Charlie jerked awake suddenly, and for a second he wasn't sure where he was. It took him a few moments to realize that he was back in his dorm.

"Oh sh*t!" One glance at the clock told him he had already missed one class and he was going to be incredibly late for another. How could he have slept this late? His alarm was automatic, set to go off at the same time every morning.

"Calm down, Charlie." He froze halfway out of bed and his eyes went straight to the door, where Jade was stepping into the room, a bag in her hand.

"I shut off your alarm. You needed the rest." Memory flooded back to Charlie in a cold rush. Adam had still been asleep at 4 in the morning, and Jade had suggested they go back to the dorm. He remembered sitting in her car, watching the almost deserted streets go by, remembered seeing one other car go by, and wondering if they, too, had someone important they had to look after. He suddenly felt a little sick and sat back down on his bed.

"Here. I got you a muffin and some juice. Thought you might be hungry," she said, handing him the bag. Now that she said that, Charlie did notice the empty ache in his stomach.

"Thanks."

"No problem. After you eat, get dressed. The hospital called last night and said that Adam's awake."

Adam lay awake in his bed, staring out the window, feeling as though he were in some sort of dream world, and that nothing around him was entirely real. His world was a haze of color and sound, faces moving in and out of his vision, voices surrounding him, then fading away. His memory was made up of mere flashes-the knife, the blood, Charlie's face above him, Charlie's voice talking to someone on the phone, the pain.

Somewhere in the haze, Adam could make out the guilt. He was still not entirely sure what had possessed him to take a knife to his wrist with so much certainty. Perhaps it was the bruises, which were still prominent on his face, or perhaps it was the feeling of loneliness, the isolation he felt day in and day out. He didn't know what had made him do it, but he knew that he had hurt his friend. Charlie's face above him last night...it was an image that came back to him again and again, over and over, as if to remind him that the cut in his wrist was not just his wound to bear.

A white bandage covered the cut now, concealing the scarred and damaged flesh, but the pain was still infinitely clear to Adam. He wondered just how deeply he'd cut himself. He hadn't yet had the courage to take the bandage off. They had told him they'd stitched it up and that the bandage was only a precaution, but he was afraid of what he would see. He didn't want to see what he could do to himself.

It scared him beyond belief that he could do something like this to himself and not even be aware of it. His mind was blank when it came down to the moments leading up to cutting himself. One moment he was holding the blade in his hand, the next, Charlie was shaking him awake, and there was blood on his sheets.

He thought he'd had control, but he realized now how wrong he was.

"Adam?" Charlie stepped hesitantly into the room, and Adam immediately saw the weariness in his posture. It only served to increase his guilt.

"Hey," he replied quietly. He motioned for his friend to sit down, but Charlie stayed standing, his eyes darting around the room.

"You really scared me, you know...last night," he said, jamming his hands deep in his pockets. Adam felt his stomach fold over itself. He had never heard Charlie's voice take on such a tone.

"I'm sorry." Sorry wasn't good enough, and they both knew it.

"God, Adam...why didn't you talk to me?" Charlie asked. He shoved a hand through his dark hair.

"I didn't..." Adam trailed off, feeling like it was useless to explain.

"Didn't what?" Oh sh*t, now he was ticked off, and somewhere in the back of his mind, Adam knew he deserved this.

"Damn it, Adam, do you know how scared I was? You know how worried I was? All of a sudden you just stopped talking, stopped telling me stuff. Why couldn't you talk to me? God...why couldn't you trust me?" Every word hurt worse and worse, and the pain Adam felt was compounded by the fact that there were tears in Charlie's eyes now.

"Look, Charlie," he muttered finally, voice breaking, "It wasn't that easy. You and I both know things were never the same after high school. I couldn't just open up again, okay?" Charlie roughly brushed the tears away, feeling awkward and uncomfortable.

"Why couldn't you trust me? I wanted to help you," he said, still angry. Adam struggled to keep control of his temper.

"Just like you helped me in high school?"

"What?"

"Sh*t, Charlie, you think after you dropped me so fast in high school that you could just come back in and win my trust again? It doesn't work like that. Trust has to be earned." Charlie was stunned into silence, the words hurting him not only because of their apparent malice, but because they were entirely true. Adam sighed heavily.

"Look, Charlie, I didn't mean-"

"No, you're right," Charlie cut him off, "You're right. I shouldn't have expected you to trust me so quickly." He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, trying to regain some hint of composure.

It hit Adam at that moment that this whole experience must have really thrown Charlie off balance, because he'd never known his friend to concede so easily, to admit so readily that he'd made a mistake. This was a whole new realm for them, a realm in which fear, anger, guilt and pain took their tolls, a realm in which bridges could either be burned or built in a matter of seconds.

It was perhaps luck that Jade walked in right at that moment.

Adam lay awake that evening, watching TV without really comprehending anything he saw. His arm was aching now, the wound beginning to heal.

He didn't know who he was anymore. Ever since the beginning, he'd been walking on shifting ground, trying to keep his footing as alliances broke and new friendships were formed. And now he'd slipped. Lost his balance. And he wasn't even sure how it happened, what had caused him to break so suddenly. It scared him, seeing the angry, raw, red lines on his wrist, because he couldn't remember the thought process he went through that had caused him to inflict such wounds on himself. It was as if someone else had been in control of him at that point, guiding his hand, blanking out his memory.

They said it was common not to remember anything in the moments just before and after an attempt such as his. Such trauma often caused slight memory loss. But for Adam, the thought that he could do something like this and not even remember it was frightening. What kind of person was he turning into?

He had hurt his friends. He had hurt Charlie. It cut into him so deeply, the guilt, but with the guilt came anger. Why did you turn your back on me, Charlie? Why did you betray my trust just because I made varsity and you didn't? Why was it automatically my fault?

Two days later, Adam was released from the hospital and allowed to go back to his dorm. They'd sent him off with a load of prescriptions for anti-depressants and the number of a local shrink, but he didn't plan on using any of it. The cure for whatever he was feeling wasn't drugs and mental help.

Jade was deep in studying when someone knocked on her dorm door.

"It's unlocked," she called out, setting down her pencil and closing her books. The door opened, and Adam stepped into the room, expression wary and anxious, but pleading for help at the same time.

"Hey," she said, beckoning him in, "How are you?" She didn't mean it in a generic way, she wanted to know more than just how he was.

"Do you really have to ask?" It came out more sharply than he intended, but Jade didn't flinch.

"Wanna talk?" she asked in reply. He nodded. No sense in beating around the bush. He came here to talk to her. They sat down at the table where Jade had been studying, and Adam's eyes immediately cast themselves downward. He didn't know where to start, didn't know how to ask the questions he needed the answers to.

"If you need a place to start, I have one," she said after a moment. This time around, Adam wasn't as surprised by her uncanny sense of his emotions. She took his silence as an affirmation.

"My brother Tanner and I were adopted into the same family; he was three, I was one. And things were pretty much okay until my mother died when I was twelve. My dad started drinking, started hitting us, doing drugs...everything he could to self-destruct and take us down with him." Her left hand went to her right wrist, tracing the scars there.

"I fell into a depression, which led to these," she held up her forearm for him to see, "And then Tanner took it all to court and got a restraining order." Her eyes clouded a little.

"The day after the settlement, our father came storming into the apartment we were living in and beat the hell out my brother. It was like he wanted to kill him or something. So I called the police, and they came and took him away...but for whatever reason, Tanner just lost it after that. He worked two jobs to try and keep our heads above water, and he was trying to finish school. I guess I wasn't really surprised when he cut himself too." Her voice wavered slightly, but Adam had the sense that she was still perfectly in control of her emotions.

"Your brother...he got through it?" he asked.

"Yeah. He pulled through okay."

"And...yourself?" Jade fiddled absentmindedly with her pencil.

"It's tough, Adam. You gotta walk really uneven ground sometimes," she replied, "But...when you find your footing again...you'll be that much stronger." Long silence. Jade didn't seem to find it the least bit uncomfortable.

"I'm scared," he said finally, "I don't how things are gonna work out. I mean...how am I supposed to just get back to life when I know...when I know I can do something like this to myself?" The words came tumbling out faster than he intended, his voice starting to tremble.

"You don't just "get back" to life, Adam. You gotta go slow, you know? I know that's what everyone tells you and you're probably sick of hearing it, but it's true." Another long silence.

"What should I do about Charlie?"



Charlie stared at himself in the mirror, trying to figure out how it was possible that the reflection he saw was really him. He reached up with his fingers to touch the pale skin under his eyes, slightly swollen from lack of sleep. He hadn't eaten in nearly a day, and his studying was a joke. Every day, it was a chore just to get up and go to class. The way things were going, he'd be lucky to hold on to this semester.

It'd been two and a half weeks since everything blew up in his face. His back was still bothering him, and the silence in the dorm was driving him up the walls. Adam had pretty much closed himself off ever since the incident, and Charlie didn't really know how to approach him. Somewhere, a voice in the back of his mind was telling him that avoiding the issue wasn't going to get them anywhere, and that he was quickly losing a friend, but he couldn't bring himself to listen to that voice.

This was one of those nights that Charlie knew was the perfect opportunity to talk. The hockey team was headed out to East to play Uconn tomorrow in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and though Adam wasn't playing, he was still going along. Both he and Charlie were in the midst of packing that evening, and their attention was not focused on the other. Charlie knew this was a good opportunity to talk to his friend because they could talk without having to look at each other. Bellowing out a deep sigh, he tossed a couple shirts into his bag and went to his dresser.

"I don't blame you for being angry with me," he said in a voice that wasn't entirely his own. Or maybe it was, and he just didn't recognize it. Long silence. When Charlie dared to turn around, he saw Adam staring back at him with something akin to guilt.

"I'm not angry at you, Charlie," he replied, averting his eyes. He busied himself folding and refolding the shirt in his hands.

"It's...it was just...it's just been really hard to talk about, you know?" he continued. Charlie clenched his jaw so hard it hurt. It was still hard to talk about, it still made him want to curl up and cry every time he thought about that night. He swallowed hard, his throat dry.

"Not like it's going to get any easier," he answered. He half-expected Adam to snap at him.

"Yeah...I realize that now." Adam sat down on his bed and let out a sharp breath.

"So sit down. We've got the whole night."