Trophy Child (On Hold)

Chapter 9

I thought that having Eric back would fix things. Maybe not everything, but something. Instead, in the days that followed, I still found myself filled with the same sense of general unhappiness and impending doom that I had been before we made up.

Mostly, it was the thought of screwing up somehow and losing everyone a second time that terrified me, but there was also the fact that Benny, Eric, and I still hadn't talked about starting Honorable Mention back up. Part of me wanted to say something but, at the same time, my confidence in my music was pretty dead. More than dead, even. It was laying dissected on an autopsy table. 

Not that we had enough guys anymore to even be considered a band anyway.

Sitting in math class, staring at an equation I wouldn't be able to solve in a million years, those emotions gnawing at me became more prominent. I needed to get out, to escape. 

"Can I go to the bathroom?" 

I'd been doing it all too often, leaving class to wander like maybe walking around would somehow solve my problems.

I think it only ever made them seem bigger though. 

Mr. Reid looked at me with something like irritation, and I knew that he thought I was using it as an excuse to get out of my work. It wasn't like it was an uncommon thing in a high school. He nodded anyway, so I pushed myself up, signed out on the sheet by the door, and left. 

What I wasn't expecting was to see Eric and Phil when I turned the corner at the end of the hall.

"-you just take his side like that?" Phil was saying, one fist balled up at his side and one bunched up in Eric's shirt as he held him against a row of lockers.

"Because you're wrong on this one, Phil," Eric replied. " Casey's your friend, dude. Why are you so set on hating him for this?"

"He isn't my friend." 

I took a few steps back before they could see me, and hid against the wall to eavesdrop. I'm pretty sure that I had a right to, given I was the topic of conversation.  There was a rule about that somewhere, I was sure.

"Until the talent show, he was." 

"Why are you defending him?" Phil demanded. "He ruined our chances, Eric. In front of our families."

Eric looked surprised more than anything. "And that meant he deserved what you did to him on stage? You can't possibly believe that."

Phil didn't respond to that, so Eric continued. 

"Just talk to him. Give him another chance and be done with it. Bygones and all that. It isn't like he purposely sabotaged you."

"You're supposed to," Phil paused for a second, struggling for words," you're supposed to have my back. Not Casey's."

"Not if you're going to treat people like that, man," Eric said. "I can't back that."

"He made us look like complete idiots."

"We would have done that just fine even without him," Eric joked with a smile.

"Can you just take things seriously for once?" Phil snapped.

I thought that he might actually hit him. Instead, the cold fury on Phil's face dulled to sadness for a second, and I realized that that's what he was. Sad.

"I am serious," Eric's tone was completely honest. "We all made that mess. You need to calm down and think about it for a minute, there's no reason for you to be this bent out of shape about it."

That was the wrong thing to say, and even I knew it. Phil would never admit to being wrong, especially now that everyone was against him. His pride would never let him.