One month. One month since that stupid party and now I see Griffin everywhere. He's like a gnat that keeps hovering around my head, not letting me forget about his annoying existence. And to make things worse he keeps stealing Justin away from me! They act like I don't even exist.

Sure, Justin gives me a wave sometimes but Griffin always pulls him away. The worst part is that Justin doesn't do anything to stop him. He's replaced me so easily, as if I never really mattered. Yeah, he still walks to school with me, but after that, he spends every free second with Fiergang. Little, contemptible, vexatious, Fiergang. 

I try to focus on my glowing laptop screen, but my thoughts keep fleeing me no matter how hard I try to hold onto them and force them into place. In front of me sits a word document even more vexatious than Griffin. A list of schools lights up the screen, colleges my mom hand-picked for me to look into. All of them offer robotics and science programs. Everything my parents could want in a college.

But there's no room for what I might want to study, not in the image of the world my parents have. "It's all part of the bigger plan," my mom would always say, "so you can have a better life than my mother had after immigrating from Japan. So you can be successful and have a good life like your father and I built. So you can provide for your future wife and children."

What she's really saying is that I have to be better than them. I have to be what they never were. The thought of having a wife and kids makes my stomach sink as I type in yet another college into my document file, for a grand total of three schools, each one more nauseating than the last.

I bite my lip, glancing at the time, then look at the high ceilings of the library. I could spend every second of every day in here, when everyone else leaves, surrounded by books. Forgetting about my problems with schools and Griffin.

Four stories up, the glass roof makes everything feel small. Gold railings protect bookshelf after bookshelf after bookshelf. The pure vastness of the school founder's collection is enough for me just to marvel at.

Books are simple, unlike people. These books don't judge me or tell me how to think or what to do. They just give me something so pure and valid: information.

I look at the time again, sighing. Now I have to go to that pointless music appreciation class, spend an hour and a half mentally killing myself and then go in for round two in English. Those are examples of useless information.

I get up and press print for my list of colleges, watching the ancient printer in the corner whir to motion, groaning as if the few words on the page required herculean effort. I close my computer and slip it into my backpack, grabbing the paper before heading to that stupid class.

It's not that I don't like classical music...I just prefer to appreciate it from a distance. Yet the whole philosophy of this school is that art and science go hand in hand and you can't have one without the other.

Let's say I want neither.

I just want information.

But I head to class anyways, ending up staring at the wall half of the time, watching the windows as cars drive by, whizzing down the street. I look over at Justin who sits at the end of the line, jiggling his leg up and down. He's probably nervous. My eyes drift to the girl singing, her brown hair swaying as she rocks from side to side with the beat.

I glance back at Justin again who now has his head in his hands, nodding to himself. The teacher calls his name. He gets up slowly, pale and shaking, but when he finally gets up there and sings, it seems like all his worries float away. I have no idea what he sings about or anything, but the sound wafts through the air with a beautiful sadness that carries all my troubles way.

Until I see her, mouth open in a contorted scream. Eyes wide and a mirror of his own. She glares at me, accuses me. Your fault, she seems to say, all your fault.

He starts crying. The bell rings. And then he's gone.

Justin just bolts out of the classroom, tears streaming down his adorable little face. I mean, his thin and hollow little face.

I run after him, scanning the hallways frantically. Nothing.

Maybe he saw her too. Maybe that's why he started crying.

Maybe I'm not alone in this...

I can't get the image of her face out of my head, even though she only appeared for a fleeting second. She had just vanished, like my imagination couldn't hold onto the apparition any longer. I wish I could say it was the only time I saw her.
But I keep seeing her at night, when I shut my eyes. She never speaks but I know what she says: your fault, your fault.

Even when I tell myself there's nothing I could have done, that I didn't know, it doesn't help. It doesn't make the feeling go away. Gripping the edge of some locker, I focus on reality. I have too.

Justin couldn't have gotten to far. I start pushing through the crowd to find him, heading towards the courtyard. Unfortunately, someone else spots me.

It seems every time I talk to him, I start disliking Griffin even more. I've almost started hating him at this point. It takes a great deal of effort to hate someone so I don't usually give anyone enough credit to warrant hate. Yet the twist in my stomach whenever I see him only seems to get worse and I find myself grinding my teeth together whenever I see him. He practically stole my best friend from me and that certainly warrants the irrational, raw, hatred that starts boiling in my abdomen as he walks toward me. I swallow, squeezing my fists as the small, but buff, dude stops me. "Where are you off to in such a hurry?"

Does this guy never mind his own business? His smooth voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard to me but I force myself to sound pleasant. "Get out of my way, Fiergang."

Okay maybe I wasn't trying to sound pleasant. I shove past his shoulder, trying to walk away but he shows up yet again, like an annoying bug that just won't die. He flexes his muscular arm and I roll my eyes. "I don't think I will," he says, leaning on his toes to try and meet my height.

Only he's still too short. "I have stuff to do, dude, so if you would kindly get out of my way that'd be much appreciated."

"This has to do with Justin, doesn't it?"

I don't respond, walking towards the courtyard.

He stops me yet again, tapping the atom shaped lapel pin on my blue blazer. I look down at his fingers and grab his hand, yanking it away. This time I stop playing nice. "Leave. Me. Alone."

Griffin winces as I twist his hand before letting go, walking towards the double doors that lead outside. Justin could be anywhere by now. "Wait," Griffin says after I make it about five feet down the marble laid hall.

"What now?" I turn around, half of me wanting to keep on walking.

He marches right up to me again. The nerve. "Where is he? Where's Justin?"

Just won't take the hint, will he? "Since you're so close to him apparently, why don't you tell me?"

"You little bitch."

"I think you're the one who's little here."

"He's my fucking boyfriend," he says, crossing his arms and furrowing his eyebrows, "tell me where he is."

Boyfriend. The word sends a shiver down my spine; all the fight in me drains away at those two syllables. I heave a sigh and point toward the door, defeated. "He went towards the courtyard."

He smirks at me, flipping me off before dashing away, disappearing around the corner.

 Sighing, I stand there for a minute before heading to my next class, barely paying attention as the teacher drones on about the wonders of English. The book she has us reading, one really old one with words the average person needs a dictionary to understand, I've already read several times. When I was ten. So, while I think it's just the class that makes me tired because my father already squeezed all the metaphors, themes, and excitement out of this book, the feeling doesn't leave me as the day wears on. When the lunch bell rings it sparks no excitement in me like in the rest of my peers. Somehow not hungry for once, I end up spending most of the lunch hour looking for Justin.

Nothing.

 Lacking anything better to do, I find my locker and lean against it, no longer interested in calculus, my next class. I pull out a granola bar and bite off the brittle end. Chewing thoughtfully, I pull out my list of schools and stare down at it.

Three options so far. All tech schools. I pick up a pen and write another one down; it's not a school for technology or medicine, but has an excellent marketing program with internship possibilities. I blink down at the name for a few seconds and quickly scratch it away. Stupid idea.

I look up and see strawberry blonde hair tied up into a ponytail. Fiona. The short girl walks over to me with a confident demeanor only she can pull off. "Hey," she says, eyes flickering to the paper in my hands.

I quickly fold it up and put it away. "Hi."

She fiddles with the pin on her shirt, a copy of the one I'm wearing: a symbol of being a tech student. "How come you didn't show up for lunch?"

I shrug, "Had stuff with Justin. Plus I'm not that hungry."

She lets out a little tsking sound. "Why do you even hang out with him?"

I close my locker and try to release the tension in my shoulders. "Because he's my best friend."

She frowns, rubbing her plump cheeks, "He's gay."

 "I'm aware."

"Isn't that, I dunno, weird for you?"

"Should it be?" I start walking and she follows, my heart skipping a beat or two. Should it be weird? I never thought about it being weird but now that I think about it... that could explain the weird sensation I get whenever I'm around him. Shaking off that same weird feeling I focus once more on reality, the only stable thing in life besides books.

Fiona and I were assigned as lab partners last year and she's been my friend ever since. Unless Justin happened to be there. Then she finds the quickest exit, always pushing me to leave with her. Why? I have no idea, I never noticed until a few months ago when Justin said something about it. But since Justin got himself a boyfriend – I gag at the word – he hasn't had time for little old me. So that leaves me with Fiona, nerdy, daughter of the principal.

 Fiona puts an arm around me, "Because you're both guys. And he's attracted to guys. That's why it's weird."

"So? I'm not gay and he has a boyfriend," I move away from her arm and point to my classroom. "I have to go."

"But lunch isn't over yet," Fiona says, stopping in her tracks.

"Like I said before, I'm not hungry."

She watches as I walk into what I assume is an empty classroom. No one in their right mind shows up to calculus early. I open the heavy, old wooden door, giving Fiona one last look. "If you can't get passed him being gay, and keep bringing it up, I don't think we can hang out anymore."

Her eyes widen and I take my regular seat at the front of the class. I sigh, pulling my list out again and scratching out the rest of the schools. All stupid. I pull out my homework and stare out the window, watching grey clouds roll in. It matches my mood perfectly.

"Well, she's a bitch," a voice says from behind me.

I jump, heart skipping a beat, turning to see someone sitting in the far corner, multicolored hair sticking out in all directions. I swear I've seen this person somewhere before... "Weren't you at that party?" I finally say, "the one at Walsh's house?"

The individual nods, picking up the massive pile of stuff on the desk before walking up towards me. "Reid," the person says, sticking out an unnaturally pale hand for me to shake, "entrepreneur, future president of the not-so United States, but only if the economy sorts itself out first, she/her or they/them, I'm not picky... And, asexual so don't even think about it."

Damn. I blink, watching as she... or they, sits down, adjusting her torn-up black jacket. She looks like some genderless motor cycler's child, not the future president. Reid takes her jacket off, revealing a long line of bracelets on both arms that go up to her (or their?) elbows. "I saw you and that guy outside, the skinny one that looks dead?"

"You remember that?  And yeah, that was my friend," the only person she could be talking about is Justin.

I make sure all my papers line up and blink at the clock. We have a good ten minutes before class starts.

"I don't drink, so yeah. Bad for my image, you know? Don't need that when I open my first store. Or my second, or third or fourth."

"You want to go into business?" I ask, looking at the college I crossed out.

"That and political science, yeah. I'm still a Sophomore but there's no time like the present, unless it's fixing the economy, that'll take some time. Imagine it, the first non-binary person as president," she looks somewhere far beyond what I can see, "What about you?"

She peers over at my list, "Tech school?"

I shrug, "My mom's a doctor and you know, phlebotomy  is pretty interesting... I guess." I can't even remember what phlebotomy is, only that it involves sticking needles in people.

She grabs the list without asking and studies it for a moment, "This one doesn't have a med program, I know because it's on my list of schools. Why is it on yours?"

She's way too smart. I take the list back and shove it into my backpack. "I've always liked marketing and stuff, sorta, and I want to keep my options open. Kinda dreamed about being an entrepreneur growing up, but you know, that's a risky career choice. Plus my parents want me to go to college and I guess I want to go, but don't really want a doctorate in something I won't use."

She opens her mouth to speak but just then the door opens and a bunch of kids waltz in followed by the teacher. Reid gives me a little wave before returning to her desk.

If Justin is an enigma, I don't know what to call Reid. She... or they (I think) is almost as much of a puzzle as he is.

So is everyone really. People refuse to be straight forward and open about what they think or feel. I just want everything to make sense for once...

In a book, everything is clear. With people, every word that comes out of their mouth is usually a lie.

I pull out my phone and shoot a text to Justin, praying he responds.

To: smol bro, 12:58p

You alright? Kind of disappeared on me after class. You did great by the way.

His response comes far too quickly.

From: smol bro, 12:58p

I'm fine.