eyes looked in eyeliner. He loved to wear eyeliner. I remember he was beat up for it in highschool. Now he was a celebrity with his lined eyes and unnaturally dyed black hair and he knew it. He loved the attention. The stark contrast between his appearance and his attitude confused and attracted everyone. I was admittedly jealous most of the time, but I was addicted to his presence as much as anyone was. I knew the things about him that they didn’t know, and I felt a certain pride that I was the best friend, not just one of the nameless admirers.

I looked up from my stack of papers. I was somewhat glad that Caspar had left. He hadn't really stopped talking to me at all the entire day, proving very counterproductive as far as my paper was concerned. I told him to shut up more than a few times, and now he was eating my pizza.

I gave up at three o'clock and headed for the dorm.



I walked into our room with an empty and growling stomach. The light was off. The smell of pizza assailed my nostrils. I began to wish that I hadn't let Caspar eat it. There was another scent in the air however.

“Caspar?” I called out nonchalantly as I dropped my backpack

No answer. I flicked on the light and looked around. Caspar was sat hunched over on his bed, his face pale and rigid, his hands clasped together tightly. The pizza lay uneaten on the floor. He didn’t look at me when I called his name, but instead stared straightforward, tears leaking down his face. I could tell right away what was going on and why he hadn't left me alone all day.

“Shit, Caspar!”

I rushed over to him and yanked on his arms, exposing deep gashes up to his elbows. Blood streamed from them and pooled onto the carpet.

“Fuck!”

“I’m sorry” was all he said. He looked at me morosely.

“Fuck! Why do you do this?” I was already in tears. I should have seen this coming.

“I’m sorry!” He said again, louder, as if I was the one he had hurt.

Caspar hadn’t cut himself in the months since he came back from the hospital. I wasn’t expecting this. He had seemed just fine when he left the library, although I had wondered why he sat with me doing nothing for so long. I fact, he hadn’t looked unhappy at all for weeks. To talk with him, one would think he was the happiest person in the world, but then you could never really tell with Caspar. This was the other side that no one at school knew about and would never suspect. He was severly depressed but could put up such a good front that even I couldn’t tell most of the time. This made it harder for him, because I never knew when he needed me around.

I grabbed a T-Shirt from the floor and pressed it firmly to his wrists. It was my favorite shirt, but it didn't really matter. I hardly cared. I stood him up and steadied him with my other arm.

“Come on, I’m gonna take you to the hospital. Can you make it to the car?”

“No!” He jerked his arms away from me abruptly and stumbled backwards, “We don’t need to go to the hospital. Let’s just stay here. I’m fine, really. We don’t need to go.”

His voice was shaky. I could tell he was scared. He didn’t want to do the whole thing over again. I didn’t want him to either. He was my best friend. I tried to stay calm.

“I don’t know what else to do, Caspar. I mean, you already started this. You’re bleeding everywhere. What do you want to do?”

“Please, let’s just stay here. I don’t want to go. I’m OK. I really am..........”

Even as he spoke, I could tell that he wouldn’t be all right. His face and hands were overly pale and he was sweating profusley. He was crying and shaking and pleading with me and I was scared as all hell. I didn’t want him to get violent or angry with me. I tried to reason with him.

“Caspar, you cut too deep. Look, you hit something important. You need help.”

He shook his head. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to do it so hard. I got carried away. It’s fine though, really." His expression changed suddenly from frightened to resolute. "I’m not going to the hospital.”

He stood up quickly and tried to push past me, but I grabbed his arm. He panicked. What followed was a scuffle that ended with me forcibly holding him down from behind. It wasn’t hard because he was weak from loss of blood.

“STOP THIS PLEASE! Everyone is going to come in, and then what?”

He didn’t say anything. He stared at the floor, crying, breathing heavily. I listened to him trying to figure out how to go about getting him fixed up without some doctors making him go through months of rehab. He had given up trying to get away from me, but he was still shaking and sniffling. I didn't let him go.

“Alright,” I said, “We’ll stay here, but you aren’t going to leave this room until I tell you and if you do I’m going to call someone. I swear it. Now, I’ll let you go if you’ve calmed down, OK?”

He nodded. I let him go. He sat down with his back against the wall and I joined him.

“What’s going on Caspar?” I asked him, I was tring to calm him down so I could find a way to get help without him noticing. There was blood all over the room and it was soaking through the shirt. I couldn't leave him here.

He put his head on his knees. “He got out of jail.”

I understood at once. The man that had killed Caspar’s parents made probation. Ever since they were murdered when he was 14, Caspar had not been able to control himself. It ruined him.

I kept the shirt pressed to his wrists. “I wish you had just talked to me about it today.”

He sniffled. “You were busy.”

I put my arm over his shoulder. I was so scared. I had never been in a situation like this before. Then he went limp. I grabbed his face with my hands and slapped him hard. He didn’t respond.

“Fuck!” I yelled once more as I rolled him over to check his pulse. Still alive. Good.

I ran into the hallway, tears rolling down my face, yelling and screaming for someone to help me. People started peeking out from behind their doors. The RA poked her head out to yell at me for waking everyone up so early in the morning.

“Please! Call 911! My friend, he’s dying I think!” I yelled at her.

“What?!”

“JUST CALL THEM OK I DON’T HAVE TIME TO EXPLAIN!"

By this time my friend Jamille had already rushed into my room. Jamille and Caspar and I had been friends since middle school and she knew about his cutting habit. I ran back inside. She was a lifeguard so she knew a few things about first aid. She laid him down and raised his arms up in the air after using my shirt as tourniquets. There was blood everywhere. Far too much for me to stomach, I went back out. People were crowding the halls to get a look.

I sat down and cried. It was all I could do.

An hour later I was in the emergency room with Jamille as the doctor told what was going on and what would happen.

“Your friend is alright, but we will have to do a transfusion. I trust you know that he is going to be away from school for quite awhile?” He raised his eyebrows. I hated him for hinting.

I looked at the floor. I felt like it was my fault that he was going to be in rehab again. I should have been more attentive. Maybe then I would have realized what he was going to do. I shouldn't have told him to shut up. Why did he always have to bottle things up though? Why didn't he realize he could talk to me? Jamille put her hand on my shoulder.

“Thank you, Doctor Tarence.”














Caspar

I woke up to a million noises that I hadn’t heard in a while and didn't welcome. My vision was blurry, but realized it was because my contacts were sitting in the dorm on my desk. It didn’t matter. I knew where I was and I knew I wasn’t going back to the dorm for a while. I tried to sit up, but couldn’t. They had me strapped down. A cord snapped in my brain and I came back to the full reality of the situation. I had fucked myself over. Why had I done it? Why on earth had I done it? I knew only too well what the consequences would be, and now I was at the beginning of a long and laborious road that I had no intention of taking. This was a nightmare.

This was a bad idea. I looked around to see if there was any means of escape. There were IVs in my arm, a steady flow of blood that wasn’t mine. I was freezing and I had an itch on my foot. I tried to reach it, but there was no way. This was too miserable. I looked around frantically. Panic. I began to thrash around as if it could get me out. I knew it wouldn’t, but for some reason, my brain and my actions would not correspond, and it seemed like too much work to care about it. Tears obstructed my already blurry vision and I heard an animal-like cry escape my lips. It was too late now to try and be calm about this. I really should go to rehab, I thought, I must look like a psycho right now. I looked to my left. I could make out Peter, looking at me from behind glass with a tear stained face. I felt instantly sober. I didn’t deserve a friend like Peter. Look at what I kept doing to him.

The doctors came in and stuck a needle in me. Blurs turned to black. I was glad about it. I was glad for sleep.






Awake. Where were the buzzes and whirs of the hospital? I opened my eyes. It took a few moments to gain my bearings. I was in a car!

“What’s going on?” I sat bolt upright. An overwhelming bout of dizziness overcame me, forcing me to lie back down.

Peter’s voice came from the front seat, “We are running away. Don’t move”

He handed me my pair of glasses. I put them on too fast, poking myself in the eye with the earpiece.

Jamille was driving us in her 78 Chevy Matador. As my eyes adjusted to the glasses I looked out the window to see a completely unfamiliar landscape. This was insane. It had to be a joke or a dream.

I blinked a few times to shrug off themy stupor. “You guys are are joking, aren’t you? Well it isn’t funny!”

Peter turned around to look at me. His expression was so grave that I didn’t even wait for an answer before starting to shake all over. Bad idea, bad idea, Bad idea. Panic was beginning to be a routine thing for me. I yelled and started to jerk at the door handle. I punched at the window, ignoring the wave of nausea was fast winning me over.


Peter

Caspar really was in no condition to leave the hospital. He could be a very levelheaded boy sometimes, and he sure as hell knew that we were being irresponsible by kidnapping him, but I knew that he had really lost it these last few days. I wasn’t going to be responsible for his killing himself by hurling himself onto a freeway as well.

I snapped off my seatbelt and jumped in the back seat and grabbed both of his wrists, forcing them to his sides in a sort of bear-hug. I had forgotten about the cuts. He screamed loudly and held still instantly, eyes closed in a grimace.

“I’m sorry Caspar. I forgot about your arms. Please, please, please try to relax ok?”

For some odd reason the idea of kidnapping my best friend from the hospital and running away to Canada seemed like a great idea. We both hated school. It was too hard for me, and not challenging enough for him. Jamille had a warrant for stealing a car two days before, and I certainly wasn’t going to let Caspar go through rehab again. That’s not what he needed. He would have killed himself there, no doubt about it.

I was terrified but it felt completely right, and I felt no regret. My parents wouldn’t care. They didn’t see why I was going to school in the first place. Jamille and Caspar both came from the same state home, so they were on their own anyways. This was perfect. Now all I had to do was make sure Caspar kept it together, and not bet recognised of course.

I let go of his wrists. He seemed to lack any volition to fight me anymore. He was still outrageously weak. I wasn't sure if he even had the strength to stand up. I scooted back to the window and rested his head in my lap. He didn't object.

“Are you boys alright back there?” Jamille asked worriedly from the front. She wasn't able to see what was going on in the back seat, and all the noise probably alarmed her.

Caspar was looking at me with a terrified expression. He was scared out of his mind.

“Yeah, were fine.” I replied.

“Well were leaving Oklahoma now.” She said, “Welcome to Kansas.”

Caspar squeezed my hand. I stroked my other hand through his hair. He was tense all over. I tried to think of something to say to make him feel better.

“Don’t worry guy. This is a good thing. Now we can start over and you don’t have to be anywhere near home. It was a bad place for you.”

“This is dangerous.” He stammered, “If we get caught, that’s it for you. That’s it for ALL of us. This isn’t a game you know.”

I smiled. I didn’t feel like smiling, but I did. “Of course it’s a game. It’s always a game. Don’t you go fucking things up, Casper, because this is going to be a blast! Besides, you don't even have a choice in the matter. We KIDNAPPED you! Just let me take care of everything.”

It was a big lie, but it seemed to help. Caspar turned his head to the side and closed his eyes.

Jamille

We stopped at a gas station when we reached Oklahoma. I watched as Pepper helped Caspar out of the car and into the rest-stop. My adrenaline had not stopped pumping for days. This was an adventure alright. The question was, where was the next tank of gas coming from? We would have to steal. I didn’t mind. That’s why I came along in the first place. We were going to be first-class miscreants. There was no way around it. Jamille the pick-pocket. Jamille the pirate. I liked the sound.

The boys came back and I decided right there and then that we would have to switch cars. Were we going to steal one? It didn’t need to be anything swanky. In fact, I was sure that someone in the area wouldn’t mind simply outright trading cars with us.

I was in the middle of a scan of the merchandise when I realized that I still had the hots for both of those boys. I’d fucked around with Pepper plenty of times, but Caspar was a wall I needed to climb. I looked at him as he crawled back into the car. It was a scorcher of a day and the shirts had come off. He had those bandages wrapped around his wrists like two big, sexy cuffs. I felt dirty just looking at him. He was a pit of despair, an open and bleeding wound, a vulnerable, emotional and impressionable sex-machine. Everything a girl would fall for. Feelings and needs and sensitivity. I’d hit it. In fact, if I’d had my way, I would have liked to have them together. They would have done it. At least thats the impression that I got.

But I had other things to think about. I saw the boys returning from their trip out of the corner of my eye. The pump clicked. Why should I steal a car on a full tank of gas? Time to go.

Peter

I helped Caspar back into the car and sat down next to him. I was starting to feel uneasy about having taken him from the hospital so soon. It had been far too easy. All I did was walk in and get him. It wasn't as if the hospital security guards were in his room watching him, although they had caught on by the time I had gotton back through the front door. There were apparetly surveillance cameras on patients thought to be a danger to themselves. Luckily Jamille and I had planned it out a bit before we took him. She was waiting outside the door in her car and it was easy from then on out.

Still, perhaps we should have waited a day or two. I didn't even know if Caspar had recieved a full blood transfusion or not. He had barely been able to walk to the bathroom, even with my support. He was now resting his head against the window, breathing heavily as if he had over-exerted himself. Jamille started the car. I pulled a bottle of water out of my backpack and handed it to him. He took it from me and started drinking as if he had run a marathon. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at me.

"Do you think they are going to find us?" he asked, worry still printed on his face

"I hope not." I said, "We'll be arrested for kidnapping, even if you agreed to be taken, you would be deemed unsound not capable of the choice."

He turned his head away from me and looked out the window at the passing fields, his face impassive. "I would be put away for a long time."

I couldn't bear the idea of Caspar being put away. He didn't deserve it. He was different from all the psychos they put him with the last time. In my opinion, it fucked him up more than it helped him. He told me once the only reason he had stopped cutting was fear of going back. Still, I knew that he wasn’t to be trusted with himself. He wasn’t insane, in my opinion, but he also wasn’t sound. He depended on me now.

Jamille turned around. "Caspar, we are almost halfway there already. Did you know that? And why would anyone be looking for us? We were just a burden on them at home. They are probably happy to be rid of us."

Jamille wasn't really good at consoling anyone. She was a fireball, and super fun to be around, but she was rough around the edges. Too blunt. Caspar was always sensitive about being a ward of the state when we were growing up, so the thought of having been a burden probably didn't help him at all.

He didn't stop looking out the window for a long time. Not until evening. This had been a bad idea. Caspar was not the same as he was before the night in the library. He wasn't right. He hadn't hardly talked to me at all. Most of the time I would have to kick him to make him shut up. He was exuding pain and it was hurting me to see it.

After a while, it was my turn to drive. Jamille sat in the back with Caspar, who had finally ceased his stare and fallen asleep again.

"Keep an eye on him." I said, "Make sure he is breathing properly every once in a while."

She looked at me like I was an idiot for feeling the need to tell her. "I know that, Pepper. Do you think we'll make it to Nebraska tonight? Jeezus! I just realized that I'm starving!

I was hungry too, but I didn't feel safe going to a restauraunt. I was tired as well, since neither of us had really slept in two nights, but I had to stay awake for a while longer at least. I pulled a pop tart out of my bag to hand to her. I had been planning on eating it during class, but there was no more class now. We had a cooler full of food in the trunk, but I didn't want to eat it all just yet, because we had hardly any money and I didnt know how long we would have to make it last.

She snatched it from me and set it aside. I watched her as she gently pulled Caspar's sleeping body towards her and cradled his head in her arms. She checked his pulse and stroked his hair a few times. He shifted but didn't wake up. I started the car, but then stopped it again.

"Hold on." I said.

I got out and kicked off both liscense plates. No need to make it easy for the cops to find us.

I climbed back in and drove until we reached Nebraska. Then I drove until I couldn't any longer. I pulled over and parked the car in an old motel parking lot. We weren't going to check in. I figured we could just sleep in the car.



Caspar
I woke up thirsty. Extremely thirsty. It was night and dark and I had lost my glasses. I shuffled around in an attempt to find the water bottle but it was lost somewhere in the pile of junk on the floor of the car. I leaned back over and closed my eyes, trying to go back to sleep. I felt terribly cold and Jamille's body was warm. Five minutes later I decided that I had to get water and there was no way around it. I opened the car door quietly so as to not wake anyone up. I stepped out of the car and walked toward the hotel building. There had to be a vending machine somewhere. I didn't know where we were, but it was extremely cold, and I was still wearing the same thin clothes from the day before, when it had been scorching. Whoa! I stopped. Dizziness. I held still, waiting for it to subside, but it only got worse. I turned around to walk back to the car and made it about two feet before it got so bad that I fell to the ground. My already blurry vision worsened. I couldn't even see in front of me anymore. I started to panic again. I did my best to drag myself towards the car. The cold was really starting to get to me. It hit me that I was too weak to take care of myself and that i couldn't even get water without help. The thought scared me to death. I started crying again.

I don't know how long I tried by myself to get back to the car, but Jamille and Peter found me at some point. A pair of arms wrapped themselves around me and lifted me into the car. I held shamelessly and tightly to whomever it was. A torrent of hurried words left my mouth, puntuated by sniffs and sobs and pauses for breath.

"I can't (cough) see anything! Where are my .........glasses? I'm thirsty! (sniff) Where are we?" I couldn't stop coughing and the air didn't seem to fill my lungs enough.

My glasses were pushed to my face and the car light was turned on. Jamille came into focus.

"Hush! Look what you've done!"

She directed my attention the policeman that had stopped his car ten feet away. I continued to gasp for breath.

"Shit!"



Peter

The cop stayed in his car for a minute, staring at us all from the window. Caspar was still breathing heavily and his face looked extremely pale. I hoped that guy would drive on, but it would have been a miracle. We looked too suspicious and I knew it.

He said something into his radio and got out of the car. I was petrified. He walked over to my window.

"You kids got a hotel room here?"

"No sir"

"Where are your lisence plates boy?"

"I don't know sir."

"What are those then?" He pointed toward the license plates that were jutting out from underneath the front seat.

I knew this was going very very badly. I pulled out the plates and handed them to hhim. Caspar coughed laudly in the back seat, his labored breathing becoming more and more obvious. Jamille pressed the water bottle to his lips.

The officer took the plates from me. He looked into the back seat at Caspar.

"Is he tripping on something boy?"

"No sir."

"Stay here boy. Give me your license. I'm going to run your number"

"I don't have it with me. I'm sorry. My number is----------"

He walked back to his car, which in my opinion was a stupid thing to do, especially with the load of crap I told him. I turned on the car and gunned it out of the lot. It took a matter of seconds before we were on the highway and I could see flashing lights and hear sirens behind us. My legs were numb with fear. I realized quickly that we weren't going to be able to outrun a cop.

I kept my foot on the accelerator. It was the middle of the night in backwoods Nebraska.

"What are we going to do?!" I yelled at Jamille, "Should I stop the car?!"

Jamille gave no answer from the back seat. I heard her roll one of the windows down. I turned my head to see what was going on and what I saw made me nearly piss myself. Jamille was holding a revolver out the back window and aiming directly at the cop.

"FUCKING SHIT JAMILLE! PUT THAT AWAY RIGHT NOW!"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP PEPPER AND DRIVE!" She yelled.

I wasn't quite sure what happened after that. All I know is that Jamille fired the gun and the cop had stopped chasing us. I drove for a few more minutes, getting off the highway and as far into the woods as I possibly could. Then I got out of the car and threw up.

I stared at the ground, shaking and gagging. Jamilles feet came into my line of vision. I looked up at her. She looked angry and resolute.

"Pepper, they are going to be looking for us. We killed a cop. We left a whole bunch of evidence. We need to get out of here and we need to leave the car. We need to get rid of it. They will find the liscence plate numbers and match my name. We need to move now."

I was so angry with her. So scared and tired. So shocked. We were all hungry and we had an incapacitated person with us that needed to be taken care of. The situation did't seem like it could get worse.

I just stayed where I was. I couldn't think. I wanted to run away from all of this. I never regretted anything more in my life.




Caspar
I sat there trying to regain my breath as Peter got out of the car. Jamille let me go and my head slid and fell to the seat. I coughed again. I was beyond panic. All I knew was that if I did not have someone there at that second to hold on to me I would slip away. I would slip away into insanity and I needed someone. I held my hand out.

"Please please please........help."

Peter took it. I felt his hand take mine and he climbed back into the car and hugged me like I was his child. He rocked back and forth as tears streamed from his eyes and sobs escaped his throat. I think he held onto me because he needed it, because he was scared. I put my cheek to his shirt and felt dizziness take hold of me again. He screamed something at me and I barely heard it. I knew he thought I was dying. I would have told him otherwise but I was too tired. I tried to smile to make him feel better, but I was alseep before I knew it.