No Matter What (Jaspar AU)

6. Strings

Caspar Lee
The next day I actually got up early for once and ended up getting to school half an hour before it started. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think it was something to do with wanting to find out more about the mysterious boy I sat next to in maths. The only problem was, I didn't actually have maths that day.

I walked to my form room and looked inside. There were a few people in there but no teacher. I decided that I just as well go and sit down in there, rather than walk around outside for half an hour. As I opened the door and walked in, I realised that Niomi was already there. She was sat in her space at her desk, playing a game on her phone. I walked up and sat in my space, which was on the desk to the right of her desk. She looked up at me, away from her phone, and smiled.

"Hey Caspar!" She said happily.
"Hey Niomi." I replied. She went back to playing her game. A thought struck me all of a sudden; Niomi is Marcus' girlfriend, which means he might have told her about what happened between him and Joe. She might tell me if I asked her. I decided to give it a try.

"Hey Niomi..." I said to get her attention.
She looked up at me. "Yeah?" She said.
"I was just wondering if I could ask you something." I told her.
She nodded. "Course you can." She said, smiling at me.
"It's about Joe..." I said and she cut me off.
"Caspar, I can't..." She began saying. But I did exactly what she did to me, and cut her off.
"Listen, I know Marcus doesn't like to talk about it, but just hear me out ok?" I asked her.

She sighed.
"Ok fine, but if Marcus finds out I told you, I'm going to tell him that you forced it out of me." She snapped.
"Tell him whatever you want." I told her.
"I just want to know what happened between Marcus and Joe when Joe's mum died. I asked Marcus, but he was very vague." I said. Niomi sighed again, and nodded.

She took a breath, but then paused before she spoke, as if trying to figure out how to explain it to me.

"Marcus and Joe used to be best friends. They've known each other since they were 5. They went all the way through school together. But when they were 14, Joe's mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer. They tried everything to save her, but they couldn't. She died two weeks after Joe's 15th birthday." She paused for a second. I could tell that this had been a hard time for her. "Joe was devastated. We all were. Tracey, his mum, was such a lovely woman. She was so kind. She was like an aunt to Marcus as well, so it was hard for him to see her go. We all tried to help Joe, but he shut everyone out, even Zoe. We all thought it was just a faze and that he would come back eventually, but he never did. We tried everything." Niomi stopped talking. She looked so sad as she stared into the distance, refusing to look at me.

"Why did he do it?" I asked.

"Um, well me and Tanya have a theory... Have you ever read John Green's 'Paper Towns'?" She asked. I shook my head. "Well, in the book it talks about people having strings inside them, strings the hold them together. And when you feel emotional pain, it's because those strings are breaking. And we think that when Joe's mum died, so many of those strings broke, and he just didn't have it inside of him to fix them again." Niomi said. As she said this, the bell rang. Gradually the classroom filled up. Joe was one of the last to walk in. I felt a strange pain in my chest as he did. Maybe Niomi was right, maybe he was broken. The question was, could he ever be fixed?
~~~
Over the next week I tried talking to Joe on multiple occasions. But it just felt wrong. It felt wrong of me to just waltz in here and act like I knew everything about him. It felt wrong of me to try and talk to him when I knew he didn't want to talk to me. And it felt wrong of me to have pried into his past when it was none of my business. But there was something about Joe, something that made me want to take those strings and hold them together until they fixed themselves, something that made me want to know everything about him and protect him from the smallest of pain.

It was weird. And I tried naming it pity, but that wasn't the right name for it. I guess I just cared about him. And I guess that after what he had been through, I just didn't want him to have to go through anything else. So on the Friday, at the end of my second week in school, as I was sat in maths next to Joe, I turned around to him and started a conversation.

It was awkward at first. It took me a while to get a decent response out of him. But I managed it. And we soon got chatting about complete shit really, but at least it was something.

Then, ten minutes before the end of the lesson, Mr Bennet, our maths teacher, announced a project. We had two weeks to do it in, and we were to work with the person next to us. The project meant having to do research outside of our lessons. This was good for me, it meant spending time with Joe.

I realise that it sounds weird, but I just wanted to help him. He didn't want the help but he needed it. God knows he needed it. And I might not have been able to fix those broken strings inside of him, but maybe, just maybe, I could make some new ones.

A/N
Just a short one today, but I felt like updating. I'm going to try and update a bit more regularly now. I think this chapter was quite cute, don't you?
Anyway, this book is almost on 60 reads, which I know isn't very much to other people, but to me it's amazing considering this was just something I decided to do because I was bored one day. Thanks so much for reading,
Meg xx