Kritvik Bhatt

Aaryan stood up from his seat. “Listen, asshole. It’s not because of being cool and shit always. Yeah, most of us do wanna look cool, ya see, and many of us are like this. And, most of us just tried it and got addicted to it. But… the fact is that… not all of us vape to look cool or satisfy their addiction, pal.”

Clomp. Clomp. Clomp.

Aaryan stood just a step away from me. With his face close to mine, he said, “Not everyone lives a life of butterflies like ya, asshole. Where ya stand today, I’d fucking kill to stand there. And ya wanna know what, I’m jealous of assholes like ya. Ya all don’t need to study and still get good grades, are loved by your families, and live a life filled with no stress, but rather just happy shit all around.” He shook his head. “I ain’t like ya, asshole. I can’t score above fifty however hard I try. My family thinks that I’m a fucking loser. They’ve lost all of their expectations of me and got so frustrated by me that all they do now is argue with each other.” I looked into his eyes. They were about to leak out tears again, man. His voice started to crack, the lump in his throat rising up, as he said, “And I gotta deal with this fucked up shit every fucking day, asshole.” He then closed his eyes and started to take in deep breaths. “Huff. Huff. Huff. Huff.” His chest was rising in and out. No doubt at it, he was about to break down again.

I opened my lips and asked, “Then… why did you start to vape? Why did you get into this stuff?”