The first day of school was, quite literally, Michael's least favorite day of class. Not that he liked school at all, but the first day was worth sitting at home and playing at being sick for a few hours. However, after three years of fake vomiting into plastic bowls only to be well enough to go outside and shoot basketball later that afternoon, his grandmother had realized that Michael's first-day-of-school flu was a farce, and his attendance had been almost spotless ever since. He couldn't put a direct finger as to why that day in late August was supremely worse than the rest, but he was sure it had to do with the expectation to wear new clothes or the ice breakers or all the new students who thought he would be interested in making their acquaintance just because he sat by himself at lunch. Every year, Michael got a bit bolder, but his grandmother, who he usually referred to by her first name, Constance, had begged and pleaded with him to stop bringing so much attention to himself.

"Honey,' she said, her blonde hair beginning to gray at the roots, a fact that Michael pointed out in all of their arguments. "You're such a special, special boy. There are people who would love to hurt you. Don't give them a reason."

He never knew what she meant by people wanting to hurt him, as he had never mentioned to her the times he'd been shoved into lockers or pushed onto the ground or had crumbled pieces of paper shoved down his shirt, he imagined that, like other things, she just knew. Constance always knew when something was going wrong at school or at home, and even when the thoughts in his mind got too loud, she, seemingly, would always appear with a bid to go get ice cream or to take a walk around their neighborhood. It didn't always bring an end to his misery, but it did introduce some peace into his life. She must have known that he was dreading his senior year specifically, as he'd never been a fan of paperwork or schoolwork, and he could see both piling up in his near future. Constance surprised him a week before school started with a black 2004 Mustang which turned his usual heavy, nihilistic persona to a much brighter one over the week. The only thing that would have made senior year worse was the impending doom of being dropped off by his grandmother everyday, thus being that he then had a way to decide when he would come and go, the pressure of high school seemed a lot less heavy. Nonetheless, he still wasn't excited to be back at the two-story building about ten minutes from his home, but the metal key in his hand gave him the one thing he so desperately needed: control. The crowd of people in the hallway still surrounded him on all sides and nearly threw him into an anger-induced anxiety attack, but, nonetheless, he was happier than he had been at other times.

Very soon into the day, Michael's first period teacher made him aware that he'd already taken the class that the school had enrolled him in, as the former had been so deep in apathy to realize he was surrounded by primarily juniors. To his chagrin, as were most things, the boy sat in the school's office for around forty-five minutes waiting for the guidance counselor to call him in and fix his schedule. The man was in his mid-forties and overly eager to shake the younger man's hand, as it was a rarity for students to approach the guidance counselor first, even in mandatory situations.

The man took the folded schedule from Michael's hands, looking over the classes before keying in his name and gazing at the information briefly. "Michael, you really excelled on your standardized tests, have you been looking and applying to universities?"

"No,' he responded flatly, looking at the collection of books behind the counselor's head. They were mainly self-help books, a few books on dieting and a few on basic spirituality. The Guide to Healthy Living and Eating, Finding your Niche, How to Heal your Mind in 10 Days!

"Do you have plans on going to college?"

Thinking for a second, Michael placed his intertwined fingers beneath his chin as his elbows balanced on his chair's arm rests. "I keep seeing mentions of war and the apocalypse in the news, my expectation is that the world as we know it might be extinct by the time I should be registering for classes. Why waste the energy?"

Staring at the young man for a few seconds, the counselor looked back at the computer, bored. "Have you read the Catcher in the Rye?' — Michael sat in silence, irritated by the man's allusion to the story's protagonist. "Ah… you have,' the man responded with a deep, arrogant chuckle. "What topics interest you?"

"Religion, maybe."

Scrolling on the page, the counselor touched his beard in thought. "I see you've already taken World Religions… what about the classics? Would you be interested in signing up for Latin?"

The conversation became very one-sided, as Michael spoke less and allowed the man to change his schedule a bit to better suit the idea he'd already conjured of him. Michael considered himself many things, and though few would agree, he could argue that he could be amicable and sociable. That sociability usually only arose with those with similar ideologies as him, and as Michael was a fan of all things unpopular and his self-importance made him tolerable at best, he usually resorted to only having small conversations and had the minimal amount of friends. He'd even been slightly interested in making conversation with the guidance counselor, but after the small slight at his character, he hated the man leading to the rest of his consultation being exponentially dry. He wasn't too upset to ask for the copy of How to Heal your Mind in 10 Days! however, and the counselor had willingly handed it over.

By the time his meeting in the office was over, Michael should have been in the lunchroom. Despite being a growing male, he found that his hunger was usually curbed. He wasn't excited to be in the company of a few hundred teenagers in the loud cafeteria either, thus he found himself in the library during lunchtime most often. His connection with books and reading had implemented itself as a child; he'd been home-schooled throughout elementary school, which Michael imagined had not only fostered his terrible social skills, but his obsession with escapism, specifically with books. He was a fan of philosophers and romanticists, but he'd fallen in love with Milton at a young age. Not many sixth graders read Paradise Lost at their leisure (or on any requirement), but Michael had worn the book's binding by the end of middle school and could recite passages from the poem. He wished he could talk about the book with anyone else, but almost no one had read it, and those who did never shared his opinion on the characters. The poem, for Michael, was meant for the reader to sympathize with the devil, but according to all the literary geniuses, or so they thought themselves, that he'd spoken with, the book only gave a realistic, humanistic few of the fallen angels, but never aided in glorifying them. Michael thought of himself as a fallen angel, not that he could put his finger on why or how, but he'd highlighted and underlined so much of the first thirty pages of his copy, that anyone else glancing through its pages would have difficulty reading certain lines. The school lacked a copy of the book, but Michael would suffice with any book focusing on lore or history.

The time, as per usual, got away from him, and soon after he was late for his third period class, and walking in with a backpack that should have already been in his locker. The teacher gave him a small, apathetic smile, handed him a syllabus and told him to sit wherever he liked. Michael trudged through a thin line of desks to the back of the class, where one of the people who he infamously disliked, leaned over to whisper, "Damn, you haven't killed yourself yet?"

Comments of the sort weren't unusual for Michael, but he was glad that that time it'd be an isolated event and not another excuse for a group of kids, if not the entire class, to laugh at him. Not that he didn't look like everyone else or hadn't grown up where everyone else had, but Michael had always been purposely different. He didn't have the basic social skills to determine when things were appropriate to say or when they weren't, and though he could have easily blamed that on his upbringing, he knew he had never done much to assuage his ineptitudes. If he'd sat down with a therapist at any point, they'd probably point out the fact that Michael knew very well what things weren't acceptable to say, he just didn't care about their consequences. What'd he'd said to the guidance counselor was true: he was wholly convinced the world was on a downwards spiral, and the end was near, but, even if he wasn't sure of that affliction, Michael doubted he would be any softer with those around him. He had a tendency to do the things others wouldn't and say the things others refused to, and whether he did it for entertainment or for the small adrenaline rush it granted him, it hadn't made his life or his appeals for friendship, no matter how minor, any easier. As Michael saw it, his inefficiencies made him who he was. He was rude, snarky and straight-forward, and that would have been enough for his classmates to dislike him, but when he wasn't inflicting some type of hate speech to anyone who crossed him, he was simply an arrogant, pretentious, self-centered motherfucker, and with a hovering grandmother that did everything for him possible, there was no wonder why. He had been suspended a few times for talking back to teachers or inciting fights, but following his grandmother's begging and pleading, he'd toned back completely during his junior year which had, ultimately, been the demise of his mental health. Whereas prior he had reflected his hatred onto others, by his senior year, he was boiling in self-loathing, practicing self-harm and exploding in suicidal thoughts that he imagined would have been quieted had he had anyone to talk to about how much he fucking hated everyone and everything.

"No, but I'm getting really close,' he replied with a fake smile and laugh, encouraging his aggressor to mockingly lunge at him, Michael only cutting his eyes over to the young man and continuing his walk of shame to the back of the class. The hour that was left over consisted of a fifty minute video and a questionnaire about lab safety procedures, all that everyone had learned in their first science class in sixth grade. Yawning by the end of class, Michael contemplated skipping and going to a local gas station to buy a box of cigarettes and heading to a local pond to skip some rocks and scream at the top of his lungs. It was one of those fantasies that made him giddy, but he feared that an absence from any of his classes on the first day would result in a call home, and the last thing he wanted was Constance knocking on his door and asking him if he wanted to talk. He did, but not to her.

The last busy rush of the hallways began as the bell rang, the young man finding himself, again, pushed between students and clawing to get to his fourth period class. It was an upper level English course, and the only one he'd felt anything less than animosity about attending, but that soon ended as soon as the teacher spoke.

"We're going to go around in a circle, say our first names and something interesting about ourselves."

Groans filled the classroom before students stood up one by one, fixing their hair and telling an irrelevant fact, occasionally stirring jokes from the classroom, but usually rushing to sit back down.

"My name is Caitlin, and I traveled to Austria this summer."

"My name is Oliver, and I got in a car wreck on the way to school this morning, and my mom still made me come, so… Resilience for the win!"

Michael's turn came towards the end of the rotation; he stood and wiped his palms off on his pants before pushing some of his hair behind his ears. "For those of you who don't know,' he started off, loud. "My name is Michael Langdon. I don't really have any interesting facts, but, I can say, doing icebreakers during your senior year of high school is bullshit, because if you don't know my name or one interesting fact about me by now, there's a chance you don't give a fuck, but that's okay, because neither do I. There's not a single person in this classroom who can say one thing to pique my interest, and the fact that some of you worthless excuses for life think that saying 'waffles are better than pancakes' is an interesting fact is beyond baffling to me and just goes to prove that the overall interesting fact for this cesspool is that neither I nor any of you are of any importance or interest to literally, and I mean literally, anyone."

— His hands were still damp from the pond's water, and he flicked a bit of dirt from underneath his nail as he walked into his home's threshold, Constance already sitting at the dinner table, a plume of smoke rising above her head.

"Why are you like this?' she started instantly, ashing her cigarette and looking over at her grandson with harsh eyes.

Michael furrowed his eyebrows, attempting to feign confusion, but backed up quickly when Constance stood as she was known for physical outbursts when angered.

"God damnit! I asked you, I begged you, I plead with you, Michael, and you don't listen! Please, just be good, Michael. Please, don't bring attention to yourself- and what do you do? How do you to repay me? You go up to that school and show your ass. Now you've got yourself a suspension on the first day of school. How can you be so stupid, Michael? Don't you get it!?"

Frowning as he looked at the woman, he did his best to fight off the burning sensation in his eyes. She was the only person who ever rose up that type of emotion from him. For years, she had been so kind and forgiving, but as he got older, Michael could tell his actions had began to wear on her, and despite his petitions to be better and be kinder, it seemed that all his right actions were repaid with ten separate travesties.

"I'm sorry."

Constance stood and stared at the young man for a few seconds, the shadow of the unlit portion of the home casting a long, dark apparition onto him. Lighting another cigarette, she shook her head and exhaled. "You're always sorry, Michael,' she said coldly before walking to the front door and exiting for a breath of fresh air. Michael placed the sealed pack of cigarettes he'd picked up from the store (following being kicked out of class and sent to the office) onto the table, hoping it would be a small peace offering and walked slowly up the stairs to his room. The room was especially bland with white walls, a few posters, black bedspread and a desk and shelf filled to the brim with books. Sitting on his bed, Michael stared at the Vitalogy poster on the ceiling above his pillows before unloading his backpack. A few writing utensils and crumbled syllabuses lay on the bed before he got to the bottom, fingering at the edge of a thick book, the pages brushing his fingers lightly. With the natural light still pouring into his room, Michael, feeling as pathetic as he would that week, opened to the first page of How to Heal your Mind in 10 Days!