Nathan had to admit that he was feeling pretty fucking good by the time he was back on campus for class, glad that AP had essentially been cancelled indefinitely. He managed to catch Frank just as he was about to leave the Two Whales diner and left rather well stocked, though only a small amount of what he picked up was actually for him. He'd picked up plenty for a personal supply sporatically throughout yesterday, as he and Frank had run into each other on three separate occasions . . . well, 'running into each other' would be one way to put it. In another way, Nathan had essentially been trying to balance coke and weed in his system since his weird vision of that storm, and had somehow been struggling to maintain a high since then. This time travel thing must really eat through cocaine or something.
Still, stuff started to get weird through the full day of no sleep and too much stuff in Nathan's system, so Nathan decided to take a little breather around 11:15am in the form of diazepam, which should help keep his twitchiness down and let him get through the rest of the school day.

Still, there was something about weed and diazepam that left you feeling pretty good, if a little out of focus.

So, when Nathan pushed open the doors of Blackwell, he wasn't entirely sure how to handle coming immediately face to face with Kate Marsh. He wasn't prepared to be scary, nor really should he try to be. He just hoped she had forgotten his presence entirely from the night of the Vortex Club party. Sure, his involvement in her video couldn't look great, but if she remembered nothing, it didn't seem very likely that she'd recall anything about him. She slept more easily with GHB in her system than anyone else he'd ever met.
So, as she walked towards him and him towards her, he wasn't sure what sort of face to put on. Intimidating? Charming? Nice? Evade her entirely?

Luckily, or perhaps not, he didn't have to settle for one, only managing a slight smile before she suddenly turned, as if she had forgotten something, and shot back the way she'd come. Shit. She was avoiding him. That was probably a bad sign. What could she possibly even remember? He had been nothing but nice towards her at the Vortex Club party, and there was no way she remembered anything from when she was in the studio - Frank had definitely made it in time before their next dose.

Nathan followed her down the hall towards Jefferson's room, glad to see that Victoria was standing just outside, leaning against the wall with her phone out, probably scrolling aggressively through We Heart It or something. Her eyes flicked up from the screen as Kate passed, and a pointed smirk followed quickly, but Kate gave her a wide berth before entering the class. Meanwhile, Nathan landed in next to Victoria silently, leaning on his shoulder against the wall.
She changed tabs, but didn't drop her phone, just turning her head towards her friend. "Didn't see you this morning, Nate - you doing okay today?"
Nathan nodded, passing a hand through his hair as if that would disguise his embarrassment. It wasn't so much that he had been vulnerable or afraid around Victoria - that was nothing new. It was just the remembering of vulnerability inside this place. He felt like, given the chance, this school would eat him alive. "Yeah, yeah, a lot better today. Just picked up some supplies for Thursday," he said, then kicked back off the wall to enter the classroom. It would help him keep an eye on Marsh and Caulfield.

As it turned out, that was unnecessary. Caulfield wasn't here yet, and Marsh was talking to Jefferson. Jefferson's eyes drifted from the little blonde and fell on Nathan and Victoria as they entered, and then he offered, "Maybe we should take about this outside, Kate."
While Jefferson left to go play with his food, Nathan leaned up against Victoria's desk, but he was surprised to find that she instead went over to the table in the back center, placing her feet down on one of the seats.
Nathan gave her a questioning look. "What?" she shrugged defensively. "It's Max's seat. I've heard she's been getting a little buddy-buddy with Taylor and I'm not going to let her play my little girl like that."

Nathan shrugged and took a position next to her, sitting on Max's table as well with his hands in his pockets, feeling lighter without the gun in his pocket and glad to ditch his backpack. He just felt like Victoria's approach to intimidation was a little . . . off. Not that it wasn't a tactic that worked, but because intimidation for her was either extremely direct with her size or extremely indirect with rumors and trash talk. Territoriality was a little different, but he didn't particularly care. A bit sad that this didn't give him a good avenue to check out the photo shoot going on behind them, but, oh well.
"So, yeah, we should be all set Thursday - I'll have a chat with my dad to make sure there isn't any police shit going on down here. They can bust skaters Friday."

Victoria nodded, but she kept checking over her shoulder every ten seconds or so. "Mmhmm, okay, good. That'll be -" she looked back to Nathan, nodding again to make sure he saw the gesture, "- good."

There was a bit of an awkward pause while Victoria looked down at her phone, occasionally interrupted by glances back towards the photo shoot every few seconds. She normally was not so spacey - it was strange to see her distracted, and Nathan was not exactly sure how to respond. "So, uh," he began again, "I was thinking we should get a new barman for this party, because that last one seemed a bit like a creep."
"Mmhmm."
"And, I don't know, I feel like it would help everyone rock out a little, get into it if we got a cool guy - maybe someone a little younger, you know, or like a chick? I mean, nobody finds bargirls weird, they only add to a party."
"Yeah."
"I mean, we're just trying to sell a memorable time, right?"
She was not listening.
"So, I just thought maybe . . . well, I suppose if we just get people drunk enough it won't really matter, honestly. People won't notice much if I can time travel anyway so I don't even know what I'm worried about."

Victoria nodded a little, but then paused and turned her head a little towards Nathan. "Huh?" she asked.
He didn't get much of a response out. Out of the corner of his eye, Nathan noticed someone enter the room, and Victoria noticed it as well, turning a little extra until she could clearly notice who it was.
And then she sort of giggled, but it was low and, well, weird. Then she asked in the same low, menacing? voice, "Do you think Max will be pissed we're sitting at her desk"

What the fuck? Yeah, of course she would be, isn't that the whole point? Why was she drawing attention to it now? What was up with Tori?
Nathan hauled himself further up onto the desk as Caulfield approached, opening up his posture. "Better be quiet, Victoria - we've got a master snitch and liar here." He didn't want to make it loud, but he wanted anyone who was listening in to know what he had to say. Nobody was going to believe Max Caulfield - or, if they did privately, they wouldn't be doing it publicly.

Victoria leaned forward a little, eyes narrowing all the while as she asked, "Did you think we were best friends forever or something?"
Something was seriously off about Caulfield, though. She kept her hands down by her sides but her head tilted while she talked, sarcastic and dismissive: "Not at all, Victoria."
Nathan decided to spread his message a little further while Jefferson was out of the room, just a little louder. "Max is such an attention whore," he announced.

But she quite honestly didn't seem to give a fuck, and that left Nathan a little stunned. "You would know," was all she said as she took a step forward to retrieve her seat from him. "Can I sit down now?" she asked, placing a hand on her hip like an impatient mother counting to 'three'.
Luckily, Victoria had Nathan's back - she lacked the context to be sufficiently surprised at the balls on this bitch. "Oh, please do," she said faux-sweetly. "Take a selfie of this moment," she said as she rounded Max, letting Nathan sit up while Max's eyes tracked her, so they temporarily had her between the two of them. Tiny girl with no friends in sight.
But she didn't flinch. This girl needed to fucking flinch! "Yeah Max," Nathan said, leaning forward to draw her attention now. "So I won't forget you." She leaned backwards a little in response to his presence, but there was no unconscious retreat, no backward awkwardly into Victoria to humiliate herself.

She just kept her cool, and muttered, "assholes" as they retreated to the corner of the room.

"That fucking bitch," Nathan muttered so only Victoria would hear, not wanting anyone to recognize that her cool got to him a little. He always felt that he could bully and control the people here one way or another, but this absolute nobody just acted fucking impervious. Was it just some shit in her head? Was this the sort of autistic fuckery that Victoria ended her complaints with if she wanted to excuse herself for talking shit about Caulfield? Could she just legitimately not process his threats on some level, or did they just mean nothing to her? Whatever it was, it stripped him of his power in this place, and he did not like it one goddamn bit.
"I know, right?" Victoria said, arms crossed, eyes still shifting away from Nathan occasionally to look back at Max. "She acts like she can do whatever she want, like the order around here means nothing." As she finished saying that, though, Victoria took another glance over at Max, and this time her stare lingered a little.

Nathan frowned. Victoria didn't sound pissed when she said that. She almost sounded like she admired it.
Now Nathan turned to take an extra look at Max. Who could admire a scrawny, weird-looking bitch like that?

Beyond her, though, there was something else - a whole different scene out the window. Madsen sat behind the branches of a pale willow tree, a beefy camera in his hands as he snapped shots from the sidelines. Following his line of sight, Nathan noticed what looked like Kate Marsh heading across the campus.
What was that fucker doing?

Then, there was another new entry to the classroom. Graham. Without so much as taking a glance at Nathan, he strolled up to Caulfield's desk and sat on the side of it with so much casual, flagrant disregard for Nathan's presence that it made his blood pressure rise.

"I saw Kate earlier and her eyes were puffy from crying."
Caulfield nodded a bit to herself. Victoria was saying something but Nathan wasn't listening.
"Kate has . . . a lot on her plate," Max replied softly.

The bell rang.
Jefferson entered the classroom, taking a brief look at everyone.
"I didn't know what to say and she didn't tell me anything," Graham said, probably saving his own ass on some level, with Jefferson and Nathan's eyes both on him.

Everyone moved to their seats.
"Okay, I know you love me, but if you're not in this class, beat it."

Nathan tailed Graham out of the classroom as Jefferson began his little lecture. His eyes slid over to Jefferson as he did, a little curious about whatever exchange had just occurred between him and Marsh to make her cry - she hadn't been crying when Nathan saw her, so either this had happened much earlier and her face had cleared from it, or Jefferson had made her cry.
Nathan raised his eyebrows as he made eye contact with Jefferson, but all he got was a stonewall of expression in response. Nothing. Beautiful.

Nathan heard giggling as he made his way out of the classroom, not in the mood to go to engineering right now.

You know what sounded a whole lot better than engineering? Fucking up whatever David Madsen was doing. Clearly he had taken an interest in Kate Marsh, and he wasn't the only forty year old man around here with an interest in her. She just seemed to be a magnet for all sorts of photography. Maybe Nathan could find out if Madsen's and his own were aligned. That was the sort of smart thinking that could get him a promotion at work. Or, you know, beat the fuck down by a security guard, but either way Nathan was going to come out on top from his confrontation.

Outside the school building, Nathan did not see Madsen anywhere - clearly, he'd moved on. Still, Nathan could tell where Kate was heading, which didn't make it difficult to deduce where he'd have to go to find David Madsen. Nathan made his way across campus towards the girls dorm, the rain beginning to spill over his jacket all the while, still largely kept off his face by his thick hair. Despite the rain, he could hardly say he was cold.

It wasn't until Zach Riggins zoomed by Nathan really recognized something was off. It was not a normal type of running. It was . . . frightened, almost. Uncharacteristic. Nathan paused while Riggins passed on the ramp between the main campus and the dorms, but then hurried his step towards the dorms afterwards. What was going on?
And as Nathan turned the corner of the boys dorm, he did not immediately understand, because he had no context. There under the rain, there was only the empty park outside the girls dorm. A fully inflated football sat at the fork in the road, probably abandoned by Zach and someone else. Nathan began to make his way across the grass, figuring someone might have discovered his message to Max, when he realized someone's eyes were on him.

Then he looked up. And he saw her there.
He did not stop walking until he was at the edge of the grass in front of the girl's dorm. And then, he just stood still, gazing up at something he barely comprehended.

Kate Marsh stood on the edge of the roof of the girls' dorm, and she was staring down at him. Not for a second did he fool himself that she didn't see him right back. Not for a second did he believe that she did not see him for exactly what he was. There, at that tremendous little distance, he discovered an intimacy in revulsion unlike anything he'd felt since . . .
And they just stood there, as if they kept each other held in place with their gazes. Within maybe thirty seconds, other people had begun to turn the corner of the boys' dorm, but none of them . . . said anything. Some people, late for class, exited the girls dorm, but in following everyone else's gaze, they too turned and saw Kate standing there. A few of them went back inside the dorms, but only to retrieve more people to come outside.

Within two minutes, it was like the park outside the dorms was flooded with people, but Nathan and Kate's eye contact never seemed to break for more than a second at a time.

Then, there was somebody. Their voice was distorted, like half the air they were putting into talking was being lost in the formation of the words, but they called out, finally, finally. "Kate! Katie, what are you doing up there? Kate, come down - what are you doing? Kate?! Kate?"

Nathan and Kate both turned to look as a girl with dyed purple hair approached on the sidewalk, her hands held out to the sides of her like she were steadying herself. Alyssa. Victoria had mentioned her. Some introverted goth bitch. But she was the only thing that had pulled Kate out of her head. Or Nathan's head - wherever she was.

Kate's voice was more unsteady than Nathan had imagined it would be. "Alyssa - no, no, stay there, okay? I can't come down, I just can't. I-"

"BITCH FLIPPED OUT!" someone called loudly, and that shut Kate up immediately. You could see her jaw roll, as if someone had struck her, and she began to look out, ahead, away from the body of students and into the forest.

"No - Katie! Katie, what are you doing, why? What's going on . . ." Alyssa's voice seemed to break and broke into something incoherant. Graham appeared, and pulled her into his arms, and she began to fragment. That response . . . it was so much more different than everyone else's. Fascination. Shock. Horror. There was a range of emotion everywhere, but nobody else really seemed to be treating it like Marsh would actually do it. She wouldn't, would she? This was just some suicidal teenage girl bullshit.

But Alyssa had seen what they all hadn't. And Nathan saw it too, for just a moment. Kate held her arms out to her side, and she -
She turned around suddenly.

David Madsen rushed passed Nathan, but Nathan barely even noticed, just trying to see what was going on. Where had he been this whole time?

She was talking to someone, and everyone just froze. Kate's arms stayed by her side, and her head bobbed slightly, her hands fidgeted as the rain poured down on her, and she was talking to someone. Nobody so much as wanted to breathe, and Nathan could barely bring himself to breathe. He couldn't hear anything but the rain pouring and pouring and he could feel it now, fuck his hair and his jacket and whateverthefuck else, he could feel the rain, and he was cold and numb everywhere.

Finally, there was something they could hear: "No! Nobody cares about me, nobody..."

They continued talking, talking, but a sharp edge of panic was setting in, like a needle had been jammed into Nathan's pulmonary artery and everything was leaking out. Everything was so quiet, he barely even processed it when Kate turned, waving her hand almost dismissively behind her.
And then she just fell.

Nathan's hand shot out, but it was like he had wrapped his hand around an electric fence, as pain shot through his entire body and he recoiled back to try and escape the pain.
"No! Kate!"
He never heard anything like the sound of her body cracking on the pavement.

His eyes were still fixed up on the roof at first. His hand outstretched, as if he could grasp the palm of the person up there. Caulfield.
They sat like reflected images across the axis of a dead body.

He let his eyes fall. Her arm was outstretched in front of her, like she was trying to crawl her way to a pillow while too drunk to continue. Blood already oozed from her mouth, or her face, or something there - it was all too buried against the concrete to really say.
It was all so familiar to him, how her body was laid out over the concrete. Where had he seen her like that?

Ah, yeah. That photo. Jefferson had liked that one.

Nathan let his hand fall. There was screaming everywhere. Caulfield's hands came over her mouth, as if to hold back a scream of her own.

It seemed like the only person who wasn't screaming was the girl sitting on the steps of the girls dorm, looking out at the body as its blood tried to find cracks to disappear in. Her eyes met Nathan's as blood began to drip down his face.

"Fuck you," she said.