The Ripple Effect

In Absence

Daniel Wright woke up on the 9th of December to the usual sound of his alarm. The boy opened his eyes with a sigh and slowly turned to his alarm clock to turn it off. For some reason or another the boy was hesitant in starting the day. When Daniel thought hard enough and finally mentally adjusted to the new day he realised that he had no memory of the previous day. As it would turn out, the boy had holes in memory ever since the previous Friday. While Daniel wanted to believe that the day went just as usual, with nothing strange whatsoever happening to him or around him, something deep inside of him told him that he was ignored for the entire day,every day since Friday, December 5th, no matter how hard he tried to get anyone's attention.

Daniel questioned the likeliness of that happening and ultimately decided that whatever was giving him that feeling wasn't telling him the truth and continued with the assumption that the days went normally. He was a bit suspicious as to what would have lead to him getting that kind of notion, but overall chose to ignore the feeling and go about his usual morning routine to go to school.

First, Daniel sluggishly got out of bed, then got dressed for the day before heading downstairs to make and eat his breakfast. After breakfast, the boy went back upstairs to brush his teeth and gather his supplies for school before leaving the house to catch the bus to school on time. Lucky for Daniel, when he arrived at the bus stop the bus was already there and students were beginning to walk into the vehicle. Daniel followed with the rest of the students by filing into the line they had instinctually made to board the bus.

The bus ride to the school was as obnoxious as usual and the bus arrived at the school campus at the usual time right before school started and the way off of the bus through the sea of students was as chaotic and annoying as usual. The day so far was normal. After getting off of the bus, Daniel swiftly walked to his first period class to make it on time, as getting off of the bus this time around took longer than usual.

When Daniel got to class he was surprised to see that the girl who normally sat next to him, Acacia Taylor, wasn't present. Daniel knew that everyone had their days that they needed to take off because of sickness or vacation, but Acacia Taylor was far from the kind that would take off days because of something like a bad cough or because her parents wanted to go somewhere; especially this early into the new semester. In the previous semester Acacia had arrived to school on multiple occasions sick and as far as Daniel knew she had a perfect attendance rate like himself.

With or without Acacia, Daniel still went about the usual for his first class and left to the remainder of his classes upon its conclusion. When lunch finally came around, the boy slowly left his class in no rush to get to the cafeteria to purchase his daily dose of poison with the money his mother put into his school account. Since Daniel piddled about his time going down to the cafeteria, he ended up close to the very end of the line to receive a "meal" from the school. Even with this fact, however, Daniel showed no care since he would always end up throwing away the food which he obtained right after he left the line.

After Daniel emptied the balance on his school account and threw away the paper tray with all of the food still on it he walked over to Acacia's table to see Alexis Smith sitting there alone.

"What's-" Daniel started as he was sitting down before Alexis reached across the table and slapped the boy. "What the hell was that for?" Daniel asked, infuriated.

"Your friends kicked the shit out of Acacia, that's what's wrong!" Alexis yelled with anger. After the girl said this Daniel's eyes widened.

"They did what?" Daniel asked with anger still staining his voice.

"First they were picking on her during lunch on Friday and then after school they ganged up on her then took her into a vacant classroom and started beating on her and then one of the assholes who came clean said it almost turned into rape!" Alexis rambled with tears falling from her eyes, "I swore I would protect her and then that goes and happens! What the fuck is wrong with them?!"