ArchivedLogs:Stop Being a Kid

Stop Being a Kid
Dramatis Personae Jim, Shelby
In Absentia	2013-04-10 '
Location <NYC> 214 {Jim} - Sunrise Apartments - Clinton
Jim's apartment is not big, the living room area L-shaped with the entrance at one end and a kitchenette found at the other. Furnished by a scuffed wooden curb-found coffee table, a saggy green couch upholstered in a scratchy burlap material and two chairs, the habitat manages to just barely function as a one bedroom rather than a studio by merit of a walk-in closet sized bedroom you would have to cross through to reach his cramped bathroom. In here, water damage stains the walls. As does rust, around the showerhead in the cramped shower stall. KnockknockknockBAMBAMBAMBAM! Shelby has evolved from door-kicking to door-knocking, hurrah! Or...maybe not, because Jesus fuck, that's loud. Peep through the peephole and one is treated to the sight of a red-faced ginger, freckles standing out in blotchy relief on a face that is set in unhappy lines. Unhappy cross or unhappy miserable? Definitely veering more towards the cross. "ArgaaarghaargharrghaARGH!" This is like Jim's version of 'coming coming coming!' to the explosive knocking on the door, and he forgets to unlock his own doorchain after undoing the twenty hundred other locks, so that he YANKS it open about two inches and then it STOPs. "Just a sec," he growls, then slams the door in Shelby's face. There's a rattling sound, and then he tries this again, "Christ, I'ma put your arm /back/ in a sling." He steps aside while saying it. To let her come INSIDE while he berates her. Hmph. Shelby gives him a narrow look, unimpressed with the level of invective being thrown her way. "Like to see you /try/," she sniffs as she eels by. She must've come right from the school, her backpack is still slung over her shoulder and she's wearing clothes appropriate to the dress code--holey jeans, a too-short sundress turned tunic shirt and a hoodie. "I got some weed, you wanna smoke up?" "Uuuuuh," this sounds like a sarcastic retort that can only end in 'hell-no?' "Why not." He has a cigarette clamped in the side of his mouth /while/ saying this, and lets the door swing shut with a loose flourish, relocking with lethargic flicks of his wrist. The interior of the apartment is a mess of glossy photographs, many in black and white, closeups of an anthill, a strange cut-off perspective of a busker in tie-dye from behind a subway pillar, the long deep subway tunnel swallowing up the background with black. Buds of a tree starting to bloom against the backdrop of an overflowing dumpster in the rain. Jim begins scooping it together into a less chaotic pile, "You got papers for rolling? I don't got papers." "I got it /all/," Shelby assures him, slinging the backpack down to her hand to haul it couchwards. As she settles, she's already craning her neck to get a look at the pictures on the top of the pile. The 'pack ends in her lap and the zipper complains as it's yanked open. "I don't think you ever showed me any of your pictures, dude. Those're pretty sweet. Or they'd be pretty sweet if they were in color, black and white's for like...stuck up posers. Maybe you didn't know that 'cause you're old, but it's true," she says as she pulls out a plastic pencil case. It's decorated in sparkly hearts and shooting stars! It's also packed full of papers, a rolled baggie of shredded green, even a small brass pipe. Jim eyeballs Shelby's pencilcase like he might be thinking about stealing it. "Good thing I ain't takin' them for other people, huh?" he GRUFFS back, tapping the photographs on the coffee table to align them in a unified edge and tucks them into a leather satchel (call it what it is: a MAN PURSE) that he tosses negligently off the side of the couch to lose it in the crack between arm rest and wall. "You load it up. I got a frozen lasagna." Because he knows damn well he's going to be hungry later. He heads for the kitchen, "So what the fuck." "Hey, I was looking at those," the art critic complains. But Shelby has other priorities, like doing as she's told because...yeah. Blazin'. The pipe is set aside for now, with the teen opting instead to roll up a big ol' doobie. She keeps her head down and her eyes focused on the task. "Shane'n'Bastian didn't make it back to school today. Yesterday was the last day of B's suspension." "God dammit," Jim is either saying this in response to Shelby, /or/ because he'd been trying to poke holes in the top of the pre-packaged lasagna and accidentally carved a slit through it. Will this screw it up? Is dinner RUINED? Does Jim /care/? No. No, he decides, he does not. In the microwave it goes. "So now what." Shelby sets the finished product down on the lid of her smokebox and tilts to the side to fish in her rear pocket. A lighter is produced. "I dunno." She sounds aggrieved at that. The chick with all the answers, answerless! "Like...I dunno. I mean, I get running. I'm the fucking /champ/. But...they got it so /good/ here. I had all these stupid ideas, how it was gonna work out and..." The lighter snaps into life, paper and leaf matter crackles, and complaining is put on hold while she holds some direly needed smoke in her lungs. "Well, don't write anything off," Jim utters, somewhat by default. He's a year shy of forty, he gets to tap into a slightly longer concept of eventuality. However, as little as a god damn tree cares about time, it also has a rough bark for a reason: "But maybe you could come up with some stupid ideas that /don't/ need their asses in it." Just like HIS ass goes into the COUCH, dropping down heavily while scratching at a shoulder. He's getting progressively more planty, green mossy fuzz crept along his jaw, a leaf or two untwisting around his ears and knuckles, where the flaky skin is darkening. If he's smoking up, there's no point in focusing on looking like People. He reaches out for the joint /proprietarily/, mashing out his cigarette in the ashtray on the coffee table, "What's up with school?" About the time Jim plunks himself down, Shelby is letting out a nigh-invisible ripple of smoke. She passes the joint over without complaint, taking the moment to resettle herself on the couch with legs tucked up and under herself and her shoulder pressed cozy against Jim-shoulder. Trees. They are the best for leaning. "I guess," she says, clearly unconvinced. "I only went to school 'cause /they/ were there. I think I'm already flunking out. Fucking sucks." Brood brood brood. Then, out of nowhere, she asks, "Will you teach me how to shoot?" "Yeah." Jim is solid as would be predictable, and even with only limited branches still can generate, in a scowling squint that is only looking darkly across the room, some modicum of shelter. He pulls a long professional drag from the joint, filling up his lungs - for about thirty seconds, there is only silence in the room, while he hands back the roach. Then he exhales, elaborating raspier, "Guess I could do that." He sniffs, rocking back his head on the couch, "Aghgh, /look/, kid. Followin' friends places t' be around them is one thing. But leaving just 'cause someone else does just makes you fuckin' follower." Before this gets a chance to even get said, he's relaying a sentiment proooobably not all that common from adults: "I'm not even sayin' you should stay at the school. But if you're gonna scat, don't do it just 'cause your teen boyfriend did it first. Or you're gonna feel real stupid in ten years." Cough. He kind of fucked up his exhale. What, no arguments? Shelby shoots him a look that borders on suspicion. No, wait. It tromps across the border, pees on it and then proceeds to /litter/. "Seriously?" But before he can reconsider, she soldiers on. "Okay. Maybe this weekend, huh? That'd be cool." Having resecured the joint for herself, she drops her head back against the couch and does the thing that they are doing. Suck in, hold, sloooowly breathe out. She does not fuck up /her/ exhale. "...didn't say I'm quitting. Said I'm /flunking/, asshole. And don't call me kid." "Then stop /being/ a kid." Ooo, Jim goes for the low blow, reclaiming his half of their joint custody (har har) for a visit. By the time he's unleashing a slow disintegrating cloud of smoke, he's down to the srs bsnss half of the agreement, "Yeah, seriously. I /see/ the people you hang with, the chances of your crazy ginger ass ending up in a place where you might needa know's not zero. But I'm serious - you do /every/ fucking thing I tell you. Cause I'm not gonna show you how to shoot so much as show you how to not accidentally shoot the top of someone's /head off/. Hell, sure, weekend. If you can bring me proof you improved one of your damn grades, I'll even take you out country and we can try a few /rifles/." Shelby balls her hand up in a fist and socks him in the arm but good--only to immediately regret it, because, "Fucking /ow/." That hand is shaken out after, the knuckles sucked on and Jim given the dirtiest look in her arsenal. "I hang out with /you/ or maybe you didn't notice," she points out, "but /fine/." Though how she intends to raise a grade by this weekend when she's here and not at school, and smoking up rather than studying... Not that it keeps Shelby for taking the joint back to make some serious inroads on its length. First things first...and maybe if she gets him high enough, he'll whip those pictures out again. She means to try, anyway.