Carlos is quiet throughout his day. Thoughts keep going back to the boy who nearly died. Logan, was his name. How he feels like smiling but absolutely will not in front of these people. His lunch table is flooded by them. Carly Shae and her best friend Sam Pucket -the pair share a webshow where they post videos of themselves on the deep web doing things all the boys around the table have seen except him. Drake Parker and Logan Reese, the former of which was currently choking on the handle of an umbrella and the latter who steals the food from his plate as he tells a boy who could quite litterally be dying to 'shut the fuck up'. Andre Harris and Beck Oliver, who host the wet t-shirt competitions under the bleachers every day during gym.

These were just a handful of the people whom he spent his time avoiding but it was no use. The harder you fight it the worse it gets. Then, eerily, a strange sound comes to him. A soft rumbling like something was coming.

"You're not eating today." Cat Valentine, with her quirky glasses, and her meekness, chooses to sit next to him today. She's one of those, a lot like him. Avoiding the chaos. Staying quiet. Speaking only when absolutely necessary.

"It's supposed to rain today." He responds.

Then this begins a whole bantar between the group he really doesn't care about and it's easy to slip away in the background. The story is focusing on Beck and the situation he had last night where a guy caught him with his girlfriend and they forced him to watch by tying him up with his mothers sex toys. A whole thing. A lot more graphic than what I've described but honestly pointless to relive.

He wants to look at Cat and show her some of the new things he felt yesterday but he can't he knows it will spark deep humiliation for them both. So instead he looks over at the still choking, and now turning blue, Drake Parker. It's like instinct. He rises, reaches over the table, and pulls the umbrella from out of his mouth angering the two jock boys that were holding him down. One of them even mentions, to everyone's comedic joys, that Parker was about to join his fat brother in death.

Carlos pops open the umbrella just as the rumbling sound happens again and suddenly a burst of rain soaks the table. All of their food is ruined. All of their shirts are wet. All of their faces are contorted in a rather confused state. The others around them laugh. Other tables, who have no clue what just happened. These close enough to have heard Carlos speak a few moments ago are stunned. It was supposed to rain today, outside. He and Cat Valentine are perfectly dry, until he's walking away from the lunch table.

She watches as he leaves and then realizes, as the others go back to their conversations like nothing happened, that even without the umbrella she's still dry. The moment Sam Pucket gets knocked in the back of the head by a flying dildo and the others turn their attention to the perpetrator, their pervy sex education teacher, Cat slips away unnoticed to follow this boy. She knows she shouldn't. She knows this will probably lead to something dreadful and humiliating. Still she can't shake the feeling she needs to follow him.

She stands outside of the supply closet he snuck into and she knows he's having a moment others would shame him for. It would be ugly. So she simply stands there doing what she does best, and looks obliviously lost. No one helps her because that's what they do. When she knows he's done she's gone before he comes out of the room. He may not know what she did but she does and that's all that matters to her.

After spending the period of gym in the library down the isle where some books could actually be found not completely defaced by the football team stuffed between a very horny couple and a pregnant girl by the name of Tori Vega stabbing herself in the crotch with a wire hanger because the obviously gay lead in every school musical was lying to her that he was in love with her and she cheated on him with Beck Oliver- another mess I don't have time to get into right now- he spent the last class of the day working on a project with the web-star pair.

Carly kept complaining about how her boyfriend makes her wear a paper bag over her head every time they have sex and Sam devoured an entire tur-duc-ken knocking out a student nearby with every bone she threw away. Still they didn't seem very focused on him. Personally he was getting overwhelmed. His brain was spinning and he couldn't ignore them like he usually did. So eventually, in the blah of the classroom chatter, he snapped.

"Damnit Carly. Don't you think it's a bit stupid to not want something more significant?" He glared at her. His brows furrowed in a way that was so serious it stunned her.

She took a deep breath, "We're talking about Logan Reese here. Captain of the football team. Hottest guy in school. He chose me."

And the rest of the cheer-leading team too when you're busy.

If he wasn't careful he'd end up with his teeth on the curve and his jaw separated in two pieces. So he considered this for a moment, "Then fuck it. Spend your entire life being someone else's tourniquet. You want to be nothing more than the fabric that keeps them from bleeding out then shut the fuck up. Stop complaining about it. God. There is such a thing as wasting oxygen and that's all your doing by stating the things you don't like but don't have the guts to change."

Sam, after ripping off the flesh of a duck wing, cocks a brow. She asks, "Are you gay dude?"

Then he's slamming the book closed, throwing his bag over his shoulder, and walking out the classroom. He passes a girl at the water fountain who's disgruntled because the water has been replaced by bleach and she's spitting it out on the floor. Cat Valentine looks up just in time to see him walk out the double doors at the entrance to the main corridor and her curiosity bubbles up inside. Anythings better than going home to her sexually abusive brother and she's got plenty of bibble to get her through the night.

So without hesitation, she allows this strange boy to lead her into the forest and part of her even hopes whatever she finds is messed up enough to kill her.