"And I heard- this girl Anna, who's only a junior; she got like a bite mark tattoo."
"Yeah..! And her friends said like before she was totally normal. But now she only hangs out with this weird guy everyone forgot even went to our school."
"But I heard she was pregnant? You're not supposed to get tattoos when you're pregnant. Duh."
"Well nobodies talked to her parents; maybe they don't know."
Dean listened as his class gossiped on, the teacher not caring and his friends not caring who heard.
"What about those guys from the football team?"
"What about them? What happened?" This time it was Deans turn to chime in, he had friends on the team. He wasn't going to let trash get talked about them on his watch,
"Like four guys have dropped out of school. The last two got like really sick at their games- so sick that other guys on the team had to bring them home." Now that; Dean hadn't heard about, but he did know Adam had brought Alfie home from a game a few weeks ago due to a fever. He and Adam were pretty close, he doubted he'd remember but he made a mental note to try to figure it out.
The teacher quickly shushed everyone and brought the class into a boring lull of notes and other things they likely would never use in the future.
Government and medical coverups? Nobody in class needed to know that.
oOo
Dean strode down the hall to Adams' locker and leaned on the next to it. "Yo..." He trailed off and Adam looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
"Yo?" He responded, grabbing his books and binders and pushing his locker closed. "What's good." Adam tried making conversation, but as Dean had been told many times before; he was impatient and blatant.
Dean turned towards him and excitedly asked; "when's Alfie coming back? Cause like guys we're talking in third hour and-"
"He dropped out. School was too stressful and he had better things to do or whatever." Adam cut in leaving Dean even more curious than before. He had known Alfie since fifth grade, and even then the kid took pride in school work. He easily always had a better grade then Dean without even trying.
So he followed Adam closely, still thinking. "What about the scholarship from Stanford? Or his parents, his mom always wanted him to grad-"
"Just let it go..! He's working through some stuff right now that you wouldn't get." He snapped quickly and ducked into his class. That left Dean feeling guilty for pushing Adam to that point; but it also just made him want to know even more. But alas the bell was about to ring. So he ran off to his next hour in defeat and dismay that for some reason his academically gifted running back friend since childhood- dropped out due to stress. And of course the only one who knew anything was a guy that Dean had just made mad.
