Getting Wilder ✔️

issue fourteenth: cold asf

I didn't go to school on Wednesday nor Thursday. I kept calling Wilder diligently any time that I could, leaving him slews of messages that he never replied to. With each ring of the phone, my stomach knotted tighter and tighter.

I decided to go to school on Friday, and everything was- in the words of William Shakespeare- weird as fuck.

Right from the moment I entered, I could hear whispers and talks. I felt strange anxiety clawing in my stomach as if a vagabond animal yearning to escape. After the glue incident and the fight with Matt, I was now in the spotlight for way longer than I wanted to. The moment I reached my locker in the morning, I was apprehended by Cam and Ray.

"Dude, what the hell is wrong with you?" Cam asked as I turned warily to him. "Why are you freezing us out like this?"

"Nico, that entire fight-" Ray shook her head, biting her lip. "Why won't you let us help?"

I sighed, feeling suddenly guilty. I knew my behaviour towards them had been unwarranted. I vaguely wondered if they had seen my article about third-wheeling but decided against asking them.

"I've...just been kinda messed," I shook my head. "I'm...sorry."

They exchanged surprised glances before Cam's face softened. "We're glad you look alright."

He messed up my hair and I punched him playfully against his shoulder. Thankfully, the cut near my jaw and most of my body had healed for the maximum part, leaving me with a dull throbbing ache in my body.

"What did Matt do to piss you off?" Ray asked as we made our way to class that day. She shook her head, her eyes deadly serious. "Not that anyone is surprised about his suspension mind you. They just know that you had some fight and....well..." she shuddered. "It's been....quite the news."

My stomach jolted slightly. What kinda news had it been? I realized I didn't want to know. I gritted my teeth at the memory of him. I didn't want to let them know some secret that wasn't mine to tell so I decided to be as vague as possible. "It's...something to do with Kailey."

I increased my pace, aware of them exchanging glances with each other. I was thankful however that they didn't pester. "Nic," Cam said as I turned to face him. "If you're free today, I'm thinking we should go out. There's this great new restaurant that opened," he grinned. "It has a Sherlock Holmes theme. We thought you might like it."

I gazed at him for a while and found myself mildly intrigued by the idea. "Sure. Sounds good."

He nodded and gently squeezed my shoulder. "After classes, yeah?" I nodded at him as he and Ray left for their history lesson and I made my way to my biology one. More whispers followed me when I entered the classroom and I felt my neck heating up in embarrassment. However, I decided to simply keep my head low and quickly made my way towards the last bench, careful not to tangle my own legs with each other.

I sat at the far end, fishing out my phone and decided to text Wilder again. I didn't know how sincere he was when it came to classes and whether he would even check his phone during one, but I was going to try.

Our teacher walked in after a while and I lowered the phone further, making sure it was hidden from his line of sight under the desk as he started droning on. It was something about the DNA.

I unlocked my phone which was thankfully on silent mode and gazed in shock at the slew of notifications incoming so rapidly that I was afraid my phone would crash and shut down. I opened the notifications to see that the blog now had ten thousand hits. I gaped at it, my heart beating somewhere near my throat. Below the article was a number of comments from stranger profiles that I was sure weren't from our school.