So Kenny isn't, in fact, an alcoholic beater like I thought he would be when my mind was clouded by paranoia and the shock of amnesia. Rather, he's one of the sweetest people I've ever met, especially for an age where one just escapes college and is enduring an existential crisis with a dash of financial instability that commands them to be as hectic as is humanly possible and scare everyone who drops by the house to deliver milk like it's the sixties while they're actually just interested in why the hell there is a hermit still living in a house that they thought would be deserted from the resident's bankruptcy, and it's a true blessing from the atheistic heavens intended to serve metaphors that I'm able to live with him.

I've been living with him for around five and a half weeks now, which I suppose is rounded to the lesser end of a new month called November, and I'm confident in saying that it's been quite the treat. Kenny is always out and about, either cooking classic mac and cheese like a suburban mom or acting as if he wasn't the one who found my mutilated body out on the street or wherever the hell I was, as if he wasn't scarred by a treacherous sight such as that one, and we've been having a great time, more so than my days in Bordeaux with my family who has no clue (that I know of) of my attempt on the life whom they said would explore many psychological breakthroughs but hasn't yet because I don't want it to, as in I don't want to live, or instead that I didn't want to live, but now I'm okay, and Kenny is helping me through the ups and downs of having my entire fucking existence swiped from me without so much as a warning, not even a brief warning, so that's going pretty well on both ends. I feel like we're improving in our relationship with each other, like I can tell Kenny anything from my limited knowledge of who I am, and he can tell me things about life and identity and everything else I've missed out on and have forgotten from my amnesia.

I've started to grow towards him, and I've grown on him like a fungus or some shit like that, but he actually likes me, contrarily unlike a fungus. We're smiling often, something I can predict that the old Dallon Weekes never enjoyed as much as I'm enjoying it now, and my jaw has begun to hurt, though it's not like I give a single fuck about it, because it just feels so fucking wonderful to be happy and not bordering on the trap of suicide attempts and pills.

In addition to a few points of my identity, Kenny has reminded me that my murder weapon wasn't just pills. I claimed they were placebo pills for the long time apparently, and then I went to the pharmacy to purchase pills that weren't as placebo as before, that weren't as harmless as my friends had suspected, that were permanent and just right for my suicidal craving. That sounds completely and utterly horrible, and it's obvious that I won't be engaging in such illicit and unwarranted activities like those ever again, not after I hurt the person whose name I don't even know anymore. There has to be someone, right? I must have been loved by someone so deeply that not even the ocean could compare, because there's this fucking hollow sensation in my bones that doesn't arise merely out of a failure. No, it's from the loss of my lover being telepathically transmitted to me to make sure that I'm sufficiently guilty for what I did to him.

If I could see him, I would tell him that I am so, so sorry for what I did to this poor soul of a man, but I can't see him, because I don't know where is, and I don't even know who he is, and I'm just so fucking hopeless in knowing where to start with pulling apart this mystery and extracting the useful strands that will lead me to my dream boy who probably hates me by now for all this shit I put him through, because if I do not know where he is, then he does not know where I am, and that must be heartbreaking to him, as I am sliding away off the hook if I really want to be, while he is being forced to stick with searching for the tattered remains of the man he used to love and most likely still does, because anyone that doesn't love me is going to leave me just like the rest before their time.

All I have is Kenny, and I am absolutely fine with that. I love it, actually, with all the freedom this living situation presents to me, and now Kenny is concerned that it's a bit too much freedom. I've become a couch potato, as Kenny so eloquently describes it, and now he's positioned me upon the distastefully salmon colored couch to discuss why I've been so lazy as of late, and I'm not liking it one bit.

"You need to go to school."

The air is robbed of all sound except for me reclining in my chair, arms concussing in a pose typical of a rebellious teenager, which I am currently. "What if I don't want to go to school?"

"You've been at home for long enough, and it's a law that kids have to attend some sort of educational facility."

My brows leap in faith for Kenny's decision making. "Can I be home schooled then? Plenty of kids are doing that these days, because high school is fucking shit."

"Even if high school is fucking shit, I still have to work throughout the day, Dallon. You know that."

I huff, pounding the table with my feet like this amnesia pounds my brain. "Fine. I'll go to school. Whatever. If that will make you so happy and shit."

"Why are you cursing so much?"

"If your memories were plundered by teenage mistakes, wouldn't you be cursing so much, too?" I showcase an annoyed expression, perhaps a tad too annoyed for his man who has taken such devoted care of me and has done nothing to offend whatever morals I have left, and I consider apologizing for a moment, but already he's moved on anyway after pretending like he was unfazed.

"Dallon, I thought you were doing fine."

"I am. Just forget about it." When Kenny doesn't relent, brows still poised in a search, I peevishly add, "I swear. You can lay off now."

Kenny only accepts minor scrapes to his emotions, then pivoting towards the diplomatic side of his character. "You will be going back to the same school you left before, you know, the incident, which is Palo Verde High School, sometime soon, sometime when you decide that you're not going to be a whiny bitch."

"Don't you think that's just a pinch idiotic?" I close my fingers into a compression to replicate my woes. "To send me back to the place that probably influenced my suicide attempt?"

"Well I figured people would be nicer after they learn what happened to you, because no mortal dares to shame the dead or the almost dead, whereas a new school would instead make a big fuss about what you did to yourself and would probably hire bullies to target you for being a cutter or whatever it is that they call their peers these days." Kenny waves it off all too casually, as though being labeled as a cutter and shunned from the area where you have to visit every day isn't a terrible fate for someone just trying to survive after they recently never wanted to and imposed near death on themselves, but I'm hating every detail about this plan, so it's really not all that monstrous in the grand scheme of things.

"All right!" I scream, tossing my hands into the air like it's a game of basketball whom I shall hate forever and without restraint. "I'll go to school!"

No abbreviated flicker of a smile sloshes over Kenny's face, rather a touch of relief that began from below the bottom and was just trying to work towards the baseline. I can only guess that it's from my unwillingness to cooperate with the man who's just laboring to keep me alive and well and tend to me more than my own parents ever did, and I respect him for that, but I'm still a selfish cunt who is on a constant rampage for what I and only I believe to be right.

Kenny grinds the flat of his hand into his cheek, clearing the strain from his ordeal of convincing me to go to school, and a sigh tumbles up his throat. "I can take you shopping tomorrow for new school clothes, if you want. I assume you're not enjoying my itchy sweaters so much."

Nodding, I simply huddle into the jagged wool of Kenny's clothing and puff a cloud out like cigarette smoke, because these sweaters are pretty fucking itchy, and I'm nowhere near to being prepared for school. To say the very least, this is going to be disastrous.

~~~~~

A/N: I hate this chapter title I'm so sorry

okay so remember how at the end of one of UCDF's chapters I said I didn't have a crush? WELL!!!! I'm a fucking idiot and that is now a lie

aesthetic: newsboy caps and my gay-ass tears upon seeing them

~Dacrushota