Eliza
It had been a week since the shooting. Miles was getting discharged from the hospital tomorrow morning. After he had come out to the school, people had not stopped talking about it all week. I felt bad because he wasn't even here to hear what people were saying or react to their reaction. This week had been awful for me too. James and Wren had refused to talk to me all week and Tau and Perri had been caught in the middle. They obviously didn't choose sides but inevitably sided with the girls as they still hangout and it was a 2 vs. 1. James had confronted me on Monday at lunch and yelled at me for knowing about Miles and Elijah and not telling her or Wren or at least not stopping her from getting with Miles in the same week as he did with her best friend's boyfriend. I got why they were mad, but it wasn't my fault Wren was dating a fucking loser. Elijah had been released on bail and I didn't really look into what was going to happen to him. Since I had nothing else to do, no friends, no girlfriend, I had visited Miles in the hospital almost every night. His mom had been with him most of the nights. I had never met her before. Apparently, he had a little brother. He had never mentioned the brother, so I was beyond shocked when I showed up and saw a little boy sitting at the end of his bed. Miles had been surprisingly chill about the whole coming out thing, but I think it was bullshit. He just had a lot of distractions right now. At school a lot of further rumours were spreading, and Miles was going to come back on Tuesday to a shitstorm. He couldn't play lacrosse for another few weeks once he was discharged, which would've been good for the avoidance of the boys on the team, but Miles insisted on still captaining. I was worried for him.
I walked through the parking lot of the hospital heading to the room Miles was staying in. Rebekah hadn't left his side every time I had come to see him which had been annoying because I wanted to talk to Miles privately. I didn't have anything in mind I wanted to talk about it, but it felt awkward chatting in front of his mom. I also didn't know what she knew about what. I made my way down the brightly lit halls that were filled with chatting doctors, gloomy patients and buzzing nurses. I finally got to Miles room and saw him sitting in his bed with his brother, Kai, and a book in his hand. He was reading the book to the boy. The boy was old enough to read on his own, so I was confused at this... bonding... moment. The book was thick with a dragon on the cover. Kai looked up when I walked in and waved. Miles' eyes caught mine.
"Hey!" He said and folded the corner of a page and put it on the table beside his bed. Kai sat up and crawled out of the bed. Rebekah was not here. I was surprised. Kai crawled into the chair beside the bed an grabbed his iPad that was set on the drawer. I walked closer to the bed and sat on the edge of the bed.
"Where is Rebekah?" I whispered. I needed to finally spill everything that had gone down at school. Arson and I had only been able to give him snippets because we felt this news was worth more than a text and we didn't want Rebekah in on all this.
"She went on a walk like ten minutes ago. She will probably be back in like half an hour." Miles whispered back. I stared at his face. I had never seen him look so... unwell. He wasn't sick, and his wounds were fine now. But being in the hospital for a week had turned him into a ghost. His hair was greasy and flat, and his eyes were dull.
"Let's go walk around." I suggested, trying to pull him out of bed. I thought that this would be good for him and for the privacy of our conversation.
"I can't leave Kai here alone." He shrugged and shook my hand off of his wrist.
"He is literally eight. He can be left alone. You treat him like he is four. Also, we are in a hospital. There are people everywhere." I grabbed his wrist again and this time yanked him out of bed. He smelt... funky. It wasn't an awful smell but there definitely was some smell that wasn't pleasant. He was wearing a red one direction t-shirt and sports shorts. Seeing his bare legs made me wish I could see the wound. He never showed me, and I was curious. I pulled him along with me as we started to walk the halls.
