may shatter on impact (tronnor)

36. Explanations & Apologies

Connor tells me that it wasn't my fault. It was Zoe and Clara's for pressing the subject when they definitely shouldn't have, he claims. It was Mrs. Reed's for bringing up the subject, and Maddy Anchor's for continuing it.

It wasn't my fault.

I tried to apologize to Tyde in the morning, and on the bus, and before first period, and in every hallway I saw him in, and during lunch, and maybe I was becoming a little too obsessive with apologizing to my brother.

I spent lunch worrying about it, while Connor tried his best to comfort me.

"Everyone here is treating you the same - "

"Y-yeah, because I-I was just as messed up b-before...t-they knew about it."

"Yeah, but - "

And so on.

Zoe tried, too. During history, when everyone was careful to avoid the subject of everything and anything that had to do with it, she talked me through all the ways that everything could possibly be okay and all the ways that I could try getting him to forgive me.

I couldn't bring myself to believe that it was going to be, so she just sighed and finished the classwork.

After school, Zoe, Connor, and Nora went with me to go find Tyde before he got on the bus. We found him waiting for it to arrive just outside of the building, playing Crossy Road - his newest obsession - on his phone.

He didn't say anything to any of us, just glared at me and went back to his phone.

"Umh, Tyde, right?" Zoe starts.

"Yeah?"

"I'm Zoe, and this is Nora, and that's Connor, and we just wanted to - "

"Apologize on Troye's behalf?"

Zoe is speechless for a moment, but continues after a glance from Nora. "No, we wanted to, just, sort of, explain what happened, I guess."

"Fine," he says, sighing, and locking his phone. "Go. Explain."

"We were in history," Zoe says, "me and Troye, that is. And we were talking about the evolution of guns and things, and our teacher tried using what happened at your old school as an example, for some reason, I have no idea what she was thinking. Anyways, the class got into a debate about it and we just got into too much detail, and she wouldn't let Troye leave the room, and started calling him by his - your - last name. And everyone stopped and put the pieces together. Troye couldn't do anything - "

"What's your point?" Tyde interrupted.

"That you shouldn't be blaming Troye for what happened," Connor told him.

Tyde only sighed. "Fine. Whatever. I'm sorry; I shouldn't have yelled at you, Troye. I was never really that mad at you, specifically. There's something - "

"Boys!" an old woman yells. "Are you getting on the bus or not?"

"Y-yeah!" Tyde yells back, pushing between Zoe and I to get on and find his seat with Ben. "Troye, we'll talk about this later."

"S-sorry, I have to g-go, but t-thank you," I told them quickly before following Tyde and sitting alone in the back with my forehead pressed up against the window and my lips turned into a sort of smile. At least he wasn't mad at me anymore.