"The most common form of despair is not being who you are." — Søren Kierkegaard
FREE PERIOD WAS the kind of class every student prayed for and nobody knew what to do with.
The room arranged itself the way rooms always did when authority stepped back — clusters formed, phones appeared, someone in the back started a conversation loud enough for three rows to hear. A girl near the window finished homework. Two boys by the door were locked into something competitive on their screens, elbows touching, completely silent.
I watched all of it.
Jose was beside me, theoretically on his phone but actually monitoring the entire room the way he always did — aware of everything, pretending to focus on nothing.
He poked my cheek once. I gave him the look. He poked it again.
"Por qué?"he asked, shaking his head. "You're such a mood killer, Raven."
Behind every one of those faces was a story. Some good, some bad. Some beautiful and some sad. At least some of them had gotten past the bad ones.
I was still working on mine.
The bell rang. Jose was already scanning the hallway before we were fully out the door. He spotted what he was looking for — a blonde on the other side of the corridor, moving with the particular energy of someone who knew they were being watched and had decided to be fine with it.
He glanced at me sideways. "Later alligator."
"In a while crocodile," I said, already turning toward my next class.
He grinned — the full version, the one that meant he was actually pleased — and crossed the hallway.
I didn't look back.
A few weeks in and Malik still hadn't mastered the art of arriving at school in a functional state.
He fell into step beside me in the hallway with the coordination of someone whose body was present and whose mind had submitted a formal request to join later. I caught his arm when he drifted toward the wall. Caught him again when Riko — broad-shouldered, Australian, perpetually unimpressed — stepped out of a doorway and Malik walked directly into him.
"Watch it," Riko said.
"Yeah. Yeah." Malik waved him off and kept walking.
I leaned close to say something and caught it — faint, underneath whatever gum he'd been chewing. Something that had no business being in a school hallway at eight in the morning.
"Malik."
"Don't."
"I wasn't going to ask if you're okay."
He glanced at me sideways. Something shifted in his expression — not gratitude exactly, but the recognition of someone who understood the rules without having to be taught them.
"Reasons," he simply stated.
"Those better be good ones."
"They're not." No drama in it. Just fact. "They're really not."
I kept my hand on his arm until we reached the classroom.
YOU ARE READING
That October Night
Novela Juvenil"Maybe dreams do come true after all. Even dreams we chase at midnight hours, Shorts." At least Ray had dreams to chase because I ran away from mine. My dreams aren't the kinda dreams I could just wake up at midnight and chase 'em. I have nightm...
