Mute (BoyXBoy)

Chapter 25

The next three months went by pretty quickly. I never got the chance to confront Axel about him leaving Shylo when he needed him most, it seemed like every time I tried he would somehow find a way to get disappear once again.

Mute and I had become good friends after everything that happened, even if it did sometimes feel a little one sided. He even started teaching me how to draw, though the progress was incredibly slow, he was patient, always adjusting the way I held the pencil, showing me different ways to get straight lines, everything. I found out Emmy was also in my school too, after which she cracked a joke similar to the first sentence she said to me about no one seeing the little camera girl, despite the fact that she see's everything then giving me a wink and smile. Even Kyle started coming around and hanging out more often. I found out he and Kevin were never actually dating, that instead, they concocted the dating story to try and make me jealous so that I might show interest in Kyle. We all had a laugh about that one, and it explained why I never actually saw them together, or why he had asked me out the day Kavaar and I had our first date.

Emmy called our little group The Avenger Squad and had asked Mute to draw us all up in costume, much to the annoyance of Kyle, who thought superheroes were dumb and overrated. We did everything together, even going so far as to make sure we could get our lunches scheduled at the same time. It wasn't difficult for me to adjust the new time frames, due to my credits finally getting transferred from my home school, making it so that I only had two classes a day. We all talked college, what we wanted to do when we left, what to do for our senior prank, everything. My mother was delighted I finally made some friends and was even more happy when I invited them over for my birthday a few weeks ago. She went a little crazy with the entire event though, inviting pretty much the entire neighborhood, making what I had thought would be a simple get together into what basically became a block party.

Kavaar and I had become even closer than before as well. We did our best to maintain our secret, carefully making sure we weren't seen together in any type of intimate situation. At least, that's what we thought anyway. Apparently, the entire Avenger Squad had their suspicions, but were confirmed when Emmy saw us kissing the night of my eighteenth birthday block party. They had already agreed not to say anything but still took us a while to actually act like a couple in front of them. They seemed happy for us though, genuinely happy. I trusted all of them, something I didn't think I'd be able to say about anyone aside from the characters in my books. It was nice, though, to finally be able to let down my guard for a change. Mute still clearly had a drug problem, however. He began showing up late more often to our get togethers, and sometimes just outright missing them. We'd see him in school the next day, eyes bloodshot, not fully functioning, hardly able to stand up straight or maintain his balance.

He became more aggressive, prone to leaving the room in anger over simple things. We had tried to get him some help, offered any and every solution we could think of, and even ones we searched online for, going to so far as to getting my mother involved, hoping she would be able to figure something out. For a while, it seemed like he was getting better. He was showing up on time, having fun, smiling, basically everything that made him Mute, but then something shifted. He relapsed, fell right back into the pattern of being late, missing events, everything. Kavaar decided to make a last-ditch attempt to contact his father to see if he could help but was simply met with him screaming into the phone that his son doesn't and would never have a drug problem.

He had stopped showing up to school, wouldn't answer his door when we came to check on him, even his drawing began to suffer. There was no attention to detail, they became sloppy, simply thrown together lines that often times were unable to tell what was even drawn in the first place. Kyle had talked about kicking him from the group, much to the anger of myself and Emmy. It actually began to cause a rift in our entire group, something that came to a head a few days ago. Mute had walked into Kavaar's class room for his fourth period after missing every other class that day, but didn't even make it to his desk before collapsing, his body shaking uncontrollably on the floor. An ambulance had to be called and he was rushed to the emergency room where he has been for the passed few days. We've been taking turns staying the night here with him, just talking to him, hoping he would wake from his medically induced coma. The doctors said he was lucky to be alive, a few moments later and he wouldn't have made it at all, but it was going to be a long road to recovery.