Today had been a long day. Two tests, a XANA attack, harassment from Sissi, and an almost fight with Yumi. Ulrich would never know which was worse; a bunch of awfulness bunched up into a small period of time or a little being spread over a long time. Thankfully at least, today was over and Ulrich was heading back to his dorm from the bathrooms in his pajamas. He waved to a few random guys in his grade or a year above or under and opened his dorm door and casually walked in, closing the door behind him.
Ulrich glanced at Odd who was sitting on his bed and noticed something strange. Odd's eyes were filled with fear and he was completely frozen. Why was Odd afraid? "Do I have a-" Ulrich cut himself off, his eyes happening to see Odd's arm. "Odd… Why is your arm bleeding?"
"Umm… I… uh… scraped it on my pencil sharpener!" said Odd, none to eloquently lying, the non-cut hand slipping under his blanket.
"Odd… how did you—never mind I don't want to know how you did," said Ulrich not even realizing it was a lie.
"You should go—" Ulrich froze as his eyes went from the blood and more recent cut to the old ones and scars, some light purple, some white, some skin colored. "Go to the bathroom and clean that up. I'll find a spare bandage from around here."
"Okay," Odd said.
"Here," said Ulrich pulling some tissues from a Kleenex box and handing them to Odd.
Odd nodded and put them on the cut as he slipped some slippers on and headed out of the room and down the hallway to the bathroom.
Ulrich sighed, not knowing how to deal with this on top of everything else today. Well, this would explain why Odd had switched to wearing long sleeves for gym class. Ulrich walked over to Odds blanket, pulled it up and grabbed the pencil sharpener blade that fell from it. It took Ulrich a moment to decipher what it was. The hole in the middle of the blade gave it away. It was one from one of those pencil sharpeners designed for those oversized pencils. Ulrich inspected it for a moment before placing it on top of the dresser, not bothering to throw it away, and sighed. He made up Odd's bed for him and then dug through his own drawers before finding some loose band-aid's in his odd 'n ends drawer. Odd walked in, paper towel pressed to his cut as Ulrich shut the drawer.
Odd sighed, and shut the door. He threw the paper towel in the garbage and said, "Ulrich, where's the bandages?"
"I have one right here," said Ulrich. "Come here so I can put it on."
"Ulrich, I can do it myself."
"Not very securely with where that cut is."
"Fine," said Odd sighing. He walked over to Ulrich and reluctantly held out his right arm. Ulrich opened the sterile skin colored bandage and placed it over the ever so slightly bleeding cut. Odd wouldn't look Ulrich in the eyes. Ulrich threw the bandage packaging in the trash and went over to his bed, grabbing some school books and started to work on his English essay that was due the day after next. Odd chose to sit on his bed which he noticed had been made.
One of Odd's knees went up and down, his heel quickly and gently tapping the carpeted floor. Odd leaned his arms on his knees, his fingers twitching as well. He couldn't stop fidgeting, visibly anxious about something. Finally, after ten minutes of the only noises being, the scrit-scratch of a pencil, pages ruffling and the odd noise Odd would make Odd burst into words.
"Aren't you going to say something? Confront me? Get angry? Hug me? Yell? Tell someone? Ask me why? React in some way at all?" asked Odd, his voice, wary, full of anxiety with a dash of depression and a gram or two of anger, his sentences sharp and quick, guilt filled.
"No," said Ulrich simply glancing up from his essay which had grown to about one page in length.
"Why?"
Ulrich shrugged. "Do you want me to do something?"
"NO!" Odd said, jumping up. "Just don't tell anyone. I'm gonna stop soon… I promise. It's just… so… hard… And summer's coming! I really need to-"
Ulrich cut him off. "Odd, you're my best friend. I trust that you know what you're doing, understand the consequences of your actions, are prepared to accept them and know that you can talk to me at any point in time," Ulrich said going back to his essay. "You do know that, right?" Ulrich caught Odd's eye.
"Y-yeah," said Odd who went back to staring at the carpet but thankful that Ulrich wasn't going to interfere. Odd knew he could handle this. Soon, he'd stop, and he'd go back to being normal. Odd walked over to his bed and lay down. "Th-thanks," the young blond stuttered.
"Yep," said Ulrich.
The truth was Ulrich knew he couldn't help Odd handle problems of the capacity that Odd was having. Not just the obvious, but the cause of the obvious as well. Not with everything else that was going on. Ulrich needed to pull A's and B's on his next report card home or his father was going to put in place some serious consequences. Ulrich had no idea what these consequences could be and had no desire to know. Things with X.A.N.A were not looking very good either. Things with Yumi weren't the best either (curse William for all he's worth) and he had somehow got in the middle of Aelita's and Odd's fight. Things were just so bleak.
Ulrich sighed and placed his essay to the side. He stood up and checked on Odd who had already fell asleep, sleeves still pushed up, arms thrown over head, forearms clear to be seen. Ulrich found himself counting. Counting, counting every scar, no matter how faint (some were really that old?), ignoring their different colors, and shapes. There were thirteen on each arm.
The left had a scar right where the bottom of the palm turned into wrist going horizontally. Most of the marks were sporadic and randomly places, none more then a few inches. Many of them seem to be angered filled, but a few placed near where the lower arm changed into the upper but down slightly where so straight and neatly made, as if careful precision had been used.
The right arm consisted of a long scar on the more right side of the arm, some wavy lines, some ex's, a peace sign and a heart. There was also the new cut which was about the center of the limb.
Odd grimaced at the sight. He hoped Odd stopped, truly did, but really couldn't be bothered to help. When you have problems in your own life, what's the point in trying to help others out? You'd probably just drag both of you down. And there is now way Ulrich could do that to Odd. Odd deserved real help. But, there was no way Ulrich would betray Odd by telling a staff member or Jeremie. Jeremie was probably the only one who even had the faintest idea about something like this. But then, if he ever did something like this, he wouldn't ever want someone to tell someone else.
Ulrich looked over at the dresser and spied the pencil sharpener blade. He walked over scooped the blade up, pocketed it, slipped on some slippers and headed off down to the bathroom.
If only Ulrich had thrown that awful weapon away, maybe things would have turned out differently…