Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

-0-

Nick’s morning alarm woke up long before the sun had risen and, judging by its loud and incessant cries, was making it everyone else's problem. In that frozen, silent darkness, his phone trembled violently against his wooden nightstand, sending a hollow rumble echoing into the room as it tugged incessantly at the frayed charging cable Nick had plugged into it over night. Realizing that it was unable to set itself free, it whipped itself into a frenzy, bawling for Nick’s attention.

The boy in question groaned and buried his face into his pillows in an effort to drown out the racket, to no avail. 

 With a silent requiem for his lost peace, Nick rolled unenthusiastically over to the cold side of his bed in a wearied endeavor to soothe his phone’s morning tantrum. The chill of the mattress seemed to pierce through the well-worn cotton of his sweater, sending waves of gooseflesh rippling up his body, and drawing forth a groggy hiss of displeasure. 

Through the haze of his barely-grasped consciousness, Nick groped blindly through the open air in an attempt to locate his chattering phone with his eyes still firmly shut. His hand went wide over the open air, and grazed past the cool satin of a lampshade, before finally sweeping over the freezing glass of his phone screen on his third sweep. With a vigor that seemed misplaced at such an early hour,  he pressed the screen of his damned phone wildly until it was throttled silent, plunging the room back into the blissful silence that had reigned for hours previous.

A contented sigh slipped past his lips as Nick rolled over again, desperately grasping for the echoes of warmth still lingering between the sheets. Slowly, he could feel himself drifting off into the loving embrace of sleep once more - stepping through the looking glass and disappearing into the land of vivid dreams which exists in the valley between conscious reality and the shadowed plateau of the unconscious. 

That is, until his alarm rang once more.

Nick groaned.

He was pretty sure the bloody thing was screeching even louder than it had been the first time. Each bleat seemed to slice into his cranium with surgical precision, resecting all logical reasoning from his mind, and leaving only a deep sense of loathing in it’s wake. It took him an unfathomable amount of self-restraint to not indulge in the fantasy of reaching over, grabbing his phone, and hurling the chattering thing against the far wall until it smashed into smithereens. 

You can’t afford to break your phone. His mind cheerfully reminded him, as Nick begrudgingly reached over, and gently pressed the button to silence the bloody thing for good. In the reigning silence, he once again snuggled deeper into his blankets in a concerted effort to go back to chasing the coattails of his dream. 

He tossed and turned, trying to return to that one comfortable spot on his mattress, but it seemed futile. Whatever remains of sleep that once lay trapped in his net of sheets slowly slipped from his grasp the more he tried to follow them, and so his mind remained groggily but determinately awake.

It was with a sleep-laden grunt, that Nick begrudgingly opened his eyes once more. He was greeted with the sight of his blindingly-bright phone screen. Nick thought that the bloody thing looked almost smug while informing him of the time, and reminding him of the mountain of unread messages from his friends he had to wade through.

Fan-fucking-tastic. Nick thought as he unlocked his phone and braved the glare of his screen to do his morning duties. 

He stifled a yawn as he scrolled glassy-eyed through the long messages Sai, Christian, and Otis had left on his phone, glazed over texts left by some of his classmates about rugby tryouts, and ignored the invitations to a party on Saturday that he was sure he’d have to go to anyways.

Nick was just about ready to leave the rest of the texts on his phone on delivered when he spotted a text left by his mum, sandwiched between the rugby team’s boisterous group chat, and Harry Greene’s smirking face. 

He didn’t hesitate before he opened the text, and it was only moments later that his face crumpled with worry. 

The contents of the texts themselves were not all that alarming, filled with his mum’s usual start of term fanfare: asking how he was settling in, a couple of updates on Nellie and Henry, and a promise to call soon. Anyone else would find it really quite mundane, but Nick’s eyes kept drifting up to look at one small detail written glaringly at the top of his screen.

The timestamp.

2:06 A.M. it read, in bold gray letters.

His frown deepened, waves of uneasiness coursing through him.

To Nick, his mum’s sleep schedule was one of the cardinal rules of the natural world, a consistent, guiding force that ruled his world. As sure as he could count on the sun rising at dawn and setting at dusk, he knew that Sarah Nelson would be in bed with the lights out by eleven. It was simply a fact of the known universe that seemed immutable, unless something catastrophic was afoot.

The memories of the first time he had seen his mother break her routine floated unbidden from his subconscious. He was seven at the time, peering worriedly from the darkness of his room, into the golden light of a cramped little kitchen in Dover. The white pages of a divorce settlement were scattered over the kitchen table like a tablecloth, and his mum sat alone in the midst of it all, like a ship unmoored at sea, with a cup of cold tea in her hands. 

Over the years, those sleepless nights made the occasional appearance, as divorce papers turned into overdue bills, and the cramped kitchen of that house in Dover was replaced with a poky kitchenette in a flat they rented out on the outskirts of town. 

Regardless of circumstance, Nick knew that nothing good ever came from those sleepless nights. He shook the hollow feeling from his chest, and let his hands ghost over his screen, tracing out the thoughts he didn’t know how to say.

What’s wrong? Is she feeling alright? He asked himself worriedly, Maybe she isn’t sleeping well. Is she eating okay? Is she lonely with just Nellie and Henry at home?

His spiraling thoughts fed the burning feeling of homesickness that had seemed to find a home in his chest. He longed to sprint out the doors of the dorms, leap over the school fence, and catch the next southbound train headed to Kent and, by extension, the waiting arms of his mum just so he could hold her and know that she was alright. 

It was a flight of fancy that drew a momentary smile to his face, but which dimmed as reality set in. 

Nick knew that he’d probably just scare his mother if he just turned up out of the blue, especially considering the fact that he was supposed to be in class, hundreds of miles away. She’d be so worried about him that she’d insist on taking the rest of the day off just to drive him back to Truham from Kent, a grueling three-hour commute that she’d have to make both to and from Truham. 

It would be cruel for him to do that to her, no matter how good his intentions were. 

There was also the minor issue of making it past school security, a feat no one at Truham had yet to accomplish, and live to boast about. Each year, there were always two or three students each year who were dumb enough to try and sneak past the borders of the school, and as such, there were always two or three students each year who were dragged in front of the Headteacher for a harsh reprimand, and a month’s worth of detention.

Truham owed their untarnished track record to the suped-up security around the school. Squadrons of armed guards patrolled just outside of the fence, dragged along by German Shepherds who looked large enough to snap Henry up in one bite. They prowled through the woods with a wolf-like hunger, seemingly more interested in hunting the charges under their care, rather than protecting them. Day and night, they kept the children of England’s rich and powerful safe by keeping them locked in, and keeping everyone else out.

Nick was just glad that the school had enough forethought to leave the campus proper to the prefects, who were easier to dupe - not that Nick was duping anyone, prefect or not. He was still as straight-laced as the day he stumbled wide-eyed past the gilded gates of the school, with the stipulations of his scholarship hanging above his head like a guillotine. 

He wasn’t under any delusions of grandeur or belonging. The headteacher had been more than clear when he informed him that his scholarship was contingent on his ability to play rugby, his ability to keep up decent grades, and, probably most importantly, his ability to not cause any trouble at Truham. Even one toe out of line could lead to his scholarship being threatened or worse, revoked entirely, and he’d be sent packing back to Kent without as much as a muttered ‘good-riddance’. 

He tried not to think too hard about that possibility as he punched out a reply to his mum, wrapped in the hope that she’d see it on her break. Pressing send and clicking his phone shut, he was immediately being swallowed by the darkness of the morning. It bled into the room through the gaps in the curtain, carrying not an ounce of light, but only a seemingly persistent chill that seeped through the cracks in the casing, and radiated out from the window panes, engulfing the room in a glacial embrace. 

As such, Nick was more than a little hesitant to leave his cozy defenses. It took him a while to steel his resolve before he grit his teeth and resignedly launched himself from the warm embrace of his bed, shrugged on his slippers, scooped up his school clothes from where he’d laid them out last night, and bolted into the bathroom before the freezing chill could get to him. 

In the confines of the tiled bathroom, Nick pulled the shower knob, drawing forth waves of groans from the old pipes in the walls which converged in a concerning gurgle that bubbled from the showerhead. The spigot shook so violently in its roost, that Nick was sure the old thing was going to rip itself free from the caulking. It was with three great rumbles that the showerhead relented in its fervent protests, and let out a steady drizzle of water, albeit reluctantly. 

Tossing his dirty laundry into the hamper, where a jumper he could have sworn he hadn’t worn during the week was sitting innocuously on top of his pile of dirty clothes, Nick fell under the siren’s song of a steamy shower on a cold morning, and watched the stress of the thoughts he had accrued that morning swirl down the drain.

It wasn’t until much later that Nick emerged from the bathroom with a wall of fog billowing in his wake. The sun was just beginning to wake as he bustled around the room, drying his hair while simultaneously trying to get ready for school. 

Can’t forget my maths homework, he thought lamely, shoving his notebook into his bag and hoping that it was the right one with a mild feeling of indifference, continuing on with his routine. He was still drying his hair as he pulled the blinds up and let the dim light from the bathroom meld with the muted morning light to illuminate the room in shades of blue and amber. 

It was just enough light for him to barely make out a shape huddled in the furthest, darkest corner of the room. 

His heart dropped for an embarrassingly long moment before he seemed to come to his senses long enough to realize that he wasn’t about to get murdered by the ghost of some medieval monk or a regency frat star. 

Instead, the lump laying on the other bed in the room belonged to his roommate, who was still miraculously lying fast asleep after all the ruckus Nick had kicked up that morning. As his eyes began to adjust, Nick could make out the other boy’s glossy curls poking up from under the blanket, which rose and fell as Charlie breathed. The smaller boy was curled in on himself, taking up only a fraction of the space on the matress while he slept. 

Bemusedly, Nick thought that Charlie looked rather like a cat, but he didn’t voice that opinion out loud.

Instead, he wisely blinked that thought away before checking the time on his phone.

8:09 AM it read cheerfully.

Huh. That’s odd . He thought, and turned to stare at the other boy again. 

Over the past week, Charlie had consistently woken up long before him, going as far as to be out the door before Nick’s alarm even stirred. Nick had just assumed that Charlie was an early riser, and thanked the lord that it saved him from having to squeeze his morning shower around his new roommate’s established routine. 

Thus, after a week of enjoying the luxury of being alone in the room during the mornings, Nick thought that it was more than reasonable for him to mistake his roommate having a lie-in for some vengeful spirit who had decided to return from the dead, ready to haunt him into an early grave.

Or at least imbue him with some belated festive cheer á la Muppets Christmas Carol.

Regardless of the corporeal state of the other being in the room, Nick reasoned that they would probably miss breakfast and likely first period as well, if they didn’t get going soon, and that was an outcome that the studious-looking boy would probably lament, rather than celebrate .

Nick shuffled forward and cleared his voice, hoping that Charlie would somehow be miraculously startled awake by the noise. He had no such luck, and the boy slumbered onwards. He hesitated once more before deciding that drastic measures had to be taken, and he reached his hand out to shake the formless lump on the bed awake. 

“Charlie?” Nick asked quietly, his hand landing on the bony shoulder beneath him.

The boy made what Nick could only describe as a snuffling groan in response. 

A beat passed before Charlie’s bleary face popped out from a gap between the blankets. 

The boy seemed to be trying to piece together what was happening around him, evidently with great effort. He stared at Nick with a look of vague mysticism, as if he had asked him to solve the Da Vinci code instead of merely informing him of the time. 

“Wazz’hat?” Charlie slurred, blinking at him as if trying, and failing, to dispel the air of exhaustion that seemed to hang him. Charlie’s eyes finally seemed to focus on his own as the last minute and a half caught up to him. 

“Hey, I think you should get up soon. It’s ten past eight. Breakfast ends in twenty minutes.” Nick said, watching as Charlie’s eyes darted from his own to rest on the tangled blankets in his grasp. Charlie seemed to shy away from Nick’s probing gaze, curling further into himself.

“Oh shit,” the boy said bluntly, scrambling from his bed, “sorry, thanks for waking me up”. 

Before Nick could reply, Charlie had grabbed his phone and disappeared into the bathroom with a quiet click of the lock sliding into the place. With the boy gone, and the bathroom door closed, Nick was plunged back into the darkness with his half-packed bag and a mind full of answerless questions. 

“Yeah, no worries.” Nick’s response died in the air between them.

Something about the boy’s actions seemed odd. 

He had only seen Charlie’s face for a brief second, but it was long enough to make out the dark circles under the other boy’s eyes. It didn’t look like Charlie hadn’t slept at all last night. In the boy’s defense, he had stayed out late last night and probably hadn’t come back until the early morning, but that wouldn’t explain why Charlie wouldn’t meet his eyes and Nick couldn’t help but wonder if Charlie’s sleepless night wasn’t partially his fault. 

Even though it sounded like a fantastic plan at the time, Nick was finally considering the possibility that springing rugby on the other boy without any preamble was not the best idea, especially considering that they’d only really known each other for less than a week. When he thought back to last night, he felt a cloying sense of embarrassment grow at how he had handled Charlie’s response. 

Nice going Nicholas. You just called the one openly gay kid at Truham small and weak, then immediately offered to give him special treatment by waiving tryouts. Nick’s inner voice said in utter humiliation, Charlie probably felt awkward and pressured already and then you had to go out of your way to make him feel uncomfortable on top of it. He probably thought you were trying to save your own arse and was too polite to point it out, and he was probably going to say no to rugby, and feel so uncomfortable near him going forward that he’ll go and ask for a new roommate, and a new seatmate in form, and he’ll probably let his parents know about how Nick was an utter dickwad, and his parents are probably mega rich, and will sue the shit out of him for offending their son.  

He silently despaired, wondering how he and his mum were going to afford to pay for a decent lawyer to save his sorry arse in court. He longed to bang his head against the wall, joining the chorus of the pipes emanating from the bathroom, as he wondered how he managed to muck everything up so horribly in such a short period of time. 

He had no reason to believe that Charlie wouldn’t just brush off Nick’s enormous social blunder, especially seeing that he had been nothing but kind and accommodating thus far to the person who had suddenly upended his living arrangements. But that revelation just brought a fresh wave of shame bubbling through him. Charlie was just so nice and here he was, just making a complete twat of himself in return. 

The thought of him hurting Charlie’s feelings, however inadvertently, seemed to claw at his throat uncomfortably. 

Nick shuffled awkwardly to the door, and clumsily tied his scuffed oxfords together, wondering all the while how he could try and make amends. He had just finished with his laces and was reaching for the handle of the door when his inner voice piped up with a brilliant suggestion.

Mum always said that the best way to right a wrong was to start with an apology, and that there’s no time like the present. It said, helpfully. His hand fell away from the doorknob as he turned to look at the white-washed door to the bathroom, his mind racing with possible apologies now that he had a goal.

Sorry for being an absolute knob and implying that you couldn’t play rugby because of how you look, which I now realize sounds mildly-homophobic. 

Please forgive me, I didn’t realize at the time how insensitive I was being.

Please don’t sue me or my mum.

Minutes passed as Nick looked at the bathroom door, which remained resolutely shut between him and Charlie. He watched the time slowly count down on his phone, like water swirling down the drain. By his count, he had to leave in the next minute to have barely enough time to make it to the dining hall, quickly scarf something down, and sprint to form before class started.

However, it seemed that his feet didn’t get the memo, staying firmly planted on its spot on the hardwood floor. His soles seem to know that he’d feel terrible if he pushed this apology off, but his eyes still watched the clock tick down in mild trepidation.

With thirty seconds to spare, Nick could hear the shower turning off in the other room. 

The sound seemed to send a jolt of fear into him, and his mind scrambled to find something to say, before drawing a complete blank. It seemed to send a message to the rest of his body telling him to flee. His feet, which were once so heroically planted in front of the bathroom door, were now scurrying out a hasty retreat from the room and down the front steps of the dormitories before Nick could comprehend what was happening.

He quietly cursed his own cowardice into the winter air, watching the lights of the dormitories retreat into the trees. The thick feeling of shame in his chest grew as he became aware of the scope of his own cowardice, but it was too late to turn back now. 

 He steeled himself, and with a resounding promise to apologize to his roommate at form, sprinted down the gravel drive towards his friends who were surely waiting for him at breakfast.

-0-

Despite the fact that the dining hall was quickly emptying out, and class was about to start in ten minutes, Tao’s ass was still resolutely stuck to the dining hall bench.

“Charlie’s still not here yet.” Tao muttered, checking his phone for what must have been the sixtieth time that morning. The screen lit his angular face in a soft glow, embellishing his soft brown eyes with a mother-of-pearl glow, and catching upon the fine strands of dark hair that fell into his eyes. His full lips warped into a pout when he noticed that he hadn’t yet received a reply from his friend, despite his best efforts to blow up the other boy’s phone with texts all morning. 

Although Tao’s sulking was undeniably cute, Elle was also undeniably running out of patience. Her, Tara, and Darcy had spent the past ten minutes practically begging the boy on their knees to head to class without Charlie, and their efforts had been met with an equal or greater amount of resistance from the boy on the bench.

 It was slowly growing increasingly clear that Tao wasn’t going to get up anytime soon, unless they dragged him out of the hall kicking and screaming - an option that seemed ever more appealing the closer the clock ticked to 8:30.

“He’s probably already at class, you know how he is.” Elle said, for what seemed like the hundredth time that morning. 

“Yeah, but he usually texts us first if he’s not coming to breakfast.” Tao argued, crossing his arms and drawing his shoulders up petulantly. His attitude drew a stifled groan from Elle’s throat. 

It was absurd that she was still able to find him cute , of all things while he was being so stubborn.

“Maybe he just forgot, Tao.” Elle noted, hoping to whatever deity lived up there, that she wasn’t blushing while looking at him. “We’re going to be late to class if we keep on standing here, come on.”

The boy didn’t budge from his seat, and instead shot her a childish glare, kicking his feet peevishly.

“You don’t think it’s about last night, do you?” Tara’s tentative voice asked from beside her. The guilty sound of voice echoed in the practically vacated hall, bounding up like a confession towards the heavens.

Elle’s resolve seemed to wilt under the sound.

Tara and Darcy had been tense all morning, rehearsing an apology to give to Charlie the moment he sat down at the table. The two of them had a remorseful air around them that morphed into a mounting anxiety, the longer the boy failed to appear. With every minute that passed, the possibility that they may have well and truly irreparably damaged their friendship with Charlie, or at the least, immensely hurt his feelings, grew closer and closer to reality. Their fears weighed heavily on the whole group, sending an edge of strain to each word spoken.

A beat passed before Tao sighed, his air of defiance vanishing as he deflated in his seat. With the stubborn glint from his eyes gone, he looked tired.

“Maybe? Look, I don’t know.” he finally said, rolling his phone between his palms and checking his phone one last time, before finally deciding that he’d had enough, and stood from his seat. 

“Let’s just go.” he muttered, shoving past Isaac and making his way down the length of the dining hall.

Tao, Tara, Darcy, Elle, and Isaac were one the last few people still lingering around the hall. They passed a few loitering students who seemed in the process of gathering their bags and bundling themselves in scarves and coats as they braced to meet the crisp morning outside. A couple year nines scurried underfoot, slamming past the wooden doors of the dining hall with a loud bang that amplified itself a thousand fold in the quiet of the hall.

It was in the quiet of their departure that Elle noticed the loud chattering that echoed from the far corner of the room. 

She turned to look at a group of boys who were still happily chatting as they lounged over the tables. Four or five of them had hidden themselves in the corner of the room and were stealthily passing around a vape that they took turns taking a king drags from, before turning and blowing the smoke into the breast of their designer blazers. The smell of artificial mango hung in a hazy aura around the boys.

In the middle of it all, Elle could spot Harry Greene’s stupid coiffure rising from the crown of his head in what must have been a pillar of gel and hairspray. A smarmy smirk plastered itself on the boy’s face, growing wider the longer he continued to expound drivel to his army of sycophants. 

They were so entirely enraptured with his sermon, that Elle was sure none of them had noticed her lip curl at the sight of them. They sure as hell didn’t notice one of the wooden panels to the walls swinging open behind them, revealing a barren concrete hallway and a gaping darkness beyond. 

From that darkness, a long silent procession of people emerged, white cotton hair nets frosted over their coarse black hair while crisp white aprons lay stark against their dark skin. For a moment, Elle could only blink owlishly at the line of newcomers, a look of mild surprise crossing her face.

Besides herself, Tao, and Tara, the dining hall’s cleaning staff were the only other people of color in the room, a fact that escaped no one. 

They wheeled out trollies upon which, a multitude of empty bins covered in black garbage bags were mounted. Tubs stuffed with graying rags and bottles of multi-coloured cleaning fluids rattled underneath. 

Elle could see groups of uniformed staff begin to break away from the cortège, following the carts of the motorcade as they headed towards one of the four long wooden tables running down the length of the hall. 

Under their downcast gazes and swift hands, the memory of breakfast was slowly disappearing from the tables. It seemed as if the dining room staff were orchestrating a carefully rehearsed dance, which swept them around the tables, and the last of the loitering students. Puddles of spilled juice and suspicious stains were mopped up under the spray of ammonia, and the tinkling of silverware and ceramic plates chimed like bells, which lept and danced in a merry choir of voices that resounded into the rafters high above. As they worked, they wheeled their spoils back down the corridor from whence they came, in carts heavily ladened with mountains of dirty cutlery, and silver platters.

Under their care, Elle could begin to see the polished wood of the table slowly emerge once more. It gleamed duly under the morning rays that streamed through the pointed arches of the windows. The varnish, clinging to the grain of the wood, reflected the light in ripples that reminded her of the lake on a sunny day and she smiled at the memory. 

It was only because she was momentarily stopped by the sight of the gleaming tables, that she noticed one of the dining room staff stepping just within the orbit of Harry Greene’s herd of boys. 

The woman seemed quite old. Elle guessed that they must have been nearing their seventies, an age that was a good twenty years older than the rest of their cohort. From across the room, Elle watched the old woman hunch over the table, hiding her deep wizened lines away from the bright sneering faces around her. She tottered about, quietly stacking dishes and building a teetering tower of cups, which she grasped with gnarled hands that shook with a resting tremor. The handful of metal knives, planted like a flag upon the top-most cup, jangled softly as she shuffled around the boisterous boys, towards a heavily-burdened cart which stood behind her.

With her head bent and hands full, the old lady didn’t seem to notice the boys around her, nevermind the way that they hastily gathered their school bags - but Elle did. She could see the way the designer leather crumpled against white skin, as the boys clutched their bags to their bodies, their joviality dying down into an air of heightened suspicion as they reached deep into their pockets, counting their coins and making sure that their valuables were present and accounted for. Their mistrustful glares followed the old woman, nipping at her heels, and trailing after her like an unwanted shadow. 

They even had the nerve to give each other pointed glances, as if to say, ‘phew, close call with that one lads, but we need to be more careful of that one in the future, yeah?’

It sparked a burning fury within Elle’s chest, that she fought to tamp down. 

 The old woman had done nothing wrong, and yet here they were, acting like she was about to rob them at gunpoint by her mere presence.

It’s ridiculous. She’s not going to steal your shit. She’s just doing her fucking job. Elle thought stormily, as she watched one of the boys turn to hiss at their friend, whose cerulean eyes darted to the old woman, and their hands darted into their pockets. 

Her thoughts brought Imogen’s grating voice from last night sharply to the forefront of her mind. 

‘ You stole my fucking hairbrush, didn’t you? ’ Imogen had screeched, the reminder of which was already bringing about the beginnings of a throbbing headache.

She hadn’t noticed it then, but the girl’s eyes had narrowed at her in much the same way as the boys at the table were now looking at the old woman. It wasn’t a look of mere suspicion, but a presumption of wrongdoing - an assessing leer which told her, in no uncertain terms, that they knew that she was guilty of whatever contrived crime they had cooked up, and were merely trying to figure out how she did it.

 It was a look that people never gave to Tao, or Charlie, or Darcy, but seemed rather exclusive to her and Tara, whose skin color marked them better than a brand.

She didn’t do anything wrong. Elle wanted to scream. She didn’t know if she was talking about the old woman or herself, and at that moment she didn’t really care.

In a perfect world, she would march over there and rage at the lot of them, consequences be damned, but reality lived in a small yet insistently loud part of her mind that was screaming at her not to. She knew that if she did, she’d be putting herself right in their crosshairs, a prime target to mock and ridicule, and that was something she wasn’t too keen on. Elle had already been the talk of the school once, and she didn’t think she could go through that again. 

The knowledge that there was nothing that she could do to stop them weighed heavily on her soul.

It was in that moment of contemplation, that a girl, no older than she was, brushed past her, dishes in hand.

Elle started at the sight. They must have been no older than she was, with smooth skin that had lightened into a sickly shade of tan, that Elle couldn’t help but compare to the color of powdered hot chocolate. Her apron, upon closer inspection, was two sizes too large, and was held up by a braided cord that wrapped around her waist three-times before being tied in a droopy bow on her lower back.

The girl with the bow threaded her way across the hall, walking past her coworkers and a fleet of empty trollies to drop her dishes in the old woman’s cart. They saddled silently up next to the old lady’s side, setting down the dishes which gently rattled, and stooped ever so slightly downwards such that her mouth was now at the old lady’s ear.

With a few words, traded in hushed tones, the girl manned the cart, leading the old woman to another table, further away from the group of rowdy boys. Elle could see the older lady turn to smile gratefully at the girl and whisper her thanks, gently resting her wrinkled hands upon the girl’s arm, before shuffling away to clear another table.

It was then that the girl looked up and locked eyes with Elle. Her brown eyes held something unfathomable in their depths, that Elle could have taken years to unravel without ever getting closer to the truth. But in that split second where their eyes met, they bored into hers with a question Elle was too ashamed to try and answer. They seemed to be asking why?

The girl looked away, her downcast gaze slipping back down to study the floor, her body blending back into the woodwork without another word. Elle turned away as well, tuning back into the conversation around her to try and draw the girl’s brown eyes from her mind.

It seemed none of her friends had noticed the exchange. 

“So was Charlie still upset by the time you two got back?” Darcy prodded from next to Tara. 

“I don’t think so,” Tao said, before he amended, “maybe a little, but he seemed fine I think.”

“That was so helpful, Tao.” Darcy said sarcastically.

The carved oak of the dining room doors loomed ahead of them, a gaping maw that served to lead them to the frigid world beyond. Elle turned to push open the doors in front of her, her hand wrapping around the cord iron handle, when they were abruptly yanked from her grasp as the door swung open.

A soft gasp of surprise left her lips. She stumbled backwards in a start, her leather flats catching against the ribbed entry carpet. It tipped her balance, suspending her in a moment of uncertainty before it sent her hurdling backwards, with her arms pinwheeling in the air as she fell. Her back slammed against something wide and soft and an arm wrapped it around her midriff as she felt a cold gust of wind blow on her face, accompanied by a large body which darted past her with a surprising amount of agility. 

“Sorry!” The person apologized in a gruff voice, barely sparing Elle a glance as they raced past in a flash of golden hair. The perpetrator beelined straight towards Harry Greene and the rest of his goons, who raucously roared at their appearance. Their association with Harry Greene of all people, immediately dropped any esteem the boy had garnered through his half-arsed apology. Elle gave them all a glare, watching them perform their elaborate greeting rituals to reaffirm their masculinity.

She started when a voice sounded from above her.

“Er-” the person stuttered, “You’re okay, right?”

She looked up, and locked eyes with Tao.

 It took her a moment to realize what a compromising position she was in, wrapped tightly against the boy’s body. From the corner of her eyes, she could see Darcy looking at the two of them with an excited gleam in their eyes, looking like they were about to burst from the effort of trying not to squeal excitedly. 

Elle couldn’t have been more mortified, and scrambled away from Tao’s arms.

“Yeah.” she squeaked, clearing her throat when she was a good three paces back, and praying that her cheeks weren’t as red as they felt. “Thanks.” 

She peeked over to gauge Tao’s reaction. However, the boy’s attention was already locked onto the blonde perpetrator, a look of murder in his eyes.

“What an asshole.” he muttered darkly, trying his darndest to set the other boy alight under his glare. Elle thought that Tao looked rather fetching like that.

“Was that- was that Nick Nelson?” Darcy asked incredulously, her smile blooming into a look of astonishment as she gazed over at the boy who was now engulfed in the raucous cheers of the rugby team. 

“Yeah.” Tao said flatly, “It was.”

“Maybe he knows where Charlie is.” said Darcy hesitantly. Tao gave them a blithe look

“And what do you suggest we do, go up and just casually ask him where his nerdy roommate is? Yeah, no chance.” Tao said skeptically.

“I mean, isn’t he our best bet?” asked Darcy in return. Elle thought that Darcy had a point there. Charlie had been rooming with Nicholas Nelson for about a week now, and if anyone knew where Charlie was, it was probably going to be either him or Tori. Since Charlie’s sister was nowhere to be found, Nicholas Nelson stood as their only lead - an option she wasn’t too fond of.

Although Charlie hadn’t said anything bad about living with Nick, it didn’t make it any less weird for them any less concerned. In a way, Elle thought that it was about as weird as her and Imogen as roommates. For Charlie’s sake, she prayed that Nick Nelson was nothing like Imogen though, judging purely by the people he hung out with, she wasn’t holding out much hope.

It seemed that Tao had reached a similar prognosis.

“People like Nicholas Nelson wouldn’t want to talk to mere commoners like us. He’s the rugby king with his loyal rugby thugs, and we’re a group of band kids and outcasts,” Tao remarked.

“Hey!” shrieked Darcy indignantly. “There’s nothing wrong with being a band kid.”

“I never said there was.” Tao sniffed hauntingly. “That’s why I put the band kids in a separate category from the outcasts.”

“But you implied that there was something wrong with it.” Darcy retorted.

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“Did-”

Tao was cut off by Tara’s huff. They all looked at her in surprise as she broke away from Darcy’s side and threaded her way across the hall towards the rugby boys.

“Hey, where are you going?” Tao’s booming voice echoed in the room, sending every head but Tara’s turning towards them. Elle could feel her face heat under their scrutiny. Tao’s announcement attracted the attention of the boys at the table, who began to smirk licentiously at Tara’s approaching figure, like a pack of vultures who had found a dying lamb in a field.

“Oh hey, Tara.” Elle heard Nick Nelson say, before the circling scavengers began to squawk in earnest. 

“Oho, go get her Nicky!” Harry whistled, giving Tara an appreciative once-over, his gaze lingering heavily on her chest. A roar of lewd cheering from his friends accompanied Harry’s announcement, which made Elle’s lip curl in distaste. Nick seemed to flush under the attention, rubbing the back of his head in obvious embarrassment as he stammered out a reply to something that Tara had asked him. 

He managed to tack on an awkward smile at the end for her benefit.

Tara only laughed, cocking her head to the side as she murmured a question to which the other boy responded with a hesitant nod.  The two of them walked further away from Harry Greene and his goons, the vague distance creating a semblance of privacy as they talked in hushed tones. 

From afar, Elle could tell that the group of boys were not so subtly trying to eavesdrop into their conversation. They leaned forward, passing secretive smiles between themselves, as they loudly speculated about what was being said just meters away from them.

She could see Tara gesture over to their group and she locked eyes with the guy who almost ran her over. He blinked blankly at her before he gave her a sheepish little wave, in what could be vaguely interpreted as an apology, if Elle squinted. She didn’t bother, and instead gave an appropriately tight lipped smile in return. 

Nick seemed to flush again, before Tara roped him back into an easy conversation that soon had the boy laughing uproariously, the apples of his cheeks glowing a soft red. It was a reaction that sent both Tao and Harry’s eyes narrowing in interest - a reaction that had her hiding her snickers.

Tao would probably have a conniption if he knew that he shared anything with Harry Greene, and Elle debated between taking that little tidbit of information with her to her grave or immediately turning to tell Tao, just to laugh at the way his face would pucker in disgust.

The boy in question turned to Darcy, and opened his mouth.

“Does Nicholas Nelson have a crush on your girlfriend?” Tao hissed.

Elle let out an incredulous breath, before the signs began to appear like blinding lights in front of her. She hadn’t thought that Nick had been crushing on Tara, but now that Tao had mentioned it, all the symptoms were there. The flushing, the jeering of his friends, the general awkwardness that hung about the other boy as he talked to Tara. It was the same signs that appeared whenever she was with Tao.

She gulped.

“He better not.” Darcy hissed back, glaring at Nick with a newfound hatred that promised swift retribution for the slight against her honor, and the honor of her lady love. Elle was momentarily vaguely concerned for the boy’s continued survival, before she remembered the whole door incident, and found her worries drifting away like clouds in the breeze.

It wasn’t long before Tara bid Nick goodbye and sped back to where they were standing by the doors, with a relieved smile on her face.

 With her back turned, Elle could see the rest of the rugby team swarming Nicholas Nelson, like he had just scored the winning goal at a rugby game. They rained down a round of manly pats on his back, and requests for a dramatic reenactment of his time spent within the general vicinity of Tara Jones, who they continued to stare lecherously at from afar.

It was a sight that sent a vague sense of disgust coursing through her.

“Nick said Charlie just slept in today.” Tara said cheerfully, finally stopping to stand next to Darcy, who shared a suspicious glance with Tao.

“I see,” Tao said, “well if that’s the case, then there’s no use just standing around waiting for him.” 

With one last scowl cast at the rowdy rugby boys, Tao spun on his heels and, without waiting for any of them to follow, left with his nose high in the air, the doors to the dining hall slamming shut behind him with a bang.

“We should go too.” Darcy announced, linking arms with their girlfriend and dragging her from the hall, with a bit more force and possessiveness than was strictly necessary as the first bell chimed in the distance.

-0-

Charlie was stifling back a yawn. His lead-laden eyes seemed to droop of their own accord as he fought valiantly against Morpheus’s call. Around him, chaos reigned in Mr. Lange’s classroom. The man himself sat at his desk, scrolling through his phone while ignoring the seemingly life-threatening amount of paperwork piling up around him. With his eyes glued to his screen, he seemed to miss, or be willingly ignorant of, the group of boys in his class tossing around a wad of paper like a softball. Others were huddled around the walls or around groups of tables chatting and laughing uproariously in a pitch that seemed, in Charlie’s opinion, too enthusiastic for such an early hour. Outside the classroom door, the sound of a thousand conversations held by students meandering to class reverberated into the form room. 

The chattering around him and the sickly fluorescent light above were a hammer and chisel that pounded into the center of his skull. Charlie groaned as he pushed his palms into his eyes in a futile effort to block out the world around him.

His lack of sleep last night wasn’t helping stall his mounting headache either.

He had spent all night tossing and turning in bed, trying to chase down the multitudes of thoughts that rushed blindly through his head, each of which slammed into and ricocheted off his skull in a drumming, pounding rhythm that Charlie was sure was going to drive him around the bend. Whenever he closed his eyes, he was met by Ben’s spectral figure, illuminated by the light of his imagination. His traitorous mind had no issues conjuring images of Ben and Imogen with the express purpose of torturing him with. The images, projected and exaggerated upon his mind’s eye, had drilled in him a deeply pathetic sense of grief and betrayal that had kept him stubbornly awake and on the verge of nausea all night long.

Charlie couldn’t seem to get over the fact that Ben had been seeing someone else – dating someone else, while he had been dating him. His mind had mulled it over, long after the moon had run its course, until the early beams of sunlight lit the horizon in shades of slate, and yet he still couldn’t comprehend it, his brain always returning to the same question.

Was there something I missed? Charlie had asked himself, his eyes gazed unseeingly at the shades of pitch that swirled upon the ceiling of his room.

 His mind had drawn up every moment he could remember spending with Ben, from that first fateful day in the music room, to that moment in the snowbank last night. For hours on end, he went over every small quirk of Ben’s lip, every word the boy had said and left unsaid, to see if there had ever been even an inkling of imminent betrayal, some hint of his infidelity that would have made it all make sense in retrospect. 

And for all of Charlie’s hard work, he reached the same blank sum he had come up with a hundred times before.  There was never a moment that would have indicated that Ben had been seeing someone else behind his back.

To Charlie, this persistent normalcy seemed worse than if Ben had suddenly started acting suspicious, and begged off meeting with him or suddenly stopped talking to him. If he had, Charlie thought that he would have at least known that something had been going on, and wouldn’t have been caught so unaware. He would have had time to draw upon his anger or sadness or self-pity – emotions which would have been more effectual than surprise, which left him arrested in inaction. 

But, it seemed that nothing had changed, and it left open the gaping possibility that Ben had been seeing Imogen, or any other girl for that matter, for far longer than any of his friends knew.

The thought seemed razor sharp. It slashed ruthlessly at his chest, hacking away at what was left of his heart. From the torn, festering shreds, a new question sprouted forth like maggots from a wound. 

Why? His mind had asked. Why would he cheat on me?

The answer came as easily as breathing to him.

There must be something wrong with me.

His mind seemed to take pleasure in this revelation, pulling out a seemingly never-ending list of his own faults that it took pride in chirping out like a set of well-rehearsed lines. His inner voice was brutally meticulous, dissecting every single conceivable aspect of himself with a clinical, scalpel-like gaze, and finding himself deeply, endlessly inadequate. It mercilessly rehashed every insecurity – every doubt he had ever had about himself in alphabetical-order, presenting the paucity of his own character to him under a frank light.

Charlie had never felt so small as he did in the darkness of his own head.

He could feel the hurt, burning like ice in his veins, rushing to claw at his throat, and leaving his body in wretched sobs. He had curled up, drawing his knees to his chest, as if to protect himself from the blows that never came, and instead bloomed relentlessly from his own heart. Tears leaked from his eyes, running down in rivets as he tried, and failed, to hold himself together.

His exhausted body had somehow managed to drift off into a blissfully dreamless sleep during the early hours of the morning, with his inner voice lost somewhere between inarticulate and incompetent in its tirade.

He had dozed for what felt like only a couple minutes before Nick had shaken him awake.

 Charlie remembered blinking his bleary eyes open, feeling like he had been put through the ringer, only to stare uncomprehendingly at the sight of Nick Nelson bending over his bed. Nick had told him something, but none of it had managed to get through the haze that had covered his brain. Only the feeling of the other boy’s warm hand searing into his right shoulder grounded him to reality.

It took him an embarrassingly long moment to realize that he hadn’t been dreaming, and an even longer moment to realize how wrecked he must have looked after crying all night long. His eyes were probably red and puffy and all together too incriminating for his own good. Charlie couldn’t let Nick see him like that. It would be totally embarrassing, and Nick might have asked questions and Charlie was too tired for it all. 

So, he ducked his head and bored his eyes into the floor, praying that Nick hadn’t seen his face. He stumbled quickly out of bed, shuffled past the other boy, and hurried into the bathroom, setting an inch of solid oak between him and Nick Nelson. It was only then that Charlie found that he could breathe once more.

Charlie had turned the shower knob and stepped under the rattling spray of the showerhead, watching the evidence of his late-night breakdown swirl down the drain with the suds. He turned the water even hotter, searing away his skin raw under the spray, but the heat seemed to bring an ounce of lucidity to his mind that had been absent all night long. The more the bathroom fogged up, the clearer his head became until, with a sudden dawning clarity, the problem of Imogen Heaney appeared in his mind. 

It was with a head of sudsy curls that Charlie realized that had spent so much time thinking about himself – of all the things that he had done wrong and all the things that had made him wrong –  that he never spared more than a passing thought for the other girl.

For Imogen Heaney. His mind reminded him helpfully. 

The name felt like acid against his tongue. 

In some ways, Charlie was ashamed to admit that he had forgotten all about her. It had been easy to reduce Imogen into merely being the other woman, a faceless seductress that had swooped in to maliciously topple his house of cards. By branding her with a scarlet letter, his mind had turned her into some indistinct monster in the night, reducing her to some textbook archetype that made it easy to both loathe and to not scrutinize that deeply. He had shoved her out of his mind, and replaced her presence with an endless supply of self-pity.

However, under the spray of the shower, his ill-defined resentment was beginning to slowly wash away.

For Charlie was beginning to realize that Imogen had probably not known that he and Ben were dating. Ben had been careful to keep the two of them a secret from everyone and he had told Imogen about him, a possibility that was next to nil, then Imogen couldn’t have possibly known any better.

The girl had merely fallen in love with a boy that she thought could reciprocate, a boy that should have known better than to lead both her and Charlie on. 

It was Ben’s fault.

The thought brought upon a wave of delicious vindication that Charlie wasn’t hastening to wash off.

When he emerged from the shower, the evidence of his feelings washed down the drain, Charlie found the room silent and still. His heated skin prickled uncomfortably against the cool air. 

Nick was long gone. 

He hadn’t really worried about it then, still trapped in his revelations from his shower as he jogged down the main steps of the dormitories, following the tracks left by his classmates on the snow-covered road headed towards the main campus. 

He was sure that he’d catch Nick at form.

Only, when Charlie arrived at first period with only a few minutes to spare, he was met with the sight of an empty seat next to his, Nick nowhere in sight. Charlie had hung his bag behind his chair with a frown, and slid into his assigned seat to anxiously await the boy’s arrival. 

Alone in that crowded room, Charlie was left to stare at the swirling wood grain of his desk, letting the thoughts that had plagued him throughout the night creep slowly into his consciousness once more. It made the bundle of hurt and pain in his chest flare up, cheering for an encore performance of last night. 

Charlie was saved by the sound of a chair scraping next to him.

“Hi.” a voice said, slightly winded.

He looked up to see Nick Nelson plonking down next to him, looking flushed and decidedly windswept. The apples of his cheeks were glowing with a blush that was undoubtedly from the bitter wind outside, and the soft strands of his hair that weren’t sticking up at ridiculous angles fell to frame his face in silken strands.

It was a ridiculously cute sight that had a small smile tugging involuntarily at Charlie’s lips.

“Hi.” Charlie replied. 

Before he could say another word, the second bell rang with a grating shriek that drew a wince from both of them. Mr. Lange begrudgingly stood from his desk to take roll, and Charlie’s eye’s drifted down to look at the swirling grain of the wood on the table once more. 

A silence stretched between the two of them, as they waited to be called.

Charlie’s inner voice took a brief pause to finally process that the boy sitting next to him had woken him up that morning, and that he should at least acknowledge the other boy’s efforts to cover for his own shortcomings. If he really thought about it, his inner monologue sounded a bit too much like his mum there, and the implications of that announcement was too much for 8:30 in the morning so Charlie chose not to think about it too hard. 

He took a steadying breath, and leaned very slightly into Nick’s space to get his attention.

“Er-” Charlie started, wincing a little at his awkwardness. The boy turned his head to look at him, not seeming to notice Charlie’s inability to speak. Nick’s face contorted into a strange expression, somewhere in the neighborhood of being both surprised and worried all at once. His eyebrows crinkled and raised, as his rose-petal lips parted as he stared at him. He couldn’t help his eyes from darting down to follow the motion before he caught Nick’s eyes again. 

Charlie opened his mouth, and felt the words tumble from his mouth.

“Thanks for waking me up this morning,” He whispered quietly, as he let his mind conjure up an appropriately mundane lie, “I must have forgotten to set my alarm last night.” 

The worry on Nick’s face seemed to give way at Charlie’s words, and the other boy’s mouth opened and closed for a moment. If Charlie didn’t know any better, he would have thought that he had caught Nick off guard.

“No worries, it happens to the best of us.” Nick managed to get out, with a small smile that Charlie returned.

With his good deed of the day done, Charlie was ready to settle back into his chair and wait for his name to be called. But, as he shimmied against his wooden seat, he caught sight of Nick’s face transforming back into a hesitant frown.  It seemed like a tumult of emotions lay hidden just beneath the calm surface of Nick’s face, a war that Charlie couldn’t hope to parse through before it all suddenly ended and was replaced by a steely resolve.

The other boy nudged his arm to get his attention, and once he had it, he proceeded to reach into his coat pocket and draw out what looked like a small turd wrapped in one of the dining room napkins, which he pressed into Charlie’s own hand under the table.

Charlie blinked, and wondered if he had actually fallen asleep and this was some absurd dream that his half-lucid mind had drawn up. He discreetly pinched himself, but it only served to draw a concerned glance from Nick.

Great. 

So this was reality, and Nick probably thought that he’d actually gone around the bend.

Fantastic.

Charlie took Nick’s gift reluctantly, and cringed slightly at the weight and texture in his palm. He didn’t think that Nick might literally give him shit for being such a bother that morning, but he guessed that there was always a first-time for everything.

He was about to let out a screech of both disgust and outrage that would have made Tao proud, when Nick opened his mouth.

“I don’t know if you had time to grab anything for breakfast, and I don’t know what you normally like to eat, so I just grabbed this for you, if that’s okay.” the boy stammered out, and gave him such a disarmingly charming smile that Charlie felt compelled to unwrap the gift in his hands, before his mind could tell him otherwise.

He peeled back the dove-coloured wrappings to find a slightly lopsided carrot muffin smiling innocuously back at him. 

If Charlie was honest, he would have rather taken the turd.

On paper, the muffin was a really nice gesture. The thought of Nick thinking of him while he was running late had some distant part of Charlie’s brain reveling in delight, frolicking around a maypole of distant delusions which involved marriage, three dogs, and the possibility of a tiny infant with his blue eyes and Nick’s sandy blonde hair. 

He was touched, really. But no amount of giddiness seemed enough to drown out the sea of nausea rolling in his stomach. He didn’t have anything against carrot muffins in particular –  besides their taste… and their texture… but other than that he loved them, really.

He just didn’t feel like eating all that much, and the carrot muffin was big and it was heavy, and the thought of it sent bile building in his stomach. 

“That was really kind of you.” He managed to get out, and was immensely proud of the fact that he did yack in front of his maybe-crush. 

Charlie looked up to see Nick peering at him with his warm brown eyes, with such an earnest expression of hope on his face that softened the boy’s features into something angelic.

In the back of his mind, Charlie knew that it was an expression that was going to make him do something really fucking stupid.

Distantly, as if watching his actions from above, Charlie could see himself reaching for the muffin at hand. He tore into the fleshy top of the muffin, tearing out a large chunk of brown mush and lifted the bite up to his lips. While Mr. Lange was looking at the attendance papers in his hands, Charlie tossed the piece into his mouth.

He quickly masticated the dough into a paste before swallowing it down with a wince, feeling the remnants of the muffin slither down his throat in a slimy, saccharine glob that seemed to glue his throat shut, like a clump of sticky phlegm lodging itself into his chest cavity. It seemed to linger there, sending his stomach rioting at the intrusion. The sour taste of stomach acid rolled against the back of his tongue, threatening to make an appearance of Charlie didn’t immediately rectify the situation.

 He tamped down the urge to throw up in front of Nick, and gave what he hoped was his most charming smile in return.

“That was really good.” He ground out, as he stuffed the rest of the offending treat into his school bag with a grimace. “I’ll have the rest of it after form so Mr. Lange doesn’t get mad at me for eating in class.”

Charlie was lying, but Nick didn’t need to know that.

Nick beamed and nodded, and Charlie felt nothing but relief. 

That was, until Nick leaned in, obviously trying to get his attention once more. 

Charlie prayed to every higher power there is and ever was that Nick wasn’t going to ask about the muffin. It seemed that whatever sick deity lived up there had finally listened to him, and had decided to answer his prayers by kicking him straight in the nuts as Nick leaned in and asked, “You’re friends with Tara right? Tara Jones?”

It was a question that caught him completely off guard.

He always seemed to kind of forget that Tara was considered popular by most people. Of course she had friends that she hung out with outside of his group of friends, but it was kind of hard to lump the same girl who snorted diet pepsi out of her nose at the Palace Pier with the same people like Nick Nelson and Harry Greene who were really popular.

And then Charlie asked himself why Nick Nelson was asking about Tara in the first place. He cleared his throat, dislodging a bit of muffin and sending it oozing down into his stomach in a thick glob which settled at the bottom like stone.

“Yeah, why?” Charlie asked, ignoring the feeling for now.

“Oh, it’s nothing really. She just came up to talk to me at breakfast.” Nick replied, sending a frown searing across Charlie’s face. 

Tara? Going out of her way to talk to Nick? Out of the blue? That wasn’t suspicious at all. His mind hummed. Charlie was inclined to agree. 

“I didn’t know you two were friends.” he couldn’t help but prod.

“I mean, I think you’re probably closer to her than I am.” Nick shrugged. He seemed to grow serious then. “Y’know, she asked me about you? She seemed concerned.”

“I’m alright. There’s nothing to worry about.” Charlie said instinctively, with a grin he hoped Nick would buy. If the growing frown was any indication, the boy hadn’t.

“If…” Nick seemed to struggle to find the words he wanted to say, “If this is about the rugby thing last night, I’m sorry if I was like pressuring you-”

He blinked dumbly at Nick, trying and failing to follow Nick’s train of thought.

“What?” Charlie’s voice came out louder than he wanted to, and cut sharply through the silence of the room. He turned to see the rest of the class looking at them curiously and, in the case of Mr. Lange, with an air of immense disappointment.

“Nick and Charlie,” Mr. Lange said, appraising them with a raised brow, “Do you have something you wish to share with the rest of the class?”

“No, Mr. Lange.” They stammered in tandem, “Sorry, Mr. Lange.”

Their form teacher gave the two of them a pointed stare before resuming whatever he was doing at the front of the class, occasionally flicking his eyes to them in vague annoyance. 

From beside him, Nick looked properly chastised. He seemed to deflate, and fold into himself, holding his eyes to some vague distance beyond as he wrapped his arms around himself in what looked like a comforting gesture, but which also served the dual purpose of flexing his arms in a way that sent Charlie’s brain into a minor gay panic. 

Deep in his thoughts, Charlie failed to see Nick slowly pull a sheet of paper from the folder on his desk. It appeared to be some half-completed maths homework that the boy must have forgotten to finish last night. Quietly uncapping his ink-stained fountain pen from his pencil box, the boy scribbled something on the corner of the page before sliding the paper across no-man's land and onto Charlie’s table.

So, was it about the rugby thing? It asked in Nick’s flowing script. Charlie had enough of his wits about him to grab a 2B from his own pencil case and scribble out a reply.

No, it wasn’t. 

He slid the page back towards the center of the desk so Nick could see what he had written.

Oh. Okay, sorry. I didn’t mean to pry, I just wanted to make sure. Nick’s apology said. 

It’s okay. Charlie wrote back. He looked up just in time to see a hesitant smile cross Nick’s face. It seemed to light him up from the inside as he seemed to draw the confidence back into his body. Charlie looked back down at the page in an effort to hide the blush blooming on his pale cheeks.

Nick’s hand drifted across the page as he scribbled out his next words.

So, have you given rugby any thought? Nick asked.

Charlie’s hand was half-lifted, ready to write a gentle denial, and to beg for more time to think about it, when his phone buzzed within his blazer pocket. Nick’s head cocked to the side as he stared at Charlie inquisitively. Bemusedly, Charlie thought that Nick looked like a golden retriever like that.

He pulled his phone from his blazer pocket and hid it underneath the desk, where Mr. Lange couldn’t see it. The screen glowed dully with a message from the last person he wanted to see right now. 

Ben had messaged him, asking if he had ‘cooled off’ enough to meet up after school.

He hadn’t noticed how Nick’s presence had slowly driven back his thoughts of Ben until the boy’s name appeared on his phone. His smile slipped from his face as he read the words on screen over and over again. Just the thought of the other boy pressed against the open wound in his chest, sending a flare of dull throbbing pain alighting his nerves once more. His throat seemed to constrict the longer he looked at the name on the message, his shaking hands ghosting over his keys in indecision while the saccharine bile churned in his stomach. 

He squeezed his eyes shut to try and tamp the feeling down, but amidst that darkness, the truth seemed to burn itself against his retinas, inescapable in its glow.

Ben’s been dating someone else for months.

Ben’s been dating someone else for months, behind your back.

He might just love her, and if he does…

What does that make you?

Charlie swallowed, and tore his eyes open, as if that would stop the truth.

His eyes darted around until they fell upon the words that Nick had written on the page. Seven little words written in blue ink that seemed to hold the ability to stop his mind from spiraling back to the darkness that had enveloped him. The word rugby chased the cloying sense of panic back into the recesses of his mind, and in its place, a memory of something Ben had mentioned only offhandedly burned as clear as the morning sun rising outside. 

“I don’t act.” Ben had spat, his eyes hardening as he tore his hands away from his grasp. 

“And besides,” He continued dismissively, “I was thinking of trying out for rugby this year.”

Charle flicked his eyes towards his copy of Romeo and Juliet sitting on Nick’s side of the table, then to Ben’s message on his phone, before they seemed magnetically drawn back to Nick’s written proposal between them.

Ben wanted to try out for the rugby team this year. His mind kept on gleefully screaming in bold, sparkling letters, lighting like a neon sign in the recesses of his haze-filled head. He wanted to try for the reserve.

His pencil found its way to the page between him and Nick. Before he could think of all the reasons why it would be a terrible idea, he scribbled his reply to Nick’s message with a settling finality.

I’ll do it. It read in dark letters.

Charlie wasn’t sure if the swooping in his chest was caused by the sweet taste of revenge on his tongue, or by the beaming smile he received from the boy sitting next to him, but it made him feel good nonetheless.

-0-

Charlie’s good mood lasted him until orchestra rehearsals that night.

Orchestra rehearsals ran for two hours every Friday night, and Charlie was doing everything in his power to avoid staying even a second longer than necessary in the noisy room with the vague hope of keeping the dull throbbing of his headache at bay. If the echoes of screeching coming from the open doors of the music room were any indication, Charlie was chasing a pipe dream.

He had squirreled himself into a little-known alcove, sheltered in the shadow of the arch leading to the arts hallway, where he could watch the other students stream out of the classrooms around him, envying their ability to start their weekends early. A herd of fifth years squabbled past him, their raucous laughter blending into the crashes of cymbals and the piercing wails of piccolos. They were quickly followed by a band of moody year tens, and a flock of gossiping year nines, each and every one of them strolling past the building heat and the cacophonous wall of noise streaming out of the music room doors, without nary a pitying glance spared for their fellow classmates trapped inside. 

Their gazes were set firmly on the oak of the side entrance doors. They pushed them open to reveal the dawning twilight outside which embraced them with a gust of cooling wind.

Freedom. 

Charlie watched them go from the shadows, and wondered if Mr. Farouk would let him beg off Orchestra. It was another pipe dream, but Charlie seemed full of them today. 

It was while lost in thought that Charlie was rudely reminded of the problem with hiding out in these shadowed nooks around the school. His peaceful corner was darkened by a head of dark hair in bunches, and a frizzy blonde bob, their bodies blocking his only escape route.

“There you are Charlie boy!” Darcy chirped, looming over him as they threw an arm around his shoulders good-naturedly. “We’d thought you died or something!”

He couldn’t help but gulp. Before he could get a word in, Darcy plunged on. 

“About last night, I’m sorry if we made you feel uncomfortable. Like I hate it when people prod into my relationship-” Darcy’s speech was interrupted by a sharp elbow to their rib cage and a pointed glare from Tara.  “Ow, what? Oh… I mean, like my love life and stuff… yeah, like it probably doesn’t feel too good for other people to be asking you all this stuff you probably want to keep private… and stuff. I wasn’t thinking and I realized that I crossed a line last night, and I’m sorry.”

Charlie blinked, trying and failing to figure out what Darcy was on about.  He had barely parsed through the first half of their ‘speech’ when Tara spoke from beside them.

“I’m sorry too,” Tara said, with a sad but earnest crinkle of her eyes, “I realized that I was sort of goading Darcy on, and asking really personal questions. I shouldn’t have done that, and I didn’t realize until it was too late. I’m sorry, and I hope that you can forgive the both of us.”

Charlie had to choke down the urge to hysterically cackle from the shadows like the villain from some B-rate action movie that Tao was sure to hate. It seemed like everyone was apologizing to him today for the weirdest and most outlandish reasons. Well, everyone except the one person who should probably be saying sorry to you, his inner voice muttered darkly. 

Charlie could practically feel Ben’s unopened message from this morning burning a hole in his jacket pocket, but he elected to ignore it in favor of turning his attention to the two pleading faces in front of him.

“So no hard feelings?” Darcy asked him, doing their best to look like a kicked puppy – a look that brought an unwitting grin to his face.

“None at all.” Charlie said.

“Thank god,” replied Tara. Charlie’s eyes widened as he watched the both of them visibly sagged in relief, as if they had unburdened themselves of some great load through the mere act of saying sorry to him.  

“We were all worried about you last night, and when you didn’t show up for breakfast… or lunch…” Tara tried to explain before trailing off, leveling him with a concerned glance that had Charlie floundering for something to say.

“Y-Yeah, I’m sorry. I just slept in this morning and wasn’t feeling well at lunch.” he replied. Belatedly, Charlie realized that it was the wrong thing to say as it sent Tara into a near frenzy of worry. Her bag swung around her shoulders, nearly taking his arm clean off. 

“Are you feeling okay now? I have some Gaviscon or some Paracetamol in my bag if you need some.” Tara asked, her hands already digging through the pockets of her knapsack, sweeping down the isles of the pharmacy she kept stocked inside.

“No, it’s alright.” Charlie rushed to answer, feeling a vague sense of panic at Tara’s attempts to be helpful. “I uh- ate a snack before this, and I feel a bit better already.” he lied on the fly, mustering up his biggest most angelic smile, with the vague hope of throwing Tara off his scent.

The girl’s hand stopped rooting around long enough for Tara to give him a long probing stare, as if she could discern what Charlie had eaten through his facial features alone. He schooled his face into a facsimile of honesty, hoping that a twitch of eye or the straining of his smile didn’t give him away. It seemed as if he was moderately successful as slowly, Tara’s hand retreated from her bag. 

“Good.” the girl finally said, giving him one last glance, “but let me know if you need anything, yeah?”

Charlie let out a quiet sigh he didn’t know he had been holding.

“Yeah, thanks Tara.” Charlie said with a forced grin. 

An awkward silence passed between the three of them. 

Beyond the arch to the arts hallway, Charlie could hear a couple belated bleats echoing from the classroom beyond, accompanied by the usual wave of chatter found wherever teenagers were grouped together.

“So…” Darcy trailed off into the open air, drawing both their eyes to them. “Did either of you practice the runs over hols?” 

It was an awkward attempt to change the subject, made with graceless tact, but Charlie felt nothing but grateful for Darcy’s efforts.

He and Tara shook their heads in tandem as Darcy roped them into a conversation, pulling them away from the dark alcove and into the bustling hall where they were enveloped by the noise around them. Their trio slipped into the classroom proper, maneuvered their way to a quiet corner to engage in a pretense of setting up their instruments.

“Me neither.” Darcy said, with a groan, “Farouk is gonna freak out this week isn’t he?” 

“Yeah, probably.” Tara replied, narrowly dodging a cart of stands rolling past her.

“I mean I love Parisian Winds, it’s a good piece and all for regionals, but we’ve been playing it since fall term,” noted Darcy. With their weapon unsheathed from its case, they whipped their head around, as if looking for errant spies listening into their conversation. Deeming the coast as clear, they leaned in and hissed, “and I’m so tired of hearing the flutes fuck up those arpeggios.” 

Charlie and Tara stifled their giggles.

“Do you think he’s going to give us new music during this rehearsal?” Charlie asked, his arms digging into his bag in search of his drumsticks. 

“I mean hopefully, but with the way the year nines are playing, I’m not betting on it.” Tara whispered. She pulled one of the many reeds from their plastic case, and stuck the offending object between her teeth like a cigarette while she wedged the pieces of instrument together. 

Her comment sent Darcy’s eyes rolling in exasperation. 

“God, I thought I was the only one who thought they were especially bad this year.” they gasped, for once managing to keep their voice quiet. 

Charlie thought that the feat was helped, in part, by the fact that the music room was especially loud that day. Darcy’s voice was practically drowned out by the noise of the brass section warming up, and the sound of scales being played with the occasional discordant screech from the clarinets. The shouts for more chairs, and demands for new reeds and valve oil mixed with the usual complaints of wobbling stands, cries of lost sheet music, and idle chatter about the holidays that had plagued Truham’s halls for the past week. 

Darcy’s efforts to keep quiet seem pointless in face of it all, but Charlie guessed that it was the thought behind it that mattered.

“No, the new music teacher has definitely been slacking with the kids in Junior Orchestra. I mean, have you guys heard them play their piece for Parents Day yet?” Tara whispered, leaning forward conspiratorially and roping Charlie back into their little huddle.

“No, is it bad?” Charlie asked, his search for his drumsticks momentarily stopped by the chance to hear some music room gossip.

“I took a look at their sheet music before break, and like half of the piece is just whole notes, but they’re acting like it’s Vivaldi or something. Like I can’t even walk past the music hall when they’re rehearsing because I swear it just makes my eardrums bleed.” Tara informed him.

The trumpets next to them began playing their scales as softly as they could, which was still loud enough to make Charlie wince at the volume. The sound seemed to rattle around in his skull, and Charlie could feel his headache getting worse. He probably should have accepted Tara’s offer for paracetamol, but it was too late now. Asking for painkillers after adamantly informing her that he was just fine, seemed like a recipe for some intense coddling that he wasn’t ready to endure, so Charlie grit his teeth and bore with it.

“Don’t hate me for saying this, but I feel like it’s all kind of gone to shit after McLaughlin left last year.” Darcy piped in. “Don’t get me wrong, I mean Farouk is amazing and all, but he’s just one guy, and the new teacher, what’s-his-face-”

“Wilson.” Tara said, while fiddling with some tiny screws on her instrument, a look of intense concentration crossed her face.

“Yeah, Mr. Wilson.” said Darcy, their eyes lighting in recognition. “He can’t teach for shit. Like remember that chord inversion practice sheet Farouk handed out in September? I asked him to check if I did my first inversion right and he scratched out my answer and moved the root back into the bass.”

“What an idiot.” Tara murmured in agreement.

“No, for real, and like everyone knows he’s shite. That’s why everyone only goes up to Farouk to ask questions.” Darcy muttered. “I mean, I don’t want to sound mean or anything, but Wilson’s teaching is subpar at best, like I seriously don’t know how he got this job.” 

“You haven’t heard?” Tara asked, her hands stilling. A familiar gleam entered her eye, and Charlie knew that he didn’t want to miss what Tara was about to say. He and Darcy leaned in.

“Heard what?” Darcy asked.

Tara opened her mouth, just as Farouk strode from the backroom, clutching his baton and sheet music in his hands with a glare that had the rest of the room scrambling to their places.

Tara’s eyes widened at the sight.

“I promise I’ll tell you both later.” She hissed and scurried over to the clarinet section with muttered apologies.

Charlie gave Darcy a nod in farewell as he slipped over to the percussion section, more grateful than ever that the instruments he was playing for these pieces didn’t need any tuning. 

He cast a sympathetic glance to Eric, who seemed to be struggling to find the right pitch on the timpani. A look of frantic desperation covered the mousey boy’s face as he softly tapped his mallet against the smooth top of his instrument in time to a hummingbird’s heartbeat. Charlie thought that it sounded a bit flat but he didn’t have time to tell the poor boy that, as Farouk tapped his baton against his stand, plunging the room into complete silence. His teacher raised his eyebrow imploringly at the gathered crowd, like a preacher assessing his congregation. As he raised his arms into the air, Charlie had the odd feeling that today’s rehearsal was going to suck.

He wasn’t wrong.

After two hours of punishing rehearsals. Farouk finally lowered his baton, a blank look on his face. Charlie, and the rest of the class were panting in silence, the room was humid and stiflingly hot with their collective breaths, waiting for Farouk to speak.

“I have to congratulate you all,” Farouk’s slow, drawling voice smothered the last note hanging in the air. He looked coldly into the souls of all his students in turn, his face an impassive mask. “You have all somehow managed to get even worse over winter holidays, a feat I didn’t think possible.”

Silence hung upon his last words.

“Can anyone tell me what happens at bar two twenty five?” he asked suddenly. His voice was never louder than a murmur, but seemed to bounce ominously off the walls of the music room. Each word seemed punctuated with a sharp rapping staccato that carried within it, a hidden, controlled fury that seemed more threatening than if the man had screaming madly at them without abandon.

Mr. Farouk’s dark eyes locked onto the one pale hand rising hesitantly from within the flute section. 

“Miss Duke?” He asked, as if surprised by her bravery or, Charlie mused, her stupidity.

He had to lean in to hear the girl’s wavering answer. “T-there’s a key change, sir.” the girl mumbled.

“Yes. There is a key change.” He said, letting his words hang dramatically in the air. A few nervous gulps came from within the congregation. “If we’re going from D to A major then why am I still hearing G naturals? This isn’t rocket science. If the sheet music is telling you to play G sharps. Play the G sharps. I don’t care if you have to draw arrows, or highlight it, or write ‘look at the bloody key change’ into your sheet music at bar two twenty five, just play it correctly, or don’t play at all, am I understood?”

Mr. Farouk didn’t stop to take a breath before he turned his ire from the general crowd to focus his fury on each individual section. He seemed to be reciting his complaints from a mental compilation of their sins that he’d accrued over the past few hours of their playing. “Flutes and violins. The arpeggios at three ten. We’ve been working on these since the beginning of fall term, how have you still not managed to get them down yet? Read the accents, they’re not there for decoration. What part of ‘staccato’ do you all not understand?”

He tore at the music in front of him, flipping to a couple sections before.

“Clarinets, for the hundredth time, section one seventy two is played at a forte, not a pianissimo. The next time I can’t hear you at one seventy two, I will be taking these pens and hurling them at you as a reminder to play louder.” As Mr. Farouk said this, he grabbed a cup full of pens from the desk next to him, as if to say that those would be the particular ones, headed straight to their faces, if they failed to meet his expectations. 

The pens themselves seemed to rattle in excitement at the prospect of potentially taking out a student’s eye or two in the near future.

His ire turned to the brass section.

“Trombones. Bar two ninety. It’s the second, fourth, third, then sixth slide positions. Show me.” He gestured to the trombones to demonstrate, snapping his fingers in their direction when they failed to heed his commands fast enough. “Wake up trombones. Bar Ninety.” Mr. Farouk barked, as they rushed to show him their accomplishments. 

Even from across the room, Charlie could see that it was all kind of a mess. None of them seemed to agree on what position their arms should be at any given time, even though they were all theoretically supposed to be playing the same notes. If Mr. Farouk’s face was any indication, he was subject to agree with Charlie’s assessment. 

“You all must be kidding me. Parents day is in two months and I’m spending rehearsals showing you slide positions you should have learned in year seven.” Mr. Farouk’s acidic tone could have melted steel. Charlie was sure that the trombone section was shaking in their chairs as Mr. Farouk stepped off the podium to stalk over to their section.

Snatching the closest trombone from the hands of one of the students, he held it up to show to them how to play their instrument with an exaggerated bout of false patience that dripped from his words. 

He moved the slide close to the mouthpiece of the instrument.

“Second.” He spat, extending the slide just over halfway off the instrument.

“Fourth.” 

The side was brought back closer to him.

“Third.” 

He extended his arm almost all the way off the instrument.

“Sixth.” 

He finished, giving each and every one of them a dirty glare.

“If you don’t know these positions by next rehearsal, just don’t show up.” He said caustically, and dropped the instrument back onto the lap of the student, as he stalked back to where he had been previously standing. 

“Tubas?” He barked off-handedly as he mounted the podium. “We were playing The Ocean Suite and not Parisian Winds. If you can’t tell the difference between the two pieces by now, you’re a lost cause.”

“And lastly percussion,” Mr. Farouk paused in his tirade, his eyes meeting Charlie’s from across the room, “the ⅞ transition was… acceptable.”

Charlie beamed.

Mr. Farouk turned to address the rest of the room, any trace of a smile disappearing from his face as he stared icily at the group of trembling students in front of him. “For the rest of you however, let this be my final warning to you all. If you fail to rectify your own failures before the next rehearsal, I will ensure that the punishment you receive for your own incompetence will be severe.” Professor Farouk let the words hang in the air like a guillotine’s blade before he spoke again. “You are dismissed.”

The shuffling of sheet music and the scraping of chairs against the wooden floors accompanied his announcement. A noticeably melancholic crowd of orchestra students morosely packed away their instruments for the night, filling the air with a noticeably quieter din than before they started.

Charlie stuffed his drumsticks into his bag, and bid the rest of his section a goodnight, as he moved towards the doors in an attempt to escape the bottleneck of students that would surely appear as soon as they finished packing up their instruments. He passed the down-trodden herd of trombones, whom he flashed a sympathetic grimace, and skirted around the growing crowd around the stand racks.

He had just stepped through the doorway when a bland voice called from behind him.

“Mr. Spring.”

Charlie jumped, turning to see Professor Farouk standing by the timpani, glaring at him. Eric was noticeably absent. 

“Please see me in my office before you leave for the night. I have matters to discuss with you.” he said ominously, before sweeping from his presence.

Charlie gulped and reluctantly stepped back aside, letting a group of violins pass as he shuffled back into the fray, towards the office doors at the back of the room.

The music department office was a cramped, narrow crawl space, with two desks that faced a long blank wall on one side, flanked closely by a narrow pathway. On the other wall, stood tall shelves that were overflowing with old sheet music, and odd storage boxes that Charlie was sure no one had opened in generations. It was lit in a sickly fluorescent glow by a pair of bulbs that hummed above his head. As Charlie entered the little office, it took him a moment to realize that it was overflowing with about twenty students, evidently carefully curated from each section. He spotted Tara standing over by one of the filing cabinets, and threaded his way through the crowd to stand by her side. 

Mr. Farouk was sitting at the desk furthest from the door, assessing each and every one of them with the same calculating gleam he had given the students during rehearsals. He took a moment to take a headcount of them all, before his hands grabbed the bulging file folder sitting on his desk, hefting it onto the hands of the closest student next to him, Dylan the clarinet player.

Even from a couple rows back, Charlie could see the poor boy wince under the weight.

Mr. Farouk gestured at the folder with his head and the boy’s spindly fingers immediately prised open the folder and rummaged through its contents, the sound of shuffling sheets filling the room. It took only a moment before he found the sheets he was looking for, and he passed the slightly lighter folder to the person next to him, who repeated Dylan’s actions.

It was with this accompaniment that Professor Farouk spoke. 

“You all must be wondering why I asked you to join me today,” he said quietly.

They knew better than to respond to him.

“No doubt, you all have noticed the posters that Mr. Ajayi has been so kind as to have plastered over every available surface of the school by now but, if some of you are still unaware, the Arts department here at Truham has decided that we will be collaboratively putting on a rendition of Romeo and Juliet this semester.” Mr. Farouk spat the word collaboratively out like it was something foul.

“While the quality of the set will undoubtedly be insipid, and the acting abilities of your peers likely not excelling beyond that, I will not let the music for this little production be anywhere near lackluster.”

Charlie tried not to snicker at Mr. Farouk’s dramatics.

Maybe it was the years he had spent hanging around Tao and Tori’s dramatics, but Charlie thought that most people just didn’t get Mr. Farouk like he did. His teacher had an odd sense of humor. Instead of smiles and joviality, he opted for an exaggerated and grandiose deadpan that most of his students took either as blanket disapproval, or barely contained contempt, and thus they feared and loathed him accordingly. 

Case in point, the office of about twenty students who were looking at Mr. Farouk in dead silence. Mr. Farouk plowed valiantly onwards, despite the lack of response.

“You have all been hand selected by myself, and Mr. Wilson because each and every of you demonstrates at least a modicum of proficiency that your peers so obviously lack. You will be representing this department in this little farce, and I expect nothing but exceptionality from each and every one of you.” Mr. Farouk took the time to look each of them in the eye.

“Should you wish to waste such an opportunity, you may leave now; however, there is a benefit afforded to those who wish to stay. Firstly, a letter of recommendation from any of the faculty members responsible for this play which includes myself, Professor Singh, Professor Ajayi, and signed by the headteacher himself. While this may not interest those of you who view graduation as some distant fantasy, those of you who are graduating know that the good words of your teachers are ultimately invaluable, if you wish to do something productive with your lives.”

From beside him, Charlie could see Tara’s eyes lighting in interest.

 “As well, an extra credit will be awarded to the students who elect to participate in this little show.” Farouk tacked on, almost off-handedly.

However, the mention of an extra credit, and thus eligibility for a free study period in their final year dangled above their heads like a carrot on a stick, perking the ears and lighting the eyes of not an inconsiderable number of students in the room. 

A girl in the front row raised her trembling hand into the air and Farouk motioned for her to speak. 

“Um, sorry Mr. Farouk but what if we wanted to audition for the play as well?” She asked, in a torrent of words.

Mr. Farouk paused before he spoke.

“I was unaware of your calling for the stage, Miss Daniels, but your fears have been discussed at length between myself and the rest of the faculty.” He turned to address the lot of them again. Tara nudged him in the arm and passed the folder to him. He plucked out his part, which was carefully labeled with his name on it, before giving it to the boy standing next to him. “Against my better recommendations, Mr. Ajayi has told me that I am to inform you that you may choose whatever role in this play you desire. It is your discretion if you choose to be some second rate actor, or some obscure stage hand, however, I trust that you all will make the right decision when the time comes and you all will not disappoint me. Am I understood?”

They nodded.

“Good.”

“We meet Tuesdays and Thursdays at lunch. Before Tuesday, you are to familiarize yourself with the music before we meet. I trust that without the rabble, we will be able to move beyond slide positions and key changes to get somewhere. Are there any questions?” Mr. Farouk asked. 

When there wasn’t a response, he sighed and dismissed them.

The students that had managed to find their parts during Mr. Farouk’s speech shuffled past the rest of their little impromptu group, and out of the office door from whence they arrived. Charlie and Tara shuffled through the fray to see Darcy leaning against the wall of the empty hallway, a look of evident boredom across their face that was replaced with a splitting grin as they noticed them walking out and trotted closer. 

“What was that all about?” Darcy asked, their hands finding the strap of their bag as they bounced on their toes.

“Farouk wanted some of us to play some music for the play.” Tara said, showing them the wad of new music in her hands. 

Darcy’s eyes seemed to bulge. “Thank god that isn’t me. I’ve got enough on my plate already, thankyouverymuch.”

They chatted while they gathered their things, and called out a proprietary goodbye to their music teacher. Farouk waved at them before slamming the office door behind him with a dramatic thud.

Charlie let himself snicker aloud that time. 

“What’s so funny?” Darcy asked, eying the door to the office with trepidation. 

“Oh nothing.” Charlie chirped back. His response earned him a pair of concerned looks from his friends, but they didn’t pry.

Darcy’s head swiveled back to look at their girlfriend.

“Anyways, with the Phantom finally gone, what did you want to tell us about Wilson?” Darcy nagged. It didn’t seem that Tara was all too bothered though, as she seemed to pick up her story where she had left off two hours ago.

“Oh!” Tara gasped, before leaning in to whisper, “Well apparently, Olivia heard Mia tell Noah that she saw Wilson at the Corbyn’s Winter Gala a couple years back. She said she only remembered him because he was wearing a really shoddy suit, but she’s definitely sure it was him.”

“Wait, you’re joking.” Darcy squawked. “How did Wankie Wilson get an invitation to the  Corbyn’s gala?”

“Well that’s the thing. No one knows.” Tara whispered, her voice carried by the wind.
“Olivia thinks that he’s got to be a family friend of theirs or something, but I’m not too sold on that theory. I mean, the Corbyn’s wouldn’t be caught dead associating with someone like Wilson at something as big as their Winter Gala, it would be terrible for their reputation.”

“Maybe he was there as someone’s plus one?” Charlie asked.

“See, I thought about that too,” Tara said, pushing open the side entrance doors to the music hallway, and stepping into the darkness outside. It was only five o’clock, but it could have been midnight for all Charlie knew. The sky was the color of tar and the lamps along the paths were lit, throwing the shadows of footsteps memorialized in the snow, across the gravel path. They all walked together, huddling for warmth and conspiracy, headed towards the glowing gem of the dining hall on the hill cresting above of them.

“But here’s the thing, Mia said that she saw him there four years ago, just before the Corbyns decided to donate all that money so that the school could build the athletic center, and we all know who came to the school the year after.”

“No...”  Darcy trailed off, with a look of revelation in their eyes. “So you don’t think…”

“Yeah.” Tara said excitedly, to the excited gasping of their girlfriend.

Charlie stared blankly between the two, feeling distinctly like he had missed a vital piece of the puzzle somewhere between the look of surprise and the squeals of unbelieving intrigue.

“What? What is it? Not all of us have the powers of telepathy here.” said Charlie, beginning to feel annoyed at being left out.

“Well, Tara’s trying to say that the Corbyn’s must have donated all of that money to somehow get Wilson a job here at Truham. Because Wilson’s so… Wilson-y, the Corbyn’s were probably not doing it out of the goodness of their cold, shriveled hearts and that means that Wilson must have some major, and I mean Major dirt on the Corbyn’s that he used to blackmail them into getting him this job.” Darcy said excitedly, the words tumbling out of their mouth in a torrent.

Charlie looked at them, decidedly unimpressed.

“That’s a bit far-fetched, even for me,” Charlie noted. “ I mean, don’t you think the Corbyn’s could have just… you know…. killed him off if he really had something on them? It definitely would have been cheaper than donating all that money to the school.”

“This isn’t a shitty action movie, Charlie. People don’t just hire assassins to kill people.” Darcy said, with a roll of their eyes. 

“And the Corbyn’s are a part of the Thirteen, I’m sure that donating a bit of money really isn’t really a problem for them.” Tara chimed in as they crunched along the open expanse of the main lawn. 

“And who knows, Charlie. Maybe Mr. Wilson has connections to other people more powerful than the Corbyns?” Darcy said, their words dripping in mystery.

Charlie just snorted. “Yeah with who? The Queen?”

“Don’t ask me for details,” Darcy replied, waving his concerns away with a flap of her hands. “I just like speculating. Leave me alone.”

Charlie rolled his eyes but agreed nonetheless.

“Either way,” Tara said, as the dining hall twinkled in front of them, a stream of chatter emerging out of the open doors and enveloping them in its embrace. “You have to admit it’s fucking weird as hell.” 

-0-