Good Things Fall Apart

Schism

Victor floats through the end of the semester, ghostlike.

Finals have crept up on him, pushed to the back of his list of priorities. Victor stares at a piece of paper covered in numbers completely foreign to him. There are equations he's supposed to know to plug everything into, but he comes up blank.

His whole life feels like that right now. Just variables, data, all of the formulas wiped away, leaving him with nothing but impossible equations.

The same happens for his second exam of the day. Though he hadn't read the final two books of the semester, he had read the rest. And yet, he can't conjure a single worthwhile answer to his English Lit essay questions. Eyes stinging from the strain of keeping them open, Victor just writes "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," over and over again, filling the page, muscles cramping as he grips his pencil so hard that it snaps in half.

That's all he has for Monday, thankfully. Which means he has a fresh opportunity to bomb everything tomorrow. Biology's going to be a disaster for sure.

He gets plenty of ghastly looks in the hallways, no doubt because of the enormous bruise that's taken residence on his face, a rotted blueberry stretched across his orbital bone. It throbs with every step; every blink sends a dull ache through Victor's face. His midsection doesn't feel any better, but at least he can hide that.

"Victor?"

Almost falling on his face at being addressed, Victor turns to the source of the voice.

"What happened to you?" Lake asks. The moment is bizarre, so much so that Victor dissociates from it. He wants to laugh. Lake's typical demeanor has shattered, completely wrenched apart by the sight of Victor's face.

Victor clears his throat. "I, uh. I fell," he says. He wishes he'd had the mental energy to prepare a convincing lie, but there's not much going on upstairs at the moment. Just unforgiving tundra, starved for daylight.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" she asks, voice careful. "Felix told me that the two of you haven't been talking. He's really worried."

"Yeah, just another person I'm disappointing, I guess," Victor says. He shoulders his bag and turns to walk away, but Lake grabs his arm.

"I'm serious, Victor. He's worried about you. And so am I. Did something happen with Benji?"

His name is an icicle breaking from Victor's eaves and crashing to the pavement of his core. "I don't want to talk about Benji right now."

Lake presses her lips together and pulls her hand away. "Okay. Just. Please take care of yourself, Victor. School's over in two days, right? After that things get easier for a couple months."

"Sure. Yeah."

With a final apprehensive look, Lake pats his arm then turns around. She casts him a final look of concern as she leaves, but all it does is make him want to shrink away. All he can do is bring other people down. Would they just be better off if he disappeared?

He gets to his locker and takes a labored breath, the still-developing bruise on his side a tangible reminder of what's waiting for him at home. His mother hasn't spoken a word since that night. It's been tearful glances and pronged silence. Not even so much as a "thank you" for putting himself at risk to protect her, to shield them all. Of course he knows it's more complicated than that. He's not so childish to ignore the nuance of it. But the fact of the matter is his father had become a threat, especially to him, and they'll be better off without him.

At least, that's what he's telling himself to hush the dissonance in his head.

The whole family had held their breath over breakfast at the sound of life in the hallway, the jingle of duffel bag zippers as he'd come to claim his belongings. There had been a pause, during which Victor's stomach swooped downward, but there had been no knock, no voice, nobody barging through the door. Just the sound of receding footsteps.