Are You Afraid of Musicals?

Chapter 6.3: Dress

Dani's pov:

It's been a month, a fucking entire month, and that ridiculous moment is still glued to my mind and just won't go away.

I don't know why but the scene of Big Red entering through the doors, seeing how changed he was... we didn't even recognized him at first... it's been coming to my mind here and there during the last month, making me feel... I don't know, it's weird.

It wasn't until Gina asked in shock if the new guy was Big Red that I finally saw it, and in that moment our table fell silent, everyone observing how he made his way to a empty table and sat there alone, not giving a flying fuck about the fact that he was eating alone.

He just sat there, irradiating a confident and mysterious aura that made everyone be a little curious about him, and which has made him very popular amongst the juniors and very respected by the seniors.

Cause no one knows his deal, he arrives alone, talks only if he has to, goes everywhere with his headphones on, eats alone and then leaves alone.

He's not interested in girls, not interested in making friends, he just goes everywhere with his serious and unapproachable demeanor, always quiet, always with that almost scary calmness.

I don't know how to explain it, but he seems dangerously calmed. Like... it's impossible to read his expression, it's not like he's hiding his emotions, it's more like he does not have any.

Ricky was one of his best friends since forever, that's why I let him into our group in sophomore year in the first place, and when we realized that the new guy was in fact Big Red we all immediately turned towards him, and even if Ricky seemed as surprised as the rest of us, he knew a couple of things.

He didn't say it this way because he knew that Gabby would feel awful, he used other words, but he basically told us that after she joined our group Big Red felt left behind and after a couple of weeks he started eating alone.

That much we knew, but what we didn't know is that Jave and his friends started going crazy on him. I imagined that as he was not spending as much time with us Jave would insult him, do the stupid things that he usually does, but it turns out that it was much worse than I could've imagined.

The lightest thing Jave did was throwing his food on him that day at the cafeteria... that day when I snapped at Big Res right after and cut ties permanently with him.

Ricky told us that that afternoon Jave and his friends followed Big Red when he was walking back home and they "sowed him his place", which was Ricky's way of lightly saying that they beat him up, broke his phone and threw him into the trash.

I know that cause I spoke with Ricky afterwards, knowing that he put things lightly so Gabby wouldn't feel bad, so I asked him to tell me the whole truth and I wish I hadn't.

He didn't tell me much more, but with the little he told me I realized that I had never been fully aware of to what point Jave's been bullying Big Red for years. Bullying that stopped for the while he joined our group, until I kicked him out.

So I forced myself to hear Ricky telling me about all the things he knew about, the constant insults, the intimidations, the throwing his things into the toilet... little and not so little things that happened almost daily and that of course affected him.

He told me that during this summer, Big Red's mother called him worried to see if he knew something, cause her son was now more quiet, hitting the gym everyday.

She was worried that he was becoming a completely new person, but as he talked I could only think about how I basically threw him to the lions and I didn't even thought about it twice.