Then Felix felt herself shift. Her eyes still saw black, except beyond her eyelids, there was a light, bright above her and shining down indefinitely. The fuzzy warmth of Mr. Tegmark's flannel jacket changed to the chilly touch of a cold draft, like feeling someone who just held snow slather their disgusting hands all over your face. Her hands weren't clutching anything but instead pressed against the sides of her head, making sure her ears weren't susceptible to hearing anything harsh. But through this meager shield, made of nothing but useless intent, she could hear the distant screams from outside the room.

She hesitantly opened her eyes to scan the area. There were tables flipped over and facing the door, and students huddled behind them, covering their ears and squeezing their eyes tightly. From around the room, she heard whimpers and puling, some of them cursed underneath their breath as the screams continued. One of the kids, a boy who looked like he'd seen everything and was never fazed a single time, said, "Dude, school's about to end, and this happens?" Everybody who wasn't cowering and whispering prayers to themselves gestured for him to shut up, said there's nothing you can say that will make this better, and thankfully, he did, much to the delight of all the frightened students.

Lockdown drills were natural, but the more she looked around and saw how the reactions of the students seemed to be innately genuine, it didn't feel like one. Felix remembered how idiotic and inane people acted whenever the lights were shut off and the room was supposed to be silent during these drills, not taking them seriously because there was no way that someone would even have the guts to stroll into school with a weapon. But presently, she felt as though this wasn't a drill, that there was actually someone out there, awaiting an opportunity to push through the barricaded door and wreak havoc upon each and every one of them. The silent prayers didn't go unnoticed, and soon, it was almost as if everyone was praying for their lives.

Then a gunshot rang through the hallways.

CRACK

Tegmark let a whine escape her mouth as the shambling effect of the noise made its rounds. Even through her hands, the sound punctured through into her brain, rupturing any ounce of stability she'd struggled to keep onto after the sudden shift into this horrifying situation. Thus the whines and whimpers went up in volume just a smidgen, and Mr. Grant, the good-looking professor, whose hair was a disheveled mess down to his shoulders and arms looked like they couldn't carry anything past a plastic baggie, hushed them all. "Quiet down," he said, his voice wan. His eyes bespoke more fear than his tremulous intonation. "He won't come in here if we stay down and stay quiet. They're statistically more prone to go after noisy areas than quiet ones, so --"

Screams from the hallways alerted the students in the classroom more danger lurked around the corner. And these ones were close. They'd been so far away the last time, at least to the end of it, but now it laid closer than two lovers do on their heart-sweet honeymoon, the blood-curdling shriek bringing nothing but straight panic into Tegmark's heart. The fright was rightfully accompanied with two more gunshots, followed in quick succession of one another, and Tegmark retched, feeling the spicy chicken sandwich and chocolate milk she'd had for lunch decide to exit through the enter doors. She swallowed down the disgusting bile, unable to think of anything else except that she might die today, there's actually someone out there right now with a gun and they could come in here and kill everybody, he's not going to stop after one, hopefully he will, but I'm not too sure he will, what about the freshman and their upcoming lives, what about the seniors and their college-bound plans, what about ME?

She backed against the stone wall, the flush of her cheeks hotter than a high fever. There was the sound of the gunshots ringing in her head, the two of them coming right after one another, and the sounds in the classroom made it worse, hearing those prayers, the whimpers and the constant cursing of plans being ruined. It was hard to think. Her thoughts vacated her head. The images of her father and how he'd look at her funeral along with all the other dead students came to her in a flash, a quick, this'll-only-hurt-a-second blip in her mind, and it was almost enough to burst her heart into shards, let the bubbling anxiety within combust spontaneously.

"Jenny," someone said to her right.

Gordon. Felix recognized his guilty face the moment those buck teeth came into view. Though the anger she'd experienced with Tegmark beforehand had influenced her thoughts of him then, it was hard to find aggravation in the mere fact that this brave boy right here was sitting with her, and Tegmark, without hesitation, feeling nothing but the rawest fright and fear imaginable, wrapped her arms around him like a huge teddy bear, tightening her grasp around his waist until she couldn't squeeze any harder. She pressed herself against him, caring not about the carefulness of her actions, or the scandalous look of the position; she felt less scared, mortified and querulous as he took his arms around her, holding her there with him as another

CRACK, CRACK, CRACK

went all throughout the halls. Her tears hadn't the audacity to come out, welling up and staying there as it echoed and bounced and ohmygod, ohmygod, this is actually happening, I don't want to die today, there's no way I'm dying today.

The police horns were down the street. Outside the small slits of what could be considered windows, the red, white and blue lights flickered and shone like an angel's harmonious aura. She breathed easy. Her dad would come. He would stroll into the school with his crew and they'd find the kid who kept firing all those shots (shots, there are more than one, that's plural, there might be more than one victim) and take him down before anything else happened. Then Freeman High School would be safe and sound for the day, and every one of the kids who got caught up in the classrooms could go home, except for the ones who --

No, she thought. Don't go there. Everyone gets to go home except for that stupid kid, no one else deserves to stay unless they helped. Her dad would fix everything. He's good at fixing things, so she'd be able to get out of her and have everything fixed up and ready to go for tomorrow, right?

Hopefully.

"Gordy," Tegmark said softly, looking up at the blonde boy. She forgot he wasn't allowed to wear his signature straw hat to school; maybe if he could, she'd wear it and not be able to think too much about anything other than him and her own thoughts, not overrun by the maddening events occurring outside of her own little bubble.

"Yeah, Jenny?" he asked, keeping his voice down.

She shuddered. It was no wonder why: it was cold in here, Gordon's arms not providing much in the department of heat, and her mindstate was a jumbled mess. Like a child who threw their toys to and fro without any precaution, she knocked aside the floating thoughts to find one for reason. It was there, she knew it was there. Panicking notions managed to overpower them.

The waves of ink had covered her in the same way, shielding her from accessing anything except the things her mind believed important, and now, it was that death was on the verge of happening, there were so many people that were going to be so scared, so unwilling to enter school tomorrow because of this. But she swam through the sea of black, her arms pushing away the distinctly negative thoughts to reveal the clear ones below. The she dove in. She found it. The resolve in the chaos, the light in the darkness.

"Nothing's going to happen to me," she whispered aloud. It was scary, saying it, but she made sure that she believed it. Believing is the first part of making progress, she remembered hearing from Beverly after she'd won Tegmark a stuffed goat from one of those crane games. And though thinking of her in this situation was a bad idea, she said it and believed it. "No one's coming after me."

"I promise nothing will," said Gordon.

The door shuddered with the weight of a thousand rocks, its hinges squeaking as the person on the other side rebounded. Through the small window into the hallway, the red-rose face of a familiar boy looked in. His wide eyes peered intently through the glass, examining the classroom as though he was conducting an experiment for Chem. His raised eyebrows stooped right above his thick-rimmed glasses, then they quickly fell, burrowing together at the center. Tegmark watched with horror as the boy backed away from the door.

Then something struck the fragile surface of the window, something dark and black and thin. It came down and down again until needle-like cracks began to appear across its surface. Chips of glass fell from the door onto the linoleum, and sometime afterward, the rest of the foundation broke underneath the weight of the object, the shards falling in bigger chunks than last time. The screams now weren't outside in the hallways but instead isolated in the room, kept inside and echoing off the walls in horrifying conception as his arm, covered in black leather, reached forward through the broken window and fumbled clumsily for the doorknob.

Mr. Grant raised from his position from behind the tables and vaulted over it, leaving the children -- Tegmark included -- to watch as the door opened and the shooter lowered his rifle into his hands, poking the barrel right at the disheveled professor. The look on the shooter's face -- Dylan, that looks like Dylan, oh no, oh no, thought Felix, panicking -- was unrelentingly terrible, his feral grin of yellowed and uneven teeth glowing with anger. His sloped shoulders and hunched back gave him the look of a gremlin who'd just risen from his slumber tow wreak havoc. He was shaking, she noticed then. His arms and legs were slightly trembling as he stood there, threatening the professor with his loaded rifle. He pulled his finger around the trigger, ready to squeeze his shaking finger. He didn't look scared, though, as much as she'd try to convince herself later; he was downright planning to fire his weapon, it was only the adrenaline fluidly traversing his veins which gave him his prepetually frightened appearance. He was more than willing to shoot.

And thinking back to how abhorrent it was to hear the sound from in the hallway, she was almost incapable of imagining having to listen to that deafening racket again. She'd go back and re-do high school if it meant she hadn't had to suffer through the cacophony. "Back," he growled, his depraved voice malicious in tone. "Get back before I pump your chest with lead."

"Kid, it's --"

"One more word, and I swear, I'll fire!" he shrieked. His voice was higher than Felix expected, because the boy had unshaven scuff rounding his sharp jaw and crawling up his rosy cheeks, so it looked as though he'd have at least a little tenor in his tone. But seeing how the tense muscles of his neck moved so tightly and how his jaw was inset with a grueling, grinding motion, she'd found nothing wrong with thinking him high-strung, drunk off a feeling of distinct uncertainty. He gestured to the tables with the rifle, which was held with so much reliance Felix was afraid there'd be mutiny if anyone pried it from his hands, or he'd melt on the spot. "Over there. With the lot of them."

Mr. Grant stood there a moment, looking down at the boy with incredulous eyes, as if thinking there was no way this little rugrat could roam around the school packing heat of this size. Tegmark had shifted in Gordon's arms to see Mr. Grant's face. The mixture of confusion and panic indicated that, although he'd promised to have everything under control if the roaming killer wandered menacingly into the room and could defuse the situation lest it all be blown into massively unprecedented trepidation, he was in no right to claim that he was prepared for this in the slightest. When the trembling boy shouted, "Now!" Mr. Grant threw aside his torpor and reluctantly scooted back towards the tables, his feet dragging along the floor as he went.

It wouldn't be long until her father barged into school, right? Only a matter of time and patience, she thought. No need to think of anything else except the SWAT rolling in deep with riot shields and pepperball guns galore.

The scruffy boy came forward. The tinny sound of his shoes clambering upon the ground filled her ears. He stopped right in front of the lines of tables, lifting the rifle to his chest with both hands. Looking at his classmates with malice and disdain, he singled out Tegmark through the sea of faces, his eyes narrowing the moment he caught sight of her startled expression. Raising the muzzle at her, he said, "You. I've been looking for you everywhere."

Tegmark swallowed the ball of anxiety bundled in the back of her throat, unable to comprehend his sentence until it sprinted in her mind several times over. "Wh-Why?"

"Your newspaper," he said, the sinister sound of his voice sending chills down her spine. He was shaking more now; probably seeing her had triggered him, or something, she didn't know, she didn't care, why did she have to be singled out? "You were the one who made that article on me."

"What article?"

The scruffy boy cackled. It was a hideous sound; hearing it made her lunch want to re-try its previous escape plan. He leaned onto the table and the muzzle of his rifle was pointed right at her. She could feel Gordon holding tighter onto her, her doing the same, but it didn't take away from the looks from her classmates, the affright expressions on their faces speaking louder volumes than their voice altogether could provide.

"You don't remember? Of course you don't, you're one of those girls. I sent a letter through your inbox and asked you to relate my therapy plans for the school to the principal. But instead, you wrote in your paper about not how it could be used to help people -- no, you wanted to bash me for wanting anything of the sort."

Felix caught sound of Tegmark's inner thoughts, the wild bundle of chaos which was kept isolated by a taut band, but one stood out amongst the rest, towering right above the sea of jumbled notions and forgotten images: Oh fuck.

"I'm tired of it all, y'know?" His chuckle was timid, like one given by a shy kid in class. But this one wasn't innocuous; it was wicked and virulent, straight from the lips of a malevolent demon-child. "I'd been so emotionally invested in that letter, even had it read out in the hallways one day by one of Them. They took it from me and ridiculed me for it. And They've been doing it for a little while now, since the beginning of freshman year, but They paid today -- yes, They definitely did. And it's all thanks to you. You're the last one on my list, y'know."

From his pocket, he pulled out a crumpled piece of notebook paper. On it, a list of names, all hastily scrawled, like he was in a hurry to get all of them down, ran down the ten or fifteen lines available on the page. Most of them were crossed out with red pen, the scratches unrelenting as they spread across the parchment. And down at the end, she could make out the lettering of Jennifer Tegmark. His wild eyes scared her. "I nearly gave up. I tried looking all around for you, but you weren't so easy to find. I have class with everyone else on here, but you -- you're the -- the special one here. It's all come to an end, huh?"

"No."

The scruffy boy suddenly turned to Gordon, who'd just spoken. His feral grin turned to a dour frown, his eyebrows spilling down to meet together. "No talking, Mr. White Knight."

"No," he repeated. Tegmark shook him and her head, trying to convince him that what he was about to do was a mistake, but he mouthed It'll all be okay to her. Then we went on: "She didn't do anything except point out the flaws in your proposed system of therapy. I read the article. There were valid points in it."

"Keep talking, and you'll get a little something coming for you, hero."

"So what, are you going to --"

When the scruffy boy growled in anger and looked down the sights of his rifle, Tegmark screamed and pushed away from Gordon. The blast of the bullet exiting the chamber was louder than a jet plane, and hearing it without having the chance to cover her ears had left her in bad shape, state and mind as she laid on the ground. She heard the sound of Gordon's cries of agony, and sometime after she'd taken refuge on the ground, she saw through her fuzzy vision that he was clutching at his leg, his fingers curling around the girth of his thigh, and his palms were stained now with red, blood's actually on his hands, ohmygod, ohmygod, this can't be happening. His seethes of agony were muddled with growls and muttered curses, but he leaned against the wall, saying nothing more in the wake of his injury.

Tegmark had her help eliminated for the time being, allowing the scruffy boy, whose horrid face was covered in a sheen of glee, turned the rifle to her. She looked down the muzzle, her wide eyes unable to see anything but her imminent death. Then: "Please, don't."

The scruffy boy lifted his eyebrows above his glasses, the spectacles sliding down his long nose. "Asking for mercy, eh? Sounds a little too late for that. Mr. White Knight already tried that, and look where that got him."

"I was only doing my job," she cried out. The tears never came, but she wish they would. The feel of them sliding down her cheeks like his glasses down his nose would have been a nice sensation, a validating point to her melancholic status here amid this chaotic situation.

Finding something concrete in the swirling mass of unsteady things would be excellent, would send her right back on that path of nothing-will-happen, but she saw the downward angled barrel turned to her, his eyes looking straight into her like the bullet which went through Gordon's leg. It was gleaming in the mid-November light, the horizontal glow bleeding through the room to illuminate his rosy cheeks. She'd been so intent watching him, thinking that this was all a dream she could wake up from. That this itself was a false memory placed into her mind by an outside source, malevolent and malicious. But of course, she knew the feel of everything, the sound of her beating heart the throbbing of her head as she struggled not to release herself to her imminent demise.

It was all real, this whole thing, and really, that might have sent her off the edge if not for the fact that her life wasn't over just yet: she had a career in journalism she wanted to fulfill, relationships she wanted smooth out and fix, people to meet, greet and hang out with, conversations she wanted to start. Obviously, it was a stretch to think that this wasn't the end (it very well could be, with the gun in your face and the dread of being struck by a bullet from it) but the solution wasn't to give up.

She slid back into the ground, pushing her hands the linoleum. She dragged herself up to meet him with a listless stare, something she'd never thought she'd have to give somebody. The scruffy boy, whose glistening face ran with sweat and rose-red, moved his rifle up to meet her movements, like a hunter following the motion of a deer he planned to shoot and show off to his hunting buddies. His finger had steadily continued pulling on the trigger, and Tegmark assumed, just as any frightened victim would, that if she didn't speak now, she never would again. Her last words would be of nothing but useless begging.

"I didn't mean to discredit you," she said gravely, channeling the affright travelling rapidly through her veins into her speech. She shook with trepidation, an earthquake spreading out from her chest into the rest of her body, but she planned, at least, to keep her voice the most steady it could be. "It was a mistake. My editor --"

"Mrs. Smith," he snapped.

"She told me there wasn't anything she could do -- or the principal, for that matter -- to change the way therapy here at school works."

"Of course, she could have!" he argued, his anger translating through the spit collecting around his lips. "You could have convinced her to do it, but --"

"That's what you don't understand," she whispered.

"I understand more than you do, girl!" he shouted. He held up his rifle like an idol, revered and celebrated by all who worship it. "I know that this gives me the power to take lives away. I have dealt with my demons before, hell, I did that today with Them. And now" -- he looked down the sights, lining it up with his unsteady hands -- "the final one will fall into Hell with the rest of them."

She couldn't move. It felt as though someone was holding her back from shifting her arms, stirring her legs into standing up and pouncing on the insane boy.

Then, just as she closed her eyes and awaited the sound of the bullet exiting its chamber, she heard

click

and Felix almost melted inside Tegmark's head as a sigh of relief barreled forth from her mouth, something that couldn't be held inside due to its immensely relaxing connotation. Tegmarked opened her eyes and saw that the scruffy boy was dumbfounded. Then he quickly started to check the magazine, but before he could slide it from its loaded position and load more bullets in, Gordon, despite the roaring pain that must have been curdling all through his leg, stood up, took a leap over the table and tackled him to the ground. The rifle was haphazardly tossed to the side, and Gordon's straining voice came out in a high-pitch: "Jenny, get it!"

But everyone started getting up from the ground and clambering over the tables, pushing others aside to get to the open door. They stumbled over each other's feet, some of them falling and landing in the pile of glass next to the door, but after some time, all of them, including Mr. Grant, who'd been the first one through the door and into the safety of the hallway, the room was vacated and it was only her, Gordon and the scruffy boy.

Realizing she'd been told to do something after the shock of the student stampede disappeared into the back of her mind, she fervently evacuated from her sat-up position, bounding towards the rifle which lay innocuous on the floor. With a bit of difficulty (the thing was a little heavy, probably weighing around fifteen pounds), she held it to her chest, clutching its barrel protectively as she fumbled the knob to safety.

Gordon kept the shooter there until Tegmark looked into the hallway and saw that her father (there he is, ohmygod, he can't believe what happened, I nearly died, he should know that, I NEARLY DIED) skimpered down the linoleum tiles of the hallway, some stained with blots of blood. She wrapped her arms around him as he came close, shoving her face deep into the folds of his on-duty uniform. The warmth exuding from her large father was something she enveloped herself in, the unwelcome thoughts of death and release devoid of her mind now that he was here, she was safe with him, she was so happy he was here, there's nothing more she needs.

Gordon was dragged off of the scruffy boy by Mr. Tegmark before the sneaky little bastard could utilize the switchblade he procured from his pocket, and Jennifer herself came forward to lean the injured boy against one of the overturned tables. She'd taken her red flannel off and rung it around his leg as Mr. Tegmark listed off the scruffy boy's right to remain silent, anything you do or say can used against you in a court of law, but Jennifer focused on Gordon, feeling the heat of his cheek flare up as her fingers dragged down his face to his jaw. He chuckled when her nails scraped the underside of his jaw, and her awkward laugh at least filled her with a little hope, that everything could probably go back to normal.

Tegmark helped Gordon outside once everything was settled with the shooter. She saw the swarms of people curiously awaiting their friends or family from inside the building. Tears and clutching hands were seldom unseen, the shock of the situation still affecting the lot of the high-schoolers. The teachers and staff were on the phone, calling distressed parents who'd probably lost their children. The saddened atmosphere doured Tegmark's behavior as she guided herself and Gordon behind her father's oppressive

From behind the swathe of awaiting high-schoolers and panicked staff, she saw ambulances pack the bodies of the victims of the scruffy boy's massively unprecedented vengeance into their backs. As she came closer to give Gordon his own necessary treatment, she recognized the bloody faces of most of the kids being shoved into the ambulances. They'd been part of the popular crowd, she could tell, after remembering how she'd heard their names and seen their faces far more than the transparent kids in the hallways. Charlie Jackson, head of the soccer team, was the worst out of all of them, as he'd apparently been struck seven times in the chest, the first bullet going through his heart and killing him instantly. Reggie Masters, the quarterback of the football team; Missy Rogers, head cheerleader and the self-proclaimed Queen of Gossip; Noah Frazier, one of Tegmark's colleagues from the newspaper; Skylar Dawson, the winner of the Talent Show; and so many other names that it was hard to think that they were all gone, they'd all suffered from the hand of the monster who almost took hers.

Thirteen of her schoolmates were gone. They died because a madman.

She was one of the lucky ones. The resounding thought smacked Felix in the face.

A little while later, the ambulance which had Gordon in it was off to Mass General, to where he'd be put underneath that drowsy state of wakefulness and have that severe bullet taken from his leg. "He wouldn't be walking normally for a little bit," the nurse had told her when she looked uncomfortable at hearing his slight moans of agony, but that was okay, at least -- he wasn't dead, of course, he was breathing and could move, he was fine, thank God, and the price of limping around for the rest of the year wasn't as bad as having to attend his funeral in a black dress and tears cascading into her mascara and near her lips. She would be able to go see him in the hospital, see him alive and safe, and that was fine, it was.

Her dad took her to the station with him as the scruffy boy, whose name was Harvey Pickard, sat in the backseat of the patrol car, leaning his head against the side of the window. He tried moving his hands around to gesture at Tegmark through the rearview mirror, but the handcuffs prevented him so doing such a thing, thankfully. He did stick out his tongue, though, the little bastard. After all that, he still didn't take any of this seriously. Shooting Gordon and all those other ones was absolutely nothing to him; he felt no remorse, nothing had affected his person in any significant way as he sat there, leaning against the window, singing a rock song he'd probably been wanting to listen to for the entire duration of his unbelievable massacre. She wanted to strangle him, or maybe put him on the gallows like in old times so she and all the other people he scared half-to-death (and her almost-to-full-death) could see him suffer the consequences of his actions, see him struggle against the rope, see him seethe and think in his final thoughts that maybe, just maybe, what he did wasn't so bad.

But no. Here in Wisconsin, he'd probably get let off with a little slap to the wrist after sitting in juvy for a little bit. They'd see that "he did nothing wrong" despite how inherently unfair that was to everyone who lost their life, but it could occur if he was tried as insane, therefore counting as innocent by the stupid court's system. She'd go to his hearing, though. She was sure everybody else would. She had not been so affected in her life by anything else (except maybe in her realization that her mother wasn't an active role model, all with her drinking habits), and this -- she was willing to speak her mind about this to everyone.

She watched him get his mugshot, standing behind the one-way glass as Harvey patted down his shock of fiery orange hair before holding up his plaque with a rugged smile. No remorse, it said in bold letters, accentuated how the sides of his mouth wanted to continue growing but couldn't. And he stared right at her when he turned to capture his profile view; although she was sure he could only see himself, it was almost as if he could see through it, could spot her straight through the window and give her that maddening look he'd been adorning the entire time he was ran through all those diagnostic tests and fingerprinting.

Mr. Tegmark made sure he wasn't locked up with other people. Jennifer trailed behind him as he went through the separate jail cells, all complete with a metal bed and a thin pillow, and a place for the killer to release himself. He was forcefully shoved into the cell, but he didn't fight anymore, didn't think that fighting was worth it in the end. Mr. Tegmark told him about how he'd be left in here until his court date and the trial which would determine how long his prison sentence would be. Jennifer would most likely be there as a witness, if it was allowed.

As they zoomed down the street back home, Tegmark couldn't stop thinking about what the boy had looked like, the words which came from his mouth and the feeling of absolute dread that'd enveloped her when she was locked in place by that wretched rifle. She was one of the reasons why he'd gone around the way he had, one of the main points of conflict which pushed him from the verge of sanity into the dark and eternal abyss below. She leaned her head against the window, trying to breath normally. Almost all those who'd caused the imminent savagery of Harvey Pickard were eliminated, free of the massive guilt which now resolutely built itself in the alcoves of Tegmark's chest. The strain of her heart as she thought of how this was partially her fault was unbearable, like she had actually been shot with the high-caliber round from that AR-15, because how were you supposed to act when you realized that the hellish combination of Harvey's mental state happened due to your inability to at least convince the principal to reevaluate the accessibility of therapy sessions outside of trauma victims and failed suicide attempts? She sat in the front seat, in shambles and shards of something she'd been right before everything had occurred.

This wasn't a forgetful event, no, not at all. She saw the way that the lot of them looked at her. It was her, no one else, who'd been the one to draw him into the classroom. It was her fault that Gordon had gotten shot. He wouldn't have had to step in if she wasn't endangering all of them, and by bringing him in there by a little grudge was enough to cause him a severe loss of blood. He was pale, he had been shot by an actual bullet, ohmygod, this actually hurt a lot of people and I'm the only one who he didn't kill, right? He got everyone else except me, I was the last one on his list, he crossed everyone else off, I was the LAST ONE. Should he have shot me, would it have been better if he had? I know he would have, he didn't hesitate to shoot Gordon, and he pulled the trigger, yes, he nearly killed me, but now . . . I'm the only one left to blame, and I have to suffer, he has given me the suffering of a lifetime.

Jennifer sniffed. Looking out the window, she saw a news van barrel down the street towards the school. It would be all over the TV for the next few days, and on social media, too, if she was certain. It would come out that she was the only one left that he hadn't killed, and they'd all know, not only those who'd been in the class with her, and even if it didn't, she'd still be affected by the eternal gossip which travels throughout the school's atmosphere like pollen. They'd know by the end of the month, right before Halloween.

The darkness which accompanied this thought followed her all the way into her room, where she flopped ceremoniously onto the bed. She stared up at her ceiling, looking at the various patterns she'd traced out when she was bored, but in her barely functioning brain, she saw words out of the patterns, not the funny images she'd shared with Beverly when they were together, and they all said something horrid, like traitor, you're to blame, insufferable, unbearable. She closed her eyes, trying to push the words from her head, but they'd taken eternal refuge amid her dysfunctional mind, keeping her thinking over and over that it was her, she shouldn't be the one who had been spared, she didn't deserve it, and she knows it.

Felix couldn't explain how to think as Tegmark sat there, contemplating whether to sleep and bundle in her blankets or lay here and stay awake, listening to the sweet sounds of those ill words. With Tegmark's actions and emotions swirling equally through her head as well as her own conflicting opinions, she wanted nothing more than to be released from these slews of memories and cradle Tegmark in her noodle arms, kiss her forehead and tell her that the lot of this wasn't her fault, that despite what she'd told herself throughout her life and the situations she'd suffered, she's not alone in all of this.

Felix had learned so much about her in the span of -- well, she didn't know how long it'd been, it could have been as long as a millennia or as small as a millisecond, but she could literally feel the pain and turmoil coursing amid her, relate in a way she wouldn't be able to without diving deep into these repressed memories. Because it was this very thing that brought them closer, even without the direct communication with the girl in question. The transfer was completely understood, not the dumbfounded half-listening she exhibited with her parents when they'd told her something she did wrong and shouldn't do again. It was viceral, like how it must've felt for Gordon to have been shot.

Felix then realized something.

She knows about Dylan now, doesn't she?

And the previous state of calm now evaporated. She would know how Felix felt, right? It wasn't her fault, she swore it to herself, but she'd always felt as though it was, just like --

Wait.

click