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It's the night of Christmas Eve and Angus is lying in bed staring at his crumbling ceiling wishing it would collapse in on him.
He tells himself he shouldn't have to feel this way, that he doesn't deserve to. This is called an abstraction. He's telling himself this to avoid the real reason he's upset. The real reason why he can't sleep.
But he's not thinking about that anyways, he's thinking about how cruel his mom is for leaving him and how he definitely doesn't deserve this. He makes good grades, doesn't cause problems, sure maybe he runs his mouth off a fair good amount of times but these assholes are asking for a verbal whipping anyways-- what with their elitist lifestyles and lackluster work ethics. They're all idiots, really they are. And if anyone was in his position they'd do the same. His dad wou-.
Angus springs out of bed and immediately turns to punch his right fist into the pillow where his head was just laying.
He's not sleeping. He doesn't even know why he fucking tried.
Angus leaves, walking halfway down the hall before turning around and walking back into his room to grab his sweater, pulling it over his pijama t-shirt in one jerky move. He's not coming back anyways, not to sleep. He won't.
So with his sweater now on he makes his way back down the hall for a second time, this time passing the hallways halfway point with a vigor.
He's not coming back.
He walks out the building and wanders in the faint lamp light glow of the night thinking about where he should go. There's no sound except his breathing and footsteps and for a second he feels like the entire world is dead apart from him. Maybe he wishes it was.
He doesn't continue that thought and keeps walking.
He makes his way to the basketball court and then to the auditorium. He wanders around the library and pulls out a random book before dropping it on the floor. He leaves it on the floor on purpose. Maybe just as prove that he was there, he existed. That he has free will. It doesn't matter.
After an hour he leaves the library and just stands outside, letting the snow fall on his head. It's cold, because its fucking snow obviously, and he hopes it will start to hurt soon but it doesn't. It just makes his fingers feel numb and that's not what he was really aiming for so he promptly decides he's done with this endeavor and begins randomly walking in the direction his body is already facing. He's taking steps that are more like leaps and in doing so watches his feet plant directly in the middle of each cobblestone crack. He watches this the entire walk, not even bothering to look up to see where he's heading.
He doesn't look up when he opens the door and he doesn't look up as he rounds the corners. It isn't until he sees the edges of a thick metal door at his feet does he realize where he is.
He's in the kitchen. That's the fridge.
It's almost funny how cruel life is to him.
He opens the freezer, closing his eyes so as not to see and reminds himself how stupid this is.
He opens them and right there, in the very center of the freezer, sits a tub of ice cream. It's fat and huge and exactly the sort of thing his dad would have bought because he never knew how to hold back when it came to his wants. Angus's mom says he gets that from his dad.
He reaches behind himself to fish out a spoon and holds the tub wrapped in both arms like a baby. It's so big, both his arms barely cover it and he knows his dad would have loved it even more.
Because when Angus was six years olds he had a nightmare on Christmas Eve. And after an entire afternoon of his mom threatening a Christmas tree with no presents if he didn't settle down and sleep before Santa came, Angus was much too scared to leave his bed. Instead sobbing softly sitting up in it whilst silently wishing his mom would hear him-- and come, see that he wasn't being bad he swears, he's just scared. Really he's just scared. But Angus knew with the heavy sleeper his mom was, he could cry until morning and she wouldn't come.
This made him cry harder.
And it was then, as the sobs took full force, racking through his small body, that the slow creak of the door rang in his ears like a symphony of angels. To this day, Angus is sure he hasn't heard anything so beautiful.
He remembers seeing his dad looking at him through the crack of the door, ever-crooked smile, and asking him if he had a nightmare and Angus thought his dad must be magic to know so easily. He fevertly nodded yes and his father padded over to take his hands in his.
“It's okay, come with me sweatheart.”
“Mom said Santa won't come if I leave my bed.”
“Santa will come, because I'm your dad, and I say you can come with me. You can always trust me.”
And so Angus does. And him and his father huddle around the freezer eating ice cream straight out of the tube with spoons. And Angus feels so bad. And it's so much fun . His dad tells him he loves him between bites and uses his thumb to wipe off ice cream from his cheek.
He never told his dad this. But he loves that moment more than opening every Christmas present he's ever had combined.
And every year after that, him and his dad share a Christmas Eve night by the freezer over a tub of vanilla ice cream. And his mom sleeps away so they giggle loudly and tell eachother stories and it's beautiful. Truly.
They don't do it the year his dad started getting sick. Angus waited by the freezer for three hours.
And the year after that, it's so bad, he doesn't even remember it on Christmas Eve.
But this year. He's alone, fully alone. And he's tried all night to avoid it. To not think about it. And in doing that, without his knowledge, his body lead him right here. To the exact place he wanted most to be. To the exact moment he wants most to live in.
He digs the spoon into the ice cream and takes a big bite, just the way his dad showed him.
It’s vanilla.