Wither

Chapter One: Strangers

Author's Note

Look at this foreshadowing and symbols yo.

Jill Andrews' "Lost It All" is where I want to point this book to??

Thank you for reading loves, this is very confusing.

December 12th

THIS COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED. 

The words are as clear as the pronounced wrinkles framing Principal Picard's thinning pink lips. One look from the aging woman has everyone in their own respectable seats  staring down at their hands, fumbling with the fact that they had mutated into a selfish body of students who sought the camera more than their own presumed-dead classmate. 

Picard doesn't use the microphone like the other teachers, she simply stands there, cool and collected while allowing her eyes to glance over the deadly quiet sea of teenagers crammed into three sections of faded black bleachers. The ones in the back, sitting in the futherest corner, aren't even saying anything- which is unheard of. 

Rose Maverick turns to glance at them- because those kids in the back, the ones that don't actually belong anywhere else so they just all mutually began to stick to one another in effort to survive high school- are his best friends. They stare down at Picard, chewing on their nails nervously and scooting in tighter as if they were attempting to hide in one another's shadow. 

Skittish things, Rose's dear friends were. Just like him. 

Today, he sits next to Tansy, surrounded by her edgy friends who finally take the time to stop pretending like they don't care- because they actually do, Rose can tell by the way they were using the study of their cuticles as a distraction from the cold reality that is now- to give their full attention to their principal on the basketball court. 

"A student is missing," Picard allows her voice to echo through out the gymnasium, lifting up one thick eyebrow to see if her words had forced any results out of her students. And it did.

They all leaned forward in their seats, pocketing their smartphones in exchange for giving their principal their undivided attention.  

Tansy's own face is resting in his shoulder, nosing at his throat as she wraps a hand around his back and brings him closer. The only time Tansy can ever stand Rose is when she actually needs him, but he doesn't say that because it's apparently insensitive to say the truth. 

"Ethan Malloup, a seventeen year-old boy who has been a student of this school for his entire academic life, and you," she says it like they all committed the heinous crime of pretending to know him for a chance to get on some news station that covered county-wide. "You discredit his entire existence, it seems, just to grab a thirty-second time slot on some news station?!"

The students who obviously committed these transgressions immediately snap their heads down, eyes fixated on their hands which are placed in their laps and their shoulders turn slack- as if they are attempting to appear smaller. As if trying to make themselves look smaller will erase any of the damage done or ease the penalty. 

"Did I not make myself clear last week," she continues, folding her hands behind her back as she walks across the court, clean converse hardly making a noise on the polished wooden floor. Picard may seem strict in this very moment, but she actually wore bell-bottom jeans and crocheted tops like it could still be the sixties.  

The entire gym nods and mutters of 'yes ma'am' echo like a scratched record. The fist Tansy has made in Rose's sweater pulls tighter at the sudden wave of noise- like it will come and force her to go with it, as if she hadn't anchored her limbs around her brother's, maybe her body would be drifting up with those voices and carried out of the cracked windows in the building's walls.