Grayson fiddles with his fingers beneath his desk as his classmates talk around him.

"You're still a bit new here, right?" Merrit's soft voice enters his ears as she addresses the boy who had transferred at the beginning of the semester. "What's your favorite color?"

"Turquoise," Everest answers. "Though a nice olive green is second."

Grayson's hands still.

"What about your favorite class?"

"Probably science. Learning things about the world around me and knowing that when I get older I can discover more of it is one of the greatest things to me."

Grayson rockets to his feet, slamming his hands on the top of his desk, chest heaving, eyes zeroed in on a lopsided circle drawn near the middle of his desk.

"Grayson?" Merrit calls softly. Grayson shakes his head violently before all but sprinting out of the room.

His hands tangle in his hair as he walks down the hallway, shallow breaths all he can manage.

"Hey, Grayson!" Kieran turns his laptop to face his brother. "Did you know that they found creatures in deep-sea volcanoes? Ones we've never even seen!"

"That's pretty cool," Grayson mumbles, attention on his phone as he texts his friends. When Kieran doesn't continue, he shuts his screen off and lays it on the table, screen down, and looks at his brother. "What'd they discover?"

Kieran's dorky grin whenever Grayson listened to him talk about some science thing is embedded in Grayson's mind permanently.

He's never gonna listen to him talk for hours on end, about anything. Ever.

Grayson sits in the middle of the hallway floor, hands pressed to his ears, eyes trained on the ground, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Even when the bell rings and students flood the hallway he doesn't move.

"Science," he mumbles. "Science."

Grayson feels a few feet nudge him as the hallways clear. The bell rings again and Grayson brings his knees up to his chest, sobbing quietly as Kieran flashes through his mind.

His favorite thing doesn't know he's gone. The stars still come out and scientists still discover new life and he doesn't get to see any of it.

What's the point?