[side note this is an awful chapter n I'm soRRY]

He'd fallen asleep with his arms wrapped around me again. The murky colored cast around his wrist had been removed, but an ace bandage was still coiled around it because Ryan had told him it would still be really sore for a while. I didn't get what an ace bandage would exactly do to help, but he was the one that was going to be a doctor so it was better not to question it unless you wanted to be bombarded with an hour long lecture complete with PowerPoints and diagrams. I couldn't go through that a third time.

He smelled like freshly cut grass and pencil shavings. Like the beach, or maybe even literal autumn. Watermelon candies too, the scent that wafted throughout his dorm room the first time I'd met him, standing at his counter and eating cereal while wearing a decently clean white tank top paired with ripped black jeans. It seemed like yesterday when he'd hung on my chest and smiled bigger than I'd ever seen him smile. Yet the intoxicating whiff of alcohol continuously ruined the memory.

"Have you ever wanted to do something so totally insane you know you'll get busted but it would be so worth it?" Brendon sniffed and pushed off my chest, rolling off the couch and standing at his window. The sky was clear, exception of a couple clouds, yet the ground was still drenched with rainwater and overflowing with a burst pipe from the fountain in the middle of the yard.

"I want to do something so great, it'll never be forgotten." He concluded, staring at me then over to everyone else in the kitchen. They'd been trying to construct a paper mâché brain for Ryan's anatomy project. It wasn't going as well as anyone expected.

Pete pulled a strip of gooey newspaper from his hair and slapped it on the front lobe, trying to smooth out the air bubbles left behind. "Well what do you wanna do? Pranks seem like they'd be our specialty."

"I don't know," Brendon muttered and placed a hand on the smudged glass "I don't know."

He stared out the window while Patrick frantically tried to hold up the right side of the newspaper brain as it collapsed in on itself with no structure to hold it up. The next 30 seconds were filled with screaming and the pain of loss of a full hours worth of time dedicated to building a brain with no structure. I felt bad for laughing.

"It's like a metaphor for my life." Pete whimpered sadly and tried to squish the goopy newsprint back in a distinctive form with no success.

"Everything's a metaphor for your life," Ryan giggled happily, despite the possibly failed grade seeping across Brendon's table and dripping through the cracks in the surface and on to the floor "you point to the garbage truck daily and say it's a metaphor for your life."

"You're a metaphor." Pete shot back with the stupid grin he reserved especially for stupid jokes.

"What happens if you fail this project?" I asked Ryan out of the blue, who went silent. When I looked over, he had the mush hanging off the edges of his hands and his lips pursed together in thought while Pete and Patrick both tried to reconstruct the paper mâché brain for hopefully the final time. The shitty frame they did create didn't seem like it would be able to endure much more.

"I get disowned by my brain surgeon dad and emergency responder mom." He said blatantly with a slight smile that must've meant he was joking. Well I hoped he was kidding. If he wasn't I don't think we had room in my semi apartment for another, because I know for a fact Brendon wouldn't want to give up half of his living space, and Patrick's other roommates would refuse. He already had one more person living in his dorm room than usual. I would've said he hated Joe and Andy with a burning passion if he didn't speak so highly of them. Pete laughed and so did Patrick and then Ryan, so I followed along and smiled with them.

"I want to release cats on campus." Brendon announced, spinning on his heels away from the window to face us. Pesto purred loudly in approval from his little box home; I'd almost forgotten about him. He was always so quiet it was like he wasn't even there sometimes.

Ryan clasped his hands together and grinned wildly. "That sounds like fun!" Pete and Patrick agreed, finally giving up on Ryan's project and tossing the last strips of newspaper on the top where they sunk into the gluey mixture, never to be seen again.

It reminded me of a paper mâché vinegar and baking soda volcano I attempted to create in the 7th grade; long story short, the only thing that made it look like a volcano was the paper and glue pulpy mush spewing out of the top and some shitty repaired holes in the sides. It wasn't supposed to do that apparently, and I didn't think the F was supposed to lower my grade as drastically as it did. 'How did you mess up that badly?' My friend asked when I took it home, and I told them it was for the experience because I couldn't think of anything else to say. But I guess it was, because I learned I should never do paper mâché again for the rest of my life.

I shuddered just thinking about the disaster. One of the worst days ever, yet somehow one of the memories I was constantly reminded of the most. As Pete would say, it was a metaphor for my life.

"Where are we going to get an abundance of cats?" Patrick squinted suspiciously at Brendon, then at Pete who's eyes had lit up like the city at night.

"Tyler! Tyler Joseph still works at that pet store we went to where he got Pesto!" Pete said with an overjoyed smile, and was joined by Ryan who also grinned excitedly.

Patrick rolled his eyes. "And we're just supposed to buy a couple dozen cats, smuggle them on campus, and set them free without getting caught?"

Pete nodded once with a straight face that meant he was dead serious.

"We should save it for after winter break," Ryan suggested, emphasizing the after "because if we do it now they're gonna know it's us since we've been the ones making all the noise lately."

Pete shrugged and started counting down the days until then on his hands.

[im losing track of when everything is so I'm just sayin this is late December I'm soRRY]

"Well we're either going to get kicked off of campus for Christmas break, or staying the full couple weeks at Seacoast, so 3 weeks and maybe a week after that, so... Soon." He concluded with a sly smile and the unexpectedly loud crack of his knuckles against the table. Ryan stared at Pete with a face of regret and everyone laughed, except for Pete who started sweating furiously under Ryan's glare.

Brendon splayed out across the couch again, his head resting on my legs like it had been at the jacuzzi when I'd started to get to know him for the first time. He closed his eyes and grinned contently, wiggling his nose like a rabbit.

"Clear your schedule, Dal Pal. It'll be one hell of a way to go out."

[1304 words, 9/8/16, I'm running out of ideas of what to write down here ha also writing these things low key weird me out sometimes like wow these are actual people but I power through because I feel obliged to finish this story now :')]