The Thoughts Between Us // CHALEX

Thirty-Five

Charlie

"Did you hear?" Beecher asked as he joined us in the hallway. "School is planning to do some exercises for an active shooter drill."

"What exercises?" Luke looked up from his book with a hopeful look. "Please say it's happening today when I have Maths. At least the test will get postponed."

"We have a test in Maths?" Jake exclaimed, closing his locker and looking at Luke in disbelief. "Why didn't you tell me? Fuck."

"No, the exercises aren't happening today." Beecher replied, at which both Luke and Jake groaned. "I heard Bolan telling Coach about it. They are planning it for next week."

"I really don't get the point of this." Diego said, as he leaned besides me on the lockers. "Do they really think that these exercises will help us when an actual shooter comes?"

I thought about Tyler, how he was once gonna shoot the school down at that Spring dance.

"Well, we can't ignore the fact that there will always be the possibility." I shrugged at him. "Anything can happen these days."

"You know what, you're right." Diego nodded, then smirked. "We have people like Clay Jensen with us. That can totally be a possibility."

Everyone started laughing as if it was their joke of the day while I rolled my eyes at their ignorance.

But whatever Beecher was talking about became true, as a notice was hung up outside the administration office the very next day.

"Register yourself and a friend for the Stop-the-blood activity?" Tyler read from the paper pinned to the board, then looked at me in confusion. "Is our school okay?"

"I don't think so." I shrugged at him in reply, keeping a straight face.

As soon as I have entered through the metal detectors at the main doors, I could hear people talking about a notice being up. So I decided to see what has gotten everyone on edge today. Tyler was on his way to his locker when I informed him and we made our way here.

"You know, I also heard that we are getting a Dean or something joining from next week." Tyler informed as we moved out of the way for some girls trying to read the notice too. "Maybe this is something he planned."

"Huh? Why?" I asked, frowning. "Wasn't Bolan enough?"

"I don't know exactly." He shrugged in response. "Maybe they are just rumors."

"Hey, guys," We turned around to see a confused Alex walking towards us. "I heard some very weird rumors since entering the school." 

As he read the notice on the board, I couldn't help but look at his concentrating face. 

Cute.

Since the night of the party about a week ago, I'm very much happy to inform that Alex and I have been hanging together much more than before. I don't exactly know what changed between us, but if getting high together was the solution all along then I would've done that way earlier.

The upside of all this was also the fact that I got to bake cupcakes on occasion of his birthday, which may I add he liked very much.

10 points for me.

"Why are they doing this all of a sudden?" Alex asked, breaking my stance. We started moving towards our classes. "Did something happen?"

"Not that we know of," Tyler shrugged as I also shook my head. "Did you hear from Zach?"

"Yeah, he says that the doctor is allowing him to school from next week."

"That's great," I replied, slightly smiling. "Maybe he will join us for this thing too."

"I don't know about anyone else," Tony interrupted when we reached him. "But I'll be partnering with Tyler for this. Hope that's okay with you?"

"Yeah, of course." Tyler nodded. "You wanna go sign up now?"

Tony nodded in response, and both of them made their way towards the admin office.

"So..." I turned towards Alex, who was busy searching something in his locker. "Do you wanna partner up with me, or you gonna wait and partner up with Zach?"

I had my fingers crossed behind my back as he found his pen and closed his locker. Then he turned towards me with a smile on his face.

"I don't think Zach will take the efforts to even show up for this thing," He replied and we both chuckled. "So, I am okay with partnering up with you."

The smile on my face was pretty much obvious as we also made our way to the admin's office. Estela gave me a wink when she saw who I was partnering up with, and I couldn't help but give her a giddy smile in return.

Yup, I was whipped.

The rest of the day went by normally, and I was genuinely feeling calm until the moment I step out of the school building.

Winston and Estela were busy talking near the latter's Jeep, much to my annoyance. But I wasn't the only one watching them. Jessica looked at me knowingly through her car's windshield for a second, then shook her head and drove away.

Someone is clearly annoyed with me.

 "Hey, Charlie!" I turned to see Clay walking towards me. "How you been?"

These past few days I've seen very less of Clay Jensen around. Since the night of the party when Justin told me that he was busy getting stoned, I noticed Clay has been mostly keeping to himself.

"Hey, Clay," I greeted back, giving him a genuine smile. "Long time no see! I'm great, life's been normal. What have you been up too?"

"Just staying out of trouble, you know." He replied. "Hey, how is Zach by the way?"

I was confused at first about why was Clay asking me about Zach, but then looking at the situation these days I assumed that they may also had a falling out.

"He will be back next week." I answered, as Clay sighed in relief. "Doctor gave him the clearance. Alex messages him everyday."

"Great!" He nodded, thinking about something. "That's really great. Anyway, I just remembered I need to run some errands for my Mom. See you tomorrow!"

Before I could say anything else, Clay had already sprinted halfway towards his car.

It was weird to see him avoid his own friends, but it just proved that there's something very much wrong with him.

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There's no excuse I will make here for not updating for months, but I really hope you all understand when I say that this have been some very crazy months.

Thank you for still been here!

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