“Today I woke up feeling dead. Tomorrow I expect more of the same,” the girl said in a flat monotone. Perspiration trailed across her wan skin.

“Gee, Casey, you sure know how to cheer someone up,” said her companion. Casey spared him a glance, and then resumed staring at the cracks in the concrete. Her companion sighed. “No matter how much you stare, you’re not going to make the building explode.”

“I’m not trying to blow up the building. I’m trying to keep from applying my head to it vigorously and repeatedly.”

“Rough first class?”

“You bet.”

Michael – for that was his name – sighed again and took out a cigarette. He then fumbled one-handed with his lighter for a good few minutes, until Casey gave him a glare.

“If I get caught sitting next to you, I’m going to get in trouble for your smoking,” she pointed out acidly. Michael gave her an innocent look.

“So? I’m a sociopath, remember? I can’t empathize with your woes.” He lit up.

“Ah. You got an upgrade from pyromaniac.”

“They still don’t know what’s wrong with you. You’re a woman of many mysteries, Casey, a woman of many mysteries.”

“Shut the hell up, you cockfuck.”

“Did I call you a woman? My bad. I forgot that you prefer ‘soulless husk’.”

Casey merely smirked, and scuffed the heel of her clunky, knee-high boot.

“Recess is over!” called a faint and distant voice. Casey and Michael stayed exactly where they were. The voice came nearer and nearer.

“Hey! You two! By the wall! It’s time to come inside!” hollered the now-breathless teacher, glaring at the two of them. Michael had dropped the still-burning cigarette into his pocket, and, pretending to wipe dirt off of his trousers, crushed it against his thigh to put it out. Casey smiled brightly at the teacher, whose equally bright purple nametag was illegible.

“We’re so sorry! We got lost in thought discussing the Divine Comedy. Perhaps you could call us louder next time?” she said, knowing perfectly well that she was holding things up.

She was delighted at the quick blink of embarrassment that flitted across the teacher’s eyes. He didn’t know who Dante was. Hurrah. Another one to put on the list.

“I’ve heard about you two,” he said warningly. “Please just come inside, now.”

“Certainly,” Michael said. “It’s terrible out here. Far too hot. Only wish you’d let us inside sooner.”

They trailed slowly behind the nameless teacher as they walked back to the doors. Casey gave Michael another glare. “I thought I told you to stop putting your cigarettes out that way,” she hissed quietly.

“What?” Michael said loudly, gazing serenely at the now-listening teacher as he passed the threshold. Casey gritted her teeth.

“I didn’t say anything.” she lied, following after.

“It’s quite ironic that we have Art together,” Michael said in his usual pleasant tone. “They put us in as many separate classes as they could manage, but they neglected to account for the one in which the most potential hazard could take place.”

Casey looked up from her charcoal portrait of a man in the process of being shot for the umpteenth time through the head. She was thinking of making a sculpture of just the head, actually, since it looked quite menacing. She shook her head. “Shop would be worse. Power drills.”

“They don’t let sophomores take shop,” he reminded her. “Mmm. Power drills. So interesting to contemplate.”

“You can’t do a skull being punctured by a drill,” she said, scowling at him. “I’m already doing a perforated head; it would have the air of plagiarism.”

“But you’re so ... artistic,” Michael said, deliberately stressing the pause. “And I plagiarize anyway, off of the little green people living in my brain.”

“That’s not plagiarism, that’s outside help.”

“Inside help.”

“Shut up, cockfuck.”

“Is that your new favorite word?”

“Maybe.”

“I met a homophobe the other day.”

Casey raised an eyebrow, keeping her eyes on her charcoal. “How amusing.”

Michael grinned, knowing that, even if Casey wasn’t watching, she would hear the grin in his voice. It had its own special tonal qualities; namely, smugness of a level most people never dreamed of reaching. “It was richly amusing. He told me he hated gay people. I said, that’s funny, I hate everything except gay people.”

“True,” Casey said, smirking to herself. “You hold a special place in your heart for complete faggots.” The girl sitting across from them choked and looked at them in open shock. They both ignored her.

“You only use that word because it makes me wince,” he accused.

“No,” she said patiently. “I use it because I’m an asshole.”

“One would think you would have more aesthetic sensibility than to resort to common vulgarities. I suspect you’re simply losing your touch,” Michael sneered, picking up someone else’s clay sculpture from a previous class and vigorously poking holes in it with a 9B pencil.

“I thought I told you to shut up?” she asked, feigning a vague forgetfulness.

“Fine, fine. I see you’re in no mood for intelligence or fine company. I’ll leave you to your companions.” He paused. “Namely, your stupidity and your PMS.”

Casey made a jab at him with the business end of her charcoal, but, laughing, he had already started to walk away. It was a pity she’d missed. He was wearing a pristine white shirt.

During the last period of the day, both Casey and Michael slumped tiredly over their desks. They had math together; they sat next to each other in the back of the room. Theoretically, the class was arranged in alphabetical order. Neither of them bothered to adhere to that particular rule, and freely ignored the teacher’s dwindling attempts to enforce it.

They were supposed to be working in groups of three. They were not.

“My head hurts like a jesusfuck,” Casey said bitterly.

“I don’t understand this concept of other people having feelings, but my head hurts, too,” Michael said. His normally chirpy voice was deflated. “Maybe we shouldn’t have drunk so much last night.”

“You two got smashed on a school night?” squealed the girl sitting across from them. Her name was Katie. She was blonde, and covered in pink, and not especially bright. She also liked to listen in on their conversations. She wanted to be a witch when she grew up and meet a real live fairy. Frankly, she made Casey nauseous.

“Yes,” Michael answered. “The lady and I drank a surfeit of wine and ate grapes of Eden, and made sweet, tender, love to each other in the dewy fields beneath the misty eyes of a glistening full moon.”

“No,” Casey said when he was finished. “We did not. Get back to work, Katie.”

“Wait! Wait, so, you two had sex?”

“That? That was a lie,” Michael said bluntly. “I lied about that.”

“We only have sex with animals,” Casey explained sweetly. “It’s our religion.”

“Oh – oh my goddess, that is disgusting,” Katie blurted, looking truly nauseated.

“I thought you believed in religious freedom,” Michael said accusingly, putting on his most convincing hurt face and allowing his eyes to water threateningly.

Katie blanched and looked stricken. Her mouth opened and closed several times, but no sound came out. Casey smiled. It was a very smug smile. “Oh, and, by the way,” she said, “I was lying about that. That bit just now? A lie.”

“Mister Gorman! Miss Thresher! Care to explain just why you’re neglecting your work?” the teacher bellowed.

“Why, but we’ve finished,” Casey said charmingly, doing her best not to wince at the loud noise. Scowling at them, their teacher snatched their worksheets and took them back to her desk to grade them.

“Caffeine withdrawal is a bitch,” Michael muttered.

“No shit, Sherlock,” Casey whispered back. “No fucking shit.”

“I hate everything,” Michael said hollowly. Casey was not there to hear him, but he continued to complain nonetheless, to the large two liter bottle of caffeinated soda he was currently drinking from. Casey had gone out to the garage to get more; they had been stockpiling for this for quite some time.

“It’s all so empty. So cold and useless and soulless. I hate it. Solipsism is not an especially comforting philosophy, but nihilism just depresses me... I think I ought to make some sort of offshoot of solipsism: You can only ever be sure that you and one other person truly exist.”

“I believe they call that ‘love’ in modern parlance,” Casey said curtly, clambering into the treehouse. “Or ‘hate’. They really ought to make up their minds as to which.”

Michael blinked drowsily at her and took a swig from his bottle, grimacing in distaste. “Anything for you yet?” he asked half-heartedly.

“No,” she said, voice flat. “Nothing. Just general disorientation.”

“Well, they say you only get hallucinations after three or four days,” he reminded her. “To expect more at this point is just plain silly.”

“Have you been drinking enough water?”

“Yes.”

“Eating?”

“Of course not, you silly bitch.”

“Shut the hell up, wanker.”

“Have you?”

“Have I what?”

“Been eating?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. As if I would.”

“Well, there you are, then.”

They both paused, leaning back into their beanbags, looking at the flickering light through the leaves. It was cool here, in the shade; things were almost, if not perfectly, beautiful.

“It grazes the edge,” Casey said softly. “This reality.”

“Ours?”

“When you live in an intersection, there’s no way to tell which plane is the tilted one and which is the one at zero degrees. You just have to pick one.”

“This or that reality. Well, there’s more than two,” Michael said dismissively. “There’s one for every mad old hobo who lives somewhere else in his mind.”

“Ah, but theirs are solitary. You and I have the odd benefit of living on the same, albeit skewed, wavelength,” Casey said. They had discussed this before. They were only rehashing things, trying to make a unified statement about something they couldn’t really put into words. She began to unbuckle her boots. Michael blinked.

“How are the blisters?” he asked, voice warm with his usual false empathy. Casey raised an eyebrow at him.

“Bleeding,” she said with a grin, peeling off her bloody sock and tossing it at him. “Hurts like a bitch to walk. Got to wear socks; don’t want to soil the inside of the boots. They’d be a bitch to clean.”

Michael wrinkled his nose in distaste, and picked the sock off of his leg with his thumb and forefinger, depositing it gingerly on the wooden slats of the floor. It was a delicate operation, as he was trying not to get any fluid on himself. “Why the hell do you wear those boots?”

Casey narrowed her eyes at him. “Because beauty is pain. I am naturally attractive; I have to be miserable in some way, or I’m not playing fair.”

“Whose rule is that?” Michael asked, sipping at his soda and picking a book off the top of their heap of reading. It was a text on the daily regimen of a Zen monk in training, and looked interesting. He opened it and began to read. That was one of the irritating things about him; he could multitask.

“Society’s rule. Obviously. All of the other girls suffer to look like the form which society has declared ideal. I was born looking like that ideal. If I am to avoid resentment and hatred from all, I, too, must suffer in some way,” Casey explained.

“Aw, so you do care about society’s opinion,” Michael cooed, grinning at her. She shrugged eloquently.

“If society is going to hate me, I would rather it be due to my own, deliberate actions than my birth condition. I like to earn my bad reputation.”

Michael nodded, acknowledging the wisdom of that point of view, or just pretending he hadn’t heard her. She flipped him off, not caring whether or not he saw it, and picked up a book for herself. This was how they bonded; shared silence, shared concentration. Shared, cultivated isolation.