Group Therapy

68 - Cephalgia-giving Asshole.

The next few days went by pretty fast, alex and l hung out more frequently to make up for the time we couldn't.

Ryder travelled to see Raleigh and is flying back in with her tonight, she still doesn't respond to anything he says but getting her to come with him was progress on it's own.

Mom is actually pretty chill now for some reason, not that I'm complaining.

Eli hadn't shown up to school a lot in the past week or so since we came back, l called him multiple times and text him pretty much every day, every single time he comes up with some lame excuse that's obviously fake, I'm planning to talk to him about it the second he shows up to school.

I've insisted on never leaving alex's side for at least a few days after what he tried to do and made him promise me he wouldn't try it again. I know a promise is just words to someone in such a dark mindset but he didn't lock the door, he wanted to be found; he didn't want to die. He was just frustrated and tired and wanted it to stop but he didn't want to die. In the past seven years we've been friends in alex has never broken a promise, l hope he doesn't break this one.

Meanwhile nothing out of the ordinary happened to me, other than aella coming over to play with hunter a few times it's been pretty quiet.

"What's the answer to number 7?" l ask alex through my phone.

"Uhh l got... -394, what about you?"

"-394? I got 1300!"

"One of us is gotta be wrong."

"I'm pretty sure it's me." l sigh in frustration.

"Hey come on, you don't have to be good at this crap to be considered smart." he says, trying to brighten up the mood.

"Easy for you to say, you're a straight A student. You wouldn't understand the struggle of working your ass off and still being considered an idiot purely because you're not good at something that you will literally never fucking need in your entire fucking life." l growl, beginning to feel the adrenaline pumping in my veins.

"Relax, it's just a stupid math problem."

"A stupid math problem that plays a role in how I'm going to spend the rest of my life." l huff, trying to control my anger.

"Okay moving on-"

"I still need the answer for this goddamn question!"

"Okay okay, l told you it's -394." he replies

I write down the answer in my math notebook, accidentally pressing on the pen too hard causing the tip to snap off and the ink to pour out of the pen.

"Oh fuck!" l curse, standing up and throwing the broken pen in the trash can.

"What is it?" alex asks.

"l broke the damn pen."

"How did that even happen? The pen is hard metal." he refers to the pen l always use, a metal one like the ones used in banks.

"l pressed on it too hard." l tear the page out of my notebook and throw it in the trash can.

"You need to chill out woman."

I sigh and sit back down "You mind if you just send me the answers so l can turn this in because I'm already late to school? I don't think a math assignment is worth sacrificing my mental health for."

"Sure. But you're taking this too personally, it's just a paper."

"Let me repeat what l said earlier; a paper that determines how I'm going to spend my future." l scoff.