OCTAVEUS
I WOKE up in a strange bed with white sheets and pillows behind my head, and was immediately swept up in painful thoughts and memories. I tried to move, but I seemed to be restrained from the waist down by something. My head was throbbing and I felt a stinging pain on my left forearm. I rotated my head, taking in my surroundings.
There was a white curtain hung from the ceiling that was pulled out so that there was a small area between it and wall on the opposite side of my bed.  I had a huge white gauze pad taped with medical tape over my forearm, a slight red tinge seeping through the gauze. Jessie was sitting by my bed in a plastic chair with his head in his hands, the same as he always was whenever I woke up.
"Why, Vee," he muttered at me, lifting his head. "Why?"
He helped me sit up and I just stared at my hands in my lap silently, not wanting to answer. He shook his head.
"You know," he said, but not harshly like he'd usually speak to me. "If you'd told us that you were upset we could have helped you, or at least treated you better. I would have treated you better."
Silence hung in the air after that last comment. I lifted my gaze to look at my brother. His brown eyes were shadowed by his hair, and inside them I saw an emotion I'd never seen Jessie show towards me. He'd obviously slept in the chair all night; his shoulder length brown hair was really messy and knotted on one side, like he'd slept with his head on his hand, and he was wearing the same clothes that he'd been wearing before I'd passed out last night. (Apparently they drugged me twice as much at night so that I actually "slept".) There were bags under his eyes, like he'd kept waking up throughout the night and had only actually gotten two hours of sleep, and his eyes were bloodshot. He watched me for a second to see if I was going to say anything, but then just sat back in his chair and sighed when I didn't.
"Fine. Don't talk." He snapped lightly. "But you might want to know, Gwen came to see you when you were asleep." He waited to see if I'd respond, then continued. "She wanted me to tell you that Summer and Drew know."
I looked at him when he told me that. "She told them?" I asked quietly.
"Not exactly," he re-positioned himself in the plastic chair. "Mom and Dad told some of the more important adults at your school about it and somehow some of the popular students found out and spread the rumor. I'm pretty sure everyone knows the rumor, it's just that the story changed each time it was told. First you choked yourself, then you hung yourself, then you jumped into a busy highway during rush-hour, then you put your head through a concrete wall," he sighed loudly. "Oh, how stupid humans can be with their assumptions. Anyway, Gwen only told them the real version of what happened."
I glared at the blanket over my legs silently. 'Why am I not surprised. Of course everyone knows. How would they not,' I thought bitterly.
"You know," Jessie said quietly, as if reading my thoughts. "Despite what you may think, you weren't the only one that was hurt Wednesday." He looked at me, and I noticed that his eyes were red and puffy, like he'd been rubbing them. "I know I was probably part of the reason you did it, but--"
"You weren't." I said suddenly, my voice cracking. "You weren't even close to the reason I did it."
Jessie looked at me in disbelief. "Yeah, right. And I'm not. . ." He stopped himself from saying something.
"Just because you're hard on me during training doesn't make me want to die." I said quieter than before. Jessie sighed, although it sounded like a sigh of relief.
"The only reason I'm hard on you is because you need it."
I stared at him. "What?"
He looked around, as if making sure that no one else was around, then continued in a low voice. "Mom and Dad don't want you to know, but your muscular disease is worse than they tell you it is. I'm supposed to be hard on you, because if I'm easy on you, then you'll never learn to use your legs properly."
"So. . . fighting is going to help my walk?"
"No," he sighed. "I'll just start at the beginning, okay? Just. . . don't fall asleep on me.
"Mom and Dad haven't told you all of the details about your muscular disease. It weakens and deforms the muscles in your legs, which is what you were told. But what they didn't tell you is that if you don't use your legs, the disease can spread, taking out other limbs or organs until you're literally a dead hunk of flesh. Since your disease was in your legs, there's a higher chance that it will spread first to take out your stomach and other organs in that general area. If the disease reaches your stomach, you can't digest food. If you can't digest anything, you begin to starve. Then you stop walking because, congrats, the disease has taken out your legs altogether, and the disease spreads to your lungs, and can you guess what happens then? You stop breathing and either suffocate or starve to death, whichever comes first." He paused. "If you use your legs frequently, the disease can't spread to other parts of your body, so it stays confined in that area until doctors can figure out a way to get rid of it. When your legs are hurting, it's because the disease is trying to spread, but can't.
"Luckily for you, your disease was a minor case. It won't spread half as quickly as in worse scenarios. But with how many times you've injured your legs, you have less of a chance that you'll ever learn to walk properly, so the muscles in your legs won't ever reform themselves to allow you to correct your walk. By teaching you how to fight without weapons, we might be able to eventually get you to use your legs in combat, which may help you walk right."
I stared at him, unable to find something to say. "But. . . why did they hide it from me?" I said eventually.
"No one wanted you to think you were going to die." He said. "But now I guess it's a little late for that."
I looked down at my own legs. "Oh."
Jessie sighed. "Look, I'm sorry, I just thought you had the right to know." He watched my face for expression.
"I'm sorry too," I responded.
"For what? You did absolutely nothing to me."
"Exactly. I never did anything for you when I should've. If I'd known you were constantly fighting me to keep me alive, I would've done more for you."
"Well," Jessie confessed. "To be honest, I didn't always fight you to keep the disease from spreading. You're really annoying."
I snorted. "Gee, thanks."
"And sassy."
I rolled my eyes at him, and I thought I saw him smirk.
"Oh, and also, Summer talked to me a little bit yesterday," he said when I glared at him. "She gave me and Gwen her number to keep in touch about you. Anyway, I wanted to ask you something."
"Okay."
"Do you. . . do you actually like girls?"
I looked at him oddly. "What?"
"I mean you obviously play hard-to-get. You've never dated anyone in your life, even though you've got literally any girl that's laid eyes on you wanting to sleep with you." He paused, ignored me when I said, "You've never dated anyone either," and continued. "Are you actually attracted to girls?"
"And how did you get this idea?" I asked.
"Well, Summer may have mentioned that you were watching Drew a certain way--"
"Shut up." I interrupted him, my face turning red. 'I'm gonna kill Summer for that,' I thought sarcastically. He smirked at me, and I could tell he knew.
"I'm fine with it," he said. "It at least explains why you've been and still are single."
I sighed and rolled my eyes at him, smirking, but I was secretly glad that he knew. I've had enough of hiding things for my lifetime.
"Soo, are you gonna ask him?" Jessie smirked.
"What? I can't believe I'm having this conversation with you!" I flopped back down on my back (which was much easier to do through the drugs than it was to sit up) and stuck my head under a pillow while he laughed.
"I'm serious," he said, but his laughter didn't reassure me. "You can't stay single forever."
"Eventually when I find out he's gay too, sure, maybe, but until then we're both friend-zoned." I looked at Jessie from under the pillow. "And I'll make sure to let you know when I do find out."
He smirked. "I'm alright with that. Just one more question."
I groaned. "What."
"Does Drew know?"
"Of course not, are you insane! Why would I tell him!"
"Okay, okay," Jessie laughed. I sighed and took the pillow off my head, shaking my head at him.
"You cannot tell anyone about this," I said slowly.
"Alright," Jessie said.
"Not even Gwen. I want to be the one to tell her."
"Okay." Jessie smiled at me, and I thought I saw a little more fondness in his eyes than before. Then he frowned.
"But. . . what about Mom and Dad?"
"They don't need to know," I sighed.
"They're going to find out somehow," Jessie said. "Parents always do. And you know how they're going to react."
"What," I said bitterly. "They're gonna go ballistic when they find out." I looked at him. "I'm surprised you are even okay with me."
"It's not that. . ." Jessie said slowly.
I was confused. "What is it then?"
"It's. . . nothing," Jessie shook his head. "Nothing. Are you hungry? The nurse left you some steak." He said, changing the subject. I could tell he was uncomfortable so I let the subject drop. I shook my head, looking away.
"No, I'm not hungry." I could tell he knew I was lying, just like all the other times he'd asked if I wanted food. I picked at the lace lining of the white blanket over me. Jessie held my phone out to me.
"Drew called you earlier," he said. "I thought you might want to call him back."
I didn't respond or make any move to take the phone.
"He'd probably be happy to hear from you," Jessie said lightly, trying to bribe me to take the phone.
I paused for a moment. "Do you know when they're planning on letting me go?"
"There's a few more tests they want to take," Jessie said after a slight hesitation, "to make sure you won't try to kill yourself again as soon as you leave. I think they're planning on sometime in the evening Monday."
    I nodded. 'Just twenty-four more hours.' I thought. 'Then I can get out of here.'