Sensory Overload [closed]

When one was faced with the task of focusing on what the teacher was writing while the words were floating right off of the whiteboard, it became a little difficult to take notes.

He took a long, gratuitous drag on his cigarette, and exhaled a swirling cloud of smoke into the air. A pale grey dragon, twisting and twirling on the soft breeze until it faded out of view. The ends of his fingers were beginning to redden at the cold bite in the air, but something about being up here on the rooptop, leaning precariously over the edge of the railing, was liberating. The squelching sound of open-mouthed gum-chewing, the wail of chairs being dragged across the floorboards, the information flying off of the board and dancing around the teacher's head - he was free of it. There were a few students sitting quietly on the other side of the rooftop, but he paid them no attention. The clamor of school life had been replaced by the soft hum of the autumn wind, and the sight of yellowing trees swaying lazily in the distance. His head was rarely this clear. It was nice.

With one hand, Roderick held his cigarette, and with the other, he reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a weathered black booklet. He flipped it open with his thumb and let the wind turn the pages. Hundreds of sketches and obscure notes were scrawled inside of it. He used it as a log for virtually everything - lists of items he needed to buy, important dates, poems, scribbling down meretricious images or phrases.. Everything.

As the pages fluttered, something written in a blocky red font caught Roderick's eye. He held the page down with one finger to get a better look at it. ASTA KASK. What did that..? Ah, right. That was what her hoodie had spelled out - 'her' being the Swedish girl he'd bought the green off of in Rosebury. For some inexplicable reason, she'd immediately socked him in the jaw following the purchase. Rod was far more curious than resentful, though. What a strange encounter that'd been.

He inhaled another lung-full of fumes and gently closed his book.

Hanna felt the chill of America's winter and she knew immediately she loved it.  The cool wind, the occasional snowflakes that floated their way to the ground.  It reminded her of a much more mild home life, without the ghetto feeling of course.  But something drove her to implore the rooftop, she used to do it all the time back in Sweden, a way to get away from the trash-ridden, pot hole filled streets of her 'neighborhood'.  Even though everything was so nice here, she still felt like she needed to escape the ground, this time it was just so...expensive.  Everyone gave her the weirdest looks and she couldn't figure out if it was the fact her face was a quarter scar tissue, her rather-different style than that of most people at the school, or the fact that it was all stuff she had worn for years.  Hanna's jeans she wore had tears that she certainly didn't cause on purpose, her boots looked like she frequently went kicking at walls and all of her tops, no matter shirt, jacket, or hoodie all looked years faded.  This time she wore her usual jacket, the blocky white letters on red reading ASTA KASK.  But instead of a nondescript tank top, she wore a nondescript T-shirt over it, having to make use of the extra layer due to her jacket being rather thin.  She had hastily pulled a red wool beanie that looked like it had seen much better days over her snow white hair before throwing on a pair of jeans that sat on the floor for a few days and were probably clean. 

Hanna climbed the stairs to the rooftop rather slow as she enjoyed the journey, the staircase lights flickered slightly and her feet echoed around the walls.  Her bright blue eyes seemed to cut through the bouts of darkness as they scanned the industrially colored steps, her left hand grasping the rail as she took it step by step.  In a world that moved so fast, it felt good to take it slow, and she didn't need the couple plastic baggies in her back pocket to slow down the world.  Her mind began to wander back to a time, when she used to "sample" what she sold.  Her feet kept moving, but her mind was moving in a completely different direction, she didn't remember much of those nights, other than laughing a lot and her friends having varying stories after the fact.  She began to laugh at one of them, when she tried to walk up a step that wasn't there and nearly made her nose as crooked as the night after she sampled more than her supplier told her she could.  She let out a small breath, happy no one was there to see her make that little hiccup, she quickly composed herself and stood straight at the door, placing her palm calmly on it and pushing through it, a chill hitting her face immediately.  

A smile grew upon her face as she closed her eyes and let in a big breath; cool fresh air wafting into her lungs, though it was quickly replaced with a stinging feeling and a slight cringe as the smoke interrupted her serenity.  The Swede's piercing blue eyes quickly opening and quickly darting about the area.  They rested on the boy sitting precariously on the fence.  She recognized him instantly as the boy she gave a haymaker and wondered if she scarred him like she did herself after her first deal in America.  Hanna didn't want to find out, she wanted out of there and was just about ready to make it through the door undetected, when it quickly uuurked shut and let out a baritone slam that could've woken up half the damn building.  Her shoulders went up as she flinched, her teeth slightly clenched, she'd mouth a curse with her hands in fists before beginning to compose herself.  She rolled her shoulders slightly, letting out a deep breath that vaporized right in front of her lips.  The girl then moved a bit of her hair from her face as she waited for the boy to turn around, when she remembered- he read minds.  She hated how carefully she had to tread around him, her own mind being her enemy when she was around the boy.  She took it into account as she didn't really consider the cigarette in the boy's hand, it just being an odd feeling in the back of her mind.

Roderick blinked at the abrupt sound of the rooftop door slamming shut, his momentary trance breaking. He didn't even have to look to figure out who it was. The reluctance radiating off of her was telling enough. What a funny coincidence that she'd shown up while he'd been thinking about her. He loosed another billowing cloud of cigarette smoke into the air before speaking.

"You know, I was a bird the other day," he murmured, sticking his arm out over the railing to feel the wind currents. The cold stung the chapped skin of his knuckles and fingers, but he ignored it. What a wonder it had been. He wasn't sure how it'd happened, but he didn't care. If he were to be frank, he enjoyed being a bird far more than being a person. Now he was land-locked. Weighty. Trapped. "Free to explore the air without having to be afraid of falling.. Up, away, in the clouds, not a worry in sight. It would appear that I am no longer a bird, sadly." He withdrew his arm and turned around to face Hanna, resting his lower back against the lean, cold steel, while his upper back tipped ever so slightly over the edge. "I would very much appreciate if you didn't punch me again, in this precarious situation, seeing as I cannot, in fact, fly anymore." There was a dark, unsightly bruise, the colour of a ripe plum, present on his jaw, where she'd hit him.