A/N: Sorry about the delay in this chapter. This chapter is Jay centric, and Jay was being… well, Jay was being Jay (lol). A lot was involved in this, as I am giving Jay a past and a family (you'll see). Anyway, I hope this chapter is worth the wait. Thanks for reading, thanks for feedback and constructive criticism. And now, on to the chapter.

The Masks We Wear

Jay didn't know how much longer he could sit here and listen to this. Everyone claiming guilt for what the psycho freak had done, the geek whining on and on about how bad psycho boy must have felt because a few people had ignored him. Spinner, taking the blame for everything like it was his and Jay's fault that the freak went nuts. Jimmy, sitting in his wheelchair, acting like he was a saint who didn't do a damn thing to Rick to deserve what happened to him – acting like it was him and Spinner who put him in that chair. And Emma, avoiding even looking at him – pretending he didn't even exist.

"Jimmy, would you care to tell us how you feel about the incident?" Ms. Suave asked, looking at Jimmy sitting in his wheelchair. Jay looked over at his chair, and found himself, for the first time, wondering what it would be like to be unable to walk. He sort of guessed it would suck – a lot. He quickly surpressed the slight twinge of guilt that thought brought. After all, it wasn't his problem.

"Well Ms. Suave, I'm angry. I'm angry that I'm stuck in this chair." Jimmy said, and glared at Spinner. Easy enough to see where Jimmy placed all his blame – as if Spinner was the one who pulled the trigger.

"And you blame Spinner and Jay?" Ms. Suave intuitively inquired.

Jimmy gave her a look that sort of said "Duh!". "Who should I blame? It was them who told Rick that I set up the whole Whack Your Brain humiliation." Jimmy stated.

"Who else? Does anybody else have any idea who else he should blame?" Ms. Suave asked of the group.

The room was silent, except for the noise of Emma shifting in her chair. Jay looked over at her, and saw her looking down at the table, avoiding all eyes. He wondered about that. He had wondered about a lot of things after what she had said to him and the look in her eyes when she walked away from him last year. It was the second time in a long time he had actually felt bad for what he had done. The first time was a few days earlier than that, when he was confronted by that look in Alex's eyes when she told him she never wanted to see him again.

The silence stretched on further, as Emma looked at the table, Toby stared off into space, Jimmy glared at Spinner, and Spinner sat there with a look on his face like he was going to start crying any second now. Finally, Jay couldn't take the silence any longer.

"Have any of you idiots figured out yet that it's Rick's fault?" Jay stated, with a smirk. "Spinner and I didn't pull the trigger, did we?"

Ms. Suave looked at Jay, surprised.

"You're right, Jay. You didn't pull the trigger -- that was Rick's choice. Ultimately, Rick is to blame. But even though you didn't pull the trigger, what do you think your treatment of Rick did?"

Emma looked up from the table, and answered the question.

"The way they treated him – the way everyone treated him at some point in time or another – it made him want to pull the trigger. It made him feel so bad that he wanted to." Emma said, sadly.

Toby nodded at her words, and Jimmy looked thoughtful. Spinner continued to look like he wanted to cry.

Jay said nothing more as her words echoed through his head. He refused to feel like any of this was his fault. So he did the thing he had always done when confronted about his past actions – he lashed out.

"Well if that's the case, Greenpeace – then why did the freak want to shoot you? You protected him from all of us big, bad bullies, didn't you? We didn't tell freak boy it was the whole Trivia geek squad that set him up – we only said Jimmy had done it. So why was the psycho after you, if he wasn't just insane?" Jay spat out, glaring at Emma.

Jay was surprised that she said nothing back to him. He really wanted a fight – he wanted something to take his mind off of what her quietly stated "it made him want to do it" made him think. Because he refused to believe that any of this was his fault. Freak boy was a psycho, and that was that.

Jay looked over at Emma, and saw she was looking down at the table again. Toby and Jimmy were looking over at her thoughtfully, as if they had been wondering the same thing for a while. Jay knew they probably were. It had been the question everyone had been wondering about since the day it had happened – why Emma? Jimmy being shot was slightly more understandable, as most of the people in the school knew about the whole dumpster incident, thanks to Spinner's bragging. But Emma had been the only one to stand up for freak boy, even protecting him from a further beating the day at the Dot.

How much more of this was he expected to put up with? Jay looked up at the clock, and saw what time it was. He felt relieved that time was up, but he also felt something else. He didn't feel bad about lashing out at Emma like that, did he? Of course not.

"Hey, Ms. Suave, times up." Jay stated, interrupting the silence. "It's been fun, but some of us have places to be." He stated, as he got up from his seat and started walking towards the door.

He heard Ms. Sauve talking behind him as he walked out of the door. After all, no one said he had to stay longer than the hour he had committed to.

"So it is. You may go, if you want to, but if anyone wants to stay and talk, I don't mind." Ms. Suave said.

Jay was out the door and headed down the hallway before any of the other students even left the room. He was glad he had made it out of there first – he didn't want to deal with any of them – not even Spinner, who at this point in time was the closest thing to a friend he had.

He headed out the door and went over to his car. This car was his baby. He had it outfitted with everything he could – in the old days it was with parts that he would buy with money he got after stealing things to pay for it, but lately, any new parts were bought with money from his paycheck at the Dot. He guessed he really was going soft, or something. Maybe it just was that he had found out what happens after you get caught, and didn't want to deal with the consequences. He didn't want to end up in prison like his dad, no way.

Jay got into his car, and peeled out, driving away from the school. He sped through the streets of Toronto, watching as the buildings and trees and houses and vehicles passed him by. He tried not to think of the last couple of days, about being an outcast. All of his old friends had disappeared, and he had lost his girlfriend long ago. If he was honest with himself, he would admit he had lost her long before she discovered his after school activities. She had slowly been drifting away from him for a while before that, spending more and more time with her new friends or at work and less and less time with him.

Was that why he had cheated on her? He didn't know. All he knew was that without Alex around, he had started to feel more and more alone, and less and less able to outrun his thoughts. So he started to find other ways to keep himself entertained, and in the process, lost Alex and any chance he might have had with a certain other girl – not that he had wanted one.

Jay drove up to his house, and looked at the older two-story house with peeling paint and a small yard that needed mowing that he had called his home for the last 4 years. His grandma was probably still at work – her low paying job as a cashier at the local convenience store. His grandpa was probably sitting in his recliner, watching T.V., with his 4th can of beer clutched in his wrinkled hand as he got sufficiently disoriented enough to report to his night shift job at one of the local factories.

Jay remembered the first day he had moved in with them – after Children's Aid Services removed him from his dad's home. It had been strange for him to come here. It was an entirely different world than he was used to. It was a place where there was actually food in the refrigerator. There wasn't a constant stream of pale people with dark circles under their eyes and black lines tracing up their arms, as if someone drew them, coming around begging for a "fix" at all hours of the day and night. There was no one here who would take a "fix" themselves and proceed to "fix" his face for some little infraction like forgetting to wash the dishes.

He remembered the kind look in his grandma's eyes as she had looked at him, her grandson she hadn't seen in years – since his mom, her daughter, and died of a drug overdose all those years ago. She had looked at him in a way no one had ever looked at him. It was the same kind of look he'd seen other parents give to their kids – maybe it was love? He really didn't know. All he knew was that now she looked at him with a completely different look in her eyes, one that he knew very well. Disappointment was something he was really used to seeing. That was what inevitably happened to anyone who tried to get close to him – they just ended up getting disappointed.

Jay walked into the door, and saw his grandpa, sitting right where he had predicted.

"Hi, Jay. You didn't get into any more trouble today, did you?" he asked in his gravely voice, without looking up from the T.V.

"No." Jay said briefly, before heading up the stairs. He needed to change before heading out again. He would find somewhere to go, where he could put on his mask and pretend like he didn't have a care in the world – there had to be a place where he could drown out his thoughts in a bottle of whatever he happened to find. Maybe he would go find Spinner to join him. He never did like to drink alone – drinking alone would make him think. The whole point in his endeavor was to try not to think. Because he didn't have a care in the world.