Faster We Burn

my patterns, but I knew hers, too.
    “Don’t even try it, bitch.”
    I shoved her away from me and stormed out. I needed a smoke.
     
    ***
     
    When I came back, Ric was passed out. Well, at least she wasn’t talking. Bad news was that I’d have to let her sleep it off. She lived in a seriously sleazy part of town, and I wasn’t going to dump her back at her place in this bad of shape. It was a wonder nothing had happened to her yet.
    I covered her up and made sure she wouldn’t suffocate on the pillows. I also left a bucket, just in case, and went to my room, taking my banjo. I had different instruments for different moods and this felt like a banjo time.
    I warmed up with a few chords and then played some bluegrass. When it came to music, I tended to like things that were a little offbeat, or at least had some interesting and complicated instrumentation. Trish used to say that bluegrass was for losers, but that was because she couldn’t play an instrument if her life depended on it. I’d tried to teach her a ton of times, but she just didn’t grasp the concept. She had a great voice, though, but she wouldn’t sing if anyone ever asked her. She’d only do it if she felt like it, which was usually only when she was alone. My theory was that she was afraid she sucked and she enjoyed singing so much that it would ruin it for her forever. And of course, me telling her she didn’t suck had no impact.
    I missed Katie.
    Pulling out my phone, I scrolled through the pictures I’d taken of her. Now, if I could only get those blown up, I could wallpaper my room with them.
    She’d kill me, but at least I’d get to have her around me.
    I thought about calling just to check in on her, but I couldn’t be that guy. Reading between the lines, Zack had been a possessive and controlling, always calling and checking on her and wanting to know where she was at all times. Anything I could do to show her I wasn’t him was a good thing, so I settled for playing my banjo and thinking about her and hoping Ric would remember what I said tomorrow and leave us the hell alone.
     
    ***
     
    Ric was gone when I got up the next morning, and from a quick look outside, so was her car. Damn. I just hoped she’d been sober enough to get home without having a fender bender. She didn’t leave a note or anything, and her calls went straight to voicemail when I tried to check up on her. I was just putting on a new shirt so I could go to her place and make sure she was ok when someone banged on my door.
    “Stryker! I swear to God, you never answer your fucking phone!” Trish.
    I yanked the door open.
    “What? You came to yell at me some more?” Then I saw that she’d been crying. Trish never cried. It was a bit like seeing the moon rise in the morning instead of the sun.
    “Ric was in an accident early this morning. She…um, she didn’t survive.”
     
    Katie
     
    It was going to take more than a week to catch up on just the reading that I’d missed while I was gone, but my brain wouldn’t focus. Things like school seemed so pointless. I mean, what was it for? I didn’t even have a major, didn’t have any idea what I wanted to study or do with my life. I thought that once I got to college, I’d have some sort of epiphany, like in a movie, and it would all be clear what my true calling was. Yeah, I was still waiting for that call. It had me on hold and the music sucked.
    Once my eyes started to swim, Lottie and I called it a night.
    “Can you believe Trish’s real name?” Lottie said as we both lay in our beds with the lights off. I didn’t think either of us felt like sleeping.
    “I can’t believe that was what she was so pissed about. I mean, really? Trish doesn’t seem like the type to get that royally ticked over something like that.”
    “I don’t know, did you see how she got when Nicholas Sparks was brought up? I thought she was going to strangle us all.”
    “True.” Still, there was something nagging me about the way Trish had been treating Stryker.
    “Crazy, she gets,” Lottie said.
    “Amen.”
    We said goodnight, but I knew I wasn’t going to sleep. Most nights I spent in thinking about anything I could to get myself to be tired. I’d started reading when I was home to try to bore myself to sleep, but I’d ended up staying up all night and kind of liking the books. My parents didn’t have many in the house, but my dad had a small collection of classics. I’d had to read them in high school and