Slowly, dreadfully, unbearably slowly, the time idled along on hands coated with molasses, cutting and chiming in a steady but draining rhythm grating on the last nerve that he could give. Its cadence, tingling with fervent anxiety, the dark murk of the ISS room (just leaving him with too much room for the imagination to roam. The lady in the room with him didn't look at him, didn't notice him; typing away and filing papers must have enthralled her much more than the nervous tick that infested his legs. They shook, and shook some more, but he didn't have it in him to make them stop, not when time just went...so...slowly.
Too slowly.
The room around him wasn't exactly helping, either.
Around him, the pointing fingers of posters and motivational frames narrowed down on him, and the many awards and odd looks of people shaking hands, smiling centered on each way with little rhyme or reason; all things that made him cringe.
They looked so happy standing there, staring at him...mocking him. He could remember so vividly the hundred or so times someone (most of the time a teacher or another student) told him to just "try harder", "do better", or, his favorite, the infamous "just believe in yourself", that rang angrily in his ears.
He believed it, of course, being a kid and everything; you feel like anything could be yours if you just tried hard enough and did good by others, you know?
It didn't make sense for that not to be the case, not when all the people he knew told him that. That it was how things went, and people who did bad things went away and didn't get what they wanted.
As least, that's supposed be the case.
He did his work (to the best of his ability, though that didn't mean he did well), he raised his hand, made nice with other students.
He tried.
He really, really did.
But it wasn't good enough.
Grades came back as F's, student conferences called, and detentions served, but the result wouldn't change. Not when to Dash, the words were becoming longer, the math appearing more as gibberish than actual numbers; it was hard enough trying to work through the chapter books that they handed out since his brain just wouldn't let him stay still.
His brain just wouldn't let him understand the way that other kids would.
It took him longer.
He didn't remember as much.
No matter how hard he tried, it just...just didn't make sense.
So when his parents would inevitably ask why he couldn't do it, why he just couldn't do what he needed to, why he was so terrible at everything, the boy didn't know how to answer them.
And eventually, he stopped trying to.
Conferences were spent with them yelling at his teachers, insisting that he didn't need any help, that individual learning plans wouldn't do anything for a lazy sack of shit like him, and to be honest, he couldn't say he disagreed.
His heart was having a bit of trouble sticking it out, a part of him didn't know if he could keep it up, trying but failing each and every time to see something change, to see something, anything, improve. Slowly, but surely, his drive to try at all dissolved, and so did the patience of his parents who'd taken quite the stance yelling at him every chance they got, and it wasn't long until they got...physical...
Really physical.
It made him wonder if there was something wrong with him, you know?
It wasn't their fault that he was like this.
What if believing yourself wasn't enough?
That maybe some people just can't do some things, that some people aren't as good as others.
That no matter how hard you tried, or how much you wanted something, you just...you just couldn't do it?
And what if...
...What if he was one of those people?
Looking down at the stack of papers on his desk, he guessed he should be thanking Falluca even giving him a chance to work through another assignment, to make up for his last. That, even despite what he di- tried - to do, he still helped him.
He would have smiled if he didn't feel so bitter.
Kwan didn't struggle with this.
Dale didn't.
Neither did Star, or Paulina, or a lot of people in the school.
At least, he thought so.
He knew a lot of people went through something like this, just like this, and it made it sting more that they would feel the same way that he did.
He wasn't alone in these feelings.
It just felt as though he was.
And that was enough for him to slip the papers into the bin next to his desk, knowing immediately that he would fail.
'Wow, you didn't even try, did you? Not even something literally being handed to you wasn't enough for you.'
'What are you doing, dummy? Aren't you gonna do the assignment?'
'Stupid!'
'Idiot! You should give up, not that it's hard for you.'
Fuckwit.
Idiot.
Stupid.
Stupid.
STUPID.
"Shut up!" The words just slipped out, spilling from his maw with such visceral anger that his leg, shaking as it had been all along, was sent into the bottom of the desk, jolting him and the clerk from their stupors, though more so the young woman who's be-speckled stare landed on him.
Questioning.
Confused.
Scared.
"Michael? Are you alright? Who are you speaking to?" She asked, looking at him warily, more so when he didn't respond.
...
...
Had he...been speaking out loud all this time?
Had she heard him?
He didn't mean it.
He was trying.
He was.
"I-I'm sorry, sorry...I didn't mean to, I didn't...I didn't-," Just like that, the chime of the tiny alarm on her desk rang clear, and Dash couldn't have left any faster, a swift grab of his bag, and a silent departure later, Dash soared from the room and towards the exit of the school, breezing (though his limp still hampered his movements) through the halls until he was met with the cool brush of air across his face.
Through the front doors of the school he went, shuddering as those chilled autumn hands nipping at his ankles, but he didn't have a moment to waste. Not a single second as he wavered off the beaten path, and back along the woodland trail, careful to avoid the still tent that dotted the landscape in the distance, though he had to squint just to see it, the dense foliage doing a fairly good job of concealing the creature the rested inside.
She was safe.
She was there.
She was okay.
That much...that much he knew.
He didn't bother trying to take out his phone (though it wasn't as if it worked anyway, it's screen cracked and without service; it was nothing more than a glorified watch at this point), knowing very well from the dipping plate of the sun over the amber trees around his home that he was late.
Very, very late.
It wasn't until he'd come to the scraggly concrete and asphalt of the mobile home park he'd come to know that he felt himself slow down, if only by a little, feeling his breath coming out in tired sputters that heaved his tired lungs.
Looking about, he couldn't allow himself to wander, his thoughts drifting about as he came to a staggering speed.
It was past the throttled trailers of the others on his lot, storming down the way until he made it to his own, finding that familiar, water-stained paneling and shoddy grass, and the dark, unbridled rage that sat settled upon his father's face, as well as that of the other four faces that stood around the older man; the teen found himself utterly frozen, stock-still despite the thundering footfalls that trampled the sparse sprouts that poked through the cracks in the pavement below them.
He couldn't move...couldn't breathe.
Not even as Allen threw his bottle at him, the fogged glass colliding with his chest before rebounding into the glass, did he move, though this appeared to amuse some of the men, chorus laughter ringing on deaf ears, though he couldn't quite pinpoint which one of the men it was.
He didn't look up, even when the must of alcohol and tobacco burned his nostrils, knowing for sure that his father was near, but he looked to his shoes instead, centering himself in them.
"Now, what I tell you a specific time to get your ass back here, I don't think that wasn't a goddamn invitation to take your sweet old time, was it, boy? You know the rules, right?" The older man hummed, leaning in as close as he could into the boy's ears, though he easily towered over the teen; through craggy teeth, he smiled, and through yellow eyes he watched his son shake his head before taking up a portion of Dash's shirt in his grip, throttling him so violently that the former could hardly keep up, stumbling about clumsily as his backside whined and his head spun, still terribly, terribly hungry.
"Then why the hell are you back so late, huh?! What makes you think that you got the right to make these fine fellas fuckin' wait? Where the fuck were you?!" Barely standing, the boy could only whisper, throat too tight to speak above that. Burning tears itched the corner of his eyes as he spotted the figure of his mother leaned against the doorway of their trailer.
"I-I...I had-," Another shake, another throttle; Dad was getting impatient.
Very impatient.
"Michael, if you don't get on with goddamn point already, I'm gonna make it so you wish you had. I don't have all day!" The men behind him looked tired, irritated; they spoke amongst themselves with the occasional glance in his direction, and the boy couldn't help the twinge of guilt that made him retreat lower into his jacket.
He'd made them wait.
It was all his fault that they were upset.
Now Dad was upset, too.
"I h-had detention. I didn't finish an assignment, and my teacher talked to me so I stayed a-after and-," He couldn't even the words before he felt them, burning eyes that threatened to make him loose his bladder right then and there; so malignant and engrossing were those eyes, the eyes he knew so well, that anything the boy thought he was going to say beyond that fizzled out on his tongue, flinching at the harsh, unyielding boom of his father's voice.
It made him want to scream when he did that, when his face got red and his beady eyes scanned him like an open book, like nothing lied behind his eyes but fear and anguish as he tried to run from his gaze.
But he couldn't.
He never could.
"Why the hell do we have to keep talkin' about the same shit, over and over again, you fuckin' idiot?! Why didn't you do your work? You know what that means? That just sounds like we need to have another heart-to-heart if you still aren't doin' what I said." He knew what he meant, he always did, but he made no move to stop him, though the younger couldn't help the shudder that ran through him, not the writhing anguish that made his stomach do twists and turns inside of him.
Grunting, Allen all but dragged the boy behind him, Dash, again, struggling to keep up as he was presented to the four men, gazing up at them with wide, deer-like eyes before whimpering at the tightening grip of his father's hand, and the man leaning down to whisper, "We'll have to save that for another time. The least you could do is work to make it up now, isn't that right?"
He didn't wait for an answer.
He'd already known that the boy would say yes.
Not that he had a choice.
He didn't have one, after all, and he didn't deserve to.
