I See Stars; Tyrus

Breaking free

(A/N trigger warning: fighting and mentions of grief)

There's not a star in Heaven that we can't reach. If we're trying, yeah, we're breaking free - High school Musical "Breaking Free"

"Hey." Cyrus reaches for my arm at the end of class as the rest of the students leave the , I swivel my head around to look at him, "Don't forget we have dinner tonight at my house."

I smile at him "I wouldn't miss it for the world, baby." Then shove the rest of my math homework in my bag and walk down the hall, Cyrus heads off in the other direction, towards the biology classroom. They just got a new reptile in and Cyrus has to see it, he told me he would explode if we didn't. I told him he's adorable.

Two girls push past me, running across the hallway, I don't think anything of it until another three follow quickly after. I stop one of them on their way. "What's going on?"

She smiles at me brightly, flicking her hair over one shoulder she says, "well cutie, Jonah Beck is back. But he doesn't compare to you."

I pat her on the shoulder, "that's great, thanks."

"Wait!" She calls out, "you can ask me more questions?" But I'm already down the hall.

A small crowd has formed out the front of the hallway, I push past them out to the front, where Beck is, wearing a cast on where we he was knifed. I see as Andi and Buffy come closer as well. Buffy goes up and high fives him but Andi hangs back. Which is weird.

Then Walker arrives and Jonah stops looking around like he was and smiles. And oh. Oh. It all suddenly becomes very clear, Andi's hunched shoulders and sober frown. Jonah's red cheeks.

"Oh hey TJ." Jonah nods at me, he leans slightly on Walker but not for balance. "Take care of everyone for me while I'm gone?" And I don't know if that means 'you can leave now' or 'you thought you could replace me?' But either way I reply with, "yeah, well you know me and Cyrus are super close now, I just want to spend every second with him. Buffy and Andi are a bonus."

Jonah grins, "yeah its really niceberg to have those type of people in your life."

"Sure is, so should we go get lunch?" I ask and the others nod, except for Andi. I watch as they follow Jonah and I hang back to talk to her.

"Wanna talk about it?" I ask gently when everyone has gone. Andi slowly nods her head.

"Its just." She inhales, "like I knew this was going to happen; Me and Jonah, we did date for real in middle school, but then Walker came along. Don't get me wrong he's great. But uh- They were suddenly really close. When I asked him about it he started getting really upset and crying and all. And he told me that he caught feelings for him. But that wasn't the worst part, the worst part was that Walker liked him back." She pauses and I let that sink in.

They liked each other, but could never be together because of society, because of bullies and everything.

Andi continues, "so I, I said that I would fake date him, Walker and Jonah have always been a thing, I've been the straightee stopping them from being caught."

I reach in for a hug and she takes it gladly, "god Andi that is awful."

"It wasn't so bad, I was torn for a little while, but I'm doing the right thing. The bad part is that I still love Jonah, even after all this time, but I know we can never be together." Andi sniffs and continues to hug me, I don't protest.

Andi pulls away after a little while and wipes her eyes, "but now, now I think they don't really even want to do the fake dating thing. So I don't know what to do."