craze // skephalo | HIATUS

Our First Exchange

~Darryl~

Definitely something I needed to keep my eye on.

"I don't get it," Ant complains.

The two of us feel hands on our shoulders. We turn to see our taller friend. "Let's not get involved. We should go back," Sam suggests.

Part of me wanted to investigate but the other part told me to listen. Sam was much wiser than us anyway. If he said it wasn't any of our business then it wasn't. The two of us nod before retreating from the scene. Sam walks behind us as if he were guarding us.

The three of us agree to end lunch early and talk in the library together. I wanted their opinions on the situation but I knew no one in my group would want to talk about it.

Like this morning, the library was just as quiet. During afternoon hours, there would be more guests. Sam organized the shelfs while Ant and I sat around in beanbags. Ant stayed fixated around his phone whereas I relaxed, staring up at the ceiling. Reading seemed like an interesting option. I arose from the plush seat and walked over to a book that caught my eye.

The cover seemed very well done with eye-catching details. The colors itself were pretty dull. Dark gray skies with dead greens for the bottom. A human seemed to stand in front of two gravestones. One marked, 'mom' another marked, 'dad'. The human seemed to carry wilted flowers as they looked down sorrowfully at the stones. They wore a school uniform with a red backpack slung around their shoulder. The backpack was unzipped open. A note was seen. It seemed to just be a scribble as the words, too small to be eligible.

I couldn't help but overhear the gossip that comes from the other aisles from my standing point. They talked about the situation from earlier. Apparently the girl who fainted was a girl named Willow. She went to the same school as Zak last year before moving to this school. They had a thing back then but went on to later breakup after too much toxicity in the relationship.

Was that why she fainted? Because she got stressed from seeing her ex? And is that why Zak was involved in the scene? I doubt anything that happened in the relationship was his fault. He doesn't seem like the type to do anything wrong. Granted, I barely know the guy - but still.

I flip through the pages of my held book as I continued to eavesdrop. There's been rumors of the relationship to be abusive. I try to remind myself that this is none of my business but if it was hard. If Zak was involved then I had the right to be worried. He seemed worth looking after for. My suspicions grew over Willow.

Maybe this could be a setup? Maybe she was overreacting so that people would think the relationship was bad on her end. I couldn't make any assumptions seeing as I don't know either of them very well.

Then again, these were just rumors. Maybe Willow has health conditions that caused her to faint. From what I know, at this time Willow was still in the nurse's office. Even then, maybe her friends knew something about it.

No - I shouldn't form an opinion. Not until I get some real intel. Of course I wouldn't be able to talk to my friends about this, but I still didn't want to be left out. I could know about the drama without including myself in it.

———

The following day, I wake up feeling as fresh as usual. Something I didn't expect after yesterday. From my arrangement of clothes I pick out something sweet. Over a white tee is a pastel yellow corduroy shirt that I purposely leave unbuttoned. My pants were as simple as beige pocket pants.