[this is really rushed?? And also terrible???? Idk where I'm writing these from. I don't like any of them but here they are]

We honestly didn't stay upset at each other for more than a day. Within less than a day, we were fine, but I was still sick and that was not fine. I liked to think he put off being ticked to make sure I didn't cough up my internal organs all over his bedsheets. It was a small price to pay, because I was not in the mood to argue, and I didn't want to have to deal with that on my plate too. Carmen Green had been suspiciously quiet recently.

Dallon was sitting next to me with his hand rubbing my back in slow circles. "I think we should go to the doctor—"

"Honestly," I glared at him from the bathroom floor, "fuck off."

He put his hands up in defense. "Hey, I'm just saying you've been fuckin' puking all over my house for the last day or whatever."

"It's only Friday. I got sick on Wednesday."

"So you admit you're sick—"

"No. I'm just dying. No big deal, okay?"

Dallon sighed, and after a minute he gave up and sat down next to me. "If we can't go see the doctor, can I at least try to figure out what's wrong?"

He probably wouldn't be able to figure it out, but it was fine. He could knock himself out, and I'd be able to die in peace beside the toilet. "Sure. Do whatever, I don't care, just be quiet. I have a headache."

He did get up, and he did leave. For a minute, everything was nice and quiet. It was all I wanted for the time being.

And then he came back. With his laptop. And he had his glasses on, which crushed any image of badass he'd built in my eyes over the last week or so. It probably wasn't even a week ago when he'd decided he wanted to skip. Time moved so fast.

"So, Brendon," he cleared his throat and took a seat next to me again, "what are your symptoms?"

"Take a look in your toilet, genius."

He nodded and tapped on the keys for a moment. "And you have a headache, a fever, and you're coughing, and..."

"It hurts to breathe. Because I'm dying."

He typed for another minute or two, and every now and then he'd glance over and just watch me lose my dinner for the eighth time.

"I think you have pneumonia."

I wasn't sick. Pneumonia? There was no way. I wasn't even sure how I'd gotten pneumonia. "Yeah, right. And I'm growing a whole extra arm out of my back. My eyes can shoot lasers. I can suddenly understand what the animals are saying."

He scoffed and turned his screen towards me. He was searching on Web.MD for answers. Once, I'd searched why I was coughing so much and it told me I had throat cancer. Needless to say, I did not have throat cancer. Only a streptococcal infection. "Yeah, it makes sense. Admit it, you're ill."

"I will when I'm on my deathbed, and the grim reaper is five seconds away from escorting me to the sweet release of death."

Dallon sighed deeply again and shut his laptop, and crossed his arms. Bile rumbled in my stomach, but I held it in. "You said you're dying, so here. You're on your deathbed. Admit it."

I shook my head. Never surrender. "I never specified how. I believe I'll be contacting you from beyond the grave to let you know you've made the dire mistake of not appreciating me enough."

I guess he'd finally realized I was never going to admit it, even if I did have pneumonia like he'd said. If I was right in predicting that Tyler was behind everything, I wouldn't have put it past him to somehow expose me to it. "Fine, fine. You don't have to tell me, I already know for a fact."

I won. "Thank you for acknowledging that I am in fact, not sick, just dying."

🖍🖍🖍

Lunch on Monday was hell.

I was still sick. I'd gotten better, and I'd stopped coughing up my guts every minute, but I still had a fever and my chest still ached whenever I took a breath. It wasn't too far off when Dallon said I'd come down with pneumonia, I guess.

That wasn't the only reason why, though. I wished it were, but it wasn't.

Dallon had both his arms wrapped around me while I tried to eat, and was doing his best to act like a blanket because I told him I was freezing. I was wearing sweatpants and a huge sweatshirt, but I was literally shaking.

He was just having a normal conversation with Josh about English class and the stupid book we were reading. It was so stupid, I hadn't even bothered to open the cover or even read the title. Maybe I felt dizzy all the time, and looking at words only made it worse, but I still wouldn't have touched it. The topic had strayed way off topic though, so it didn't even matter.

"... But I still can't believe he eliminated Van. He was such a good chef. He didn't deserve that at all." Josh was shaking his head and poking at the pasta in his little plastic box.

"He was just having a bad day. I felt awful," Dallon said, and immediately I remembered the competitive cooking show he'd watch every Friday night, no matter what we were doing, "someone else should've been sent home. I don't know who, but I don't think Ben is going to go very far either. He's one of the weaker chefs."

"Van was at least twenty times better than Ben. The whole show is rigged."

"I'm just waiting until they put Elise on the blue team. I can't wait to see that."

Josh made a face similar to a little kid taking a bite out of a lemon. My mom hung that photo of me on the wall. "Okay, no. I don't think any of the red team has the ability to be a head chef."

Dallon looked offended. He almost dropped his sandwich in my lap. "Michelle could totally win. She's pretty consistent—"

"Uh, compared to Nick? Or Millie? Van? I don't think so."

I suddenly remembered why I always fell asleep during his cooking show. It was intense and very dramatic, but it was also filled with cooking. Watching people cook always made me so drowsy. I couldn't explain it, but even when my mom tried to teach me to bake something, I ended up dozing off. Maybe that was why he put it on so often.

He always turned it on whenever he told me to go to sleep.

Suddenly, it all made sense.

"...Jennifer is by far the best one on the red team! Dana is just okay, and Michelle is way too problematic. Don't even get me started on Elise and Barbie, Josh."

It was all friendly fighting, because neither of them had jumped up to tear the other to shreds with their bare hands, but it was still fun to watch. It was like cage wrestling without the death. And it was all verbal. Verbal cage wrestling.

Tyler was enjoying it too. He was eating an Uncrustable sandwich and he smiled whenever Josh would say something stupid. That was about every other sentence. The only thing I could think about was the facade he kept up daily. That must've been exhausting; I barely held mine up for a day or two before giving up and playing not-so-innocent.

And then he pulled out a ziplock baggie of beef jerky.

The whole time, Tyler never broke eye contact. He knew. Either Dallon had let it spill to Josh in a rant and from there it'd leaked to him, or something else went down, but he knew. A small part of me kept insisting he was the one that planted it in my pocket, because he was over the day before, and I hated the smell of beef jerky with a burning passion.

The conversation fell, not out of disinterest, but because both of them started to pester for food. They always had their own, but it held true for both; every last crumb was gone before third period.

"You don't have anymore of the snack mix, do you? The ones with the pretzels and cheez-its," Dallon stuck his head into my backpack, "because those are good. I could eat them for the rest of my life."

I had the second and last package in my hand. He'd eaten the first one a few hours ago. "No, you finished them all yesterday," I told him, and I slowly shoved the rest into my pocket, "remember? No more, unless you want carrots."

"Carrots are shit. Did you eat the fruit snacks too? What about the Cheetos?"

"Ate those too." Actually, they were hidden in the front pocket of my backpack. I loved Cheetos, and I wasn't going to let them snatch them away.

He shoved my bag to the floor with a lopsided grin on his face. "I fuckin' hate you. Quit keeping food from me." He held up the pack of fruit snacks and shook his head before happily ripping it open and dumping half of them in his mouth.

I'd watched him try and chew six gummies at once for a minute until I realized he'd probably take more once he'd finished, and I went back to my own food before he could stuff the rest of my pretzels in his face too.

Tyler was staring, like a few people around were. His eyes were wide, and his jaw had metaphorically dropped to the ground. Josh's had too, but he wasn't as stunned.

"Dude," Josh whispered, "did you curse?"

Dallon paused. "Yeah, I guess I did. It's just been kinda happening recently. I don't know why. Maybe Gordon Ramsay has been rubbing off on me." He shrugged it off with a smile, and he and Josh left it at that. It was simple enough to them. If only they knew.

Tyler kicked my shin underneath the table, and when I looked up, he was shaking his head, and grinning.

He mouthed, "give up now", and didn't say anything for the rest of lunch.

He'd figured it out.