ZZZ

Should they. . .say something?

It wasn't like they were friends or anything but when you find someone in as bad of a shape as TJ a few night ago, you had to say something, right?

Spinelli and Vince had plenty of questions, considering how he showed up to school without a mark on his face when they KNOW for a fact he had a gash on his forehead, a black eye, swelling over the other, and a bleeding lip, and that's just the injures they saw on his face.

But they didn't exactly know how to do that.

They asked Mikey, Gus, and Gretchen to keep an eye on him along with them, but they didn't find out anymore information then they already had. He was quit in class, opting out of group assignments in favor of doing them by himself, despite the occassional girl or girls sitting with him at lunch, he didnt appear to have any friends.

There wasn't much they could get from that. Maybe he crossed someone who wanted to beat the shit out of him. He did always used to fet in fights in middle school for some reason.

Going up to him and talking was all they had left, but he wasn't interested and barely said a full sentence to either of them before leaving.

ZZZ

The screaming only stopped when whoever was doing it ran out of air. Between the "what the fuck are you doing?!'s" and "what the fuck, what the FUCK?!'s", his pocket knife was snatched out of his hands, and his chair was pushed away from his desk.

When he was finally out of his haze, he noticed that two of them were trying to clean his cuts. Gretchen and Spinelli, while the other either stood or sat near by. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath to get his barring. Christ, how was he going to handle

"Hey, you back with us, man?" Vince asked him. He was trying to clean the cuts on his upper arm. "You, uh, did a number on yourself, huh?"

"It's fine."

"It's not fine!" Spinelli shouted. "Nothing about this is fine! Anyone who does. . .this!" She gestured at his cuts. "Is not fine!"

"It's fine."

"Stop saying that! You're not fine, TJ! Look at your arm! Look at your stomach!" She kept shouting. Good thing his parents weren't home to keep thing from getting worse. "What is that- are those needles in your neck?!"

The others moved to get a closer look, and cringed when they saw that he, in fact, had four needle piercing through the front of his neck. He had forgotten about those, actually. They needed to be removed before the blood dried and it became harder to pull them out.

So with his arm with unmarred skin, he reached up to pull them out.

"Ew, ew, you aren't going to pull them out are you?" Gus said. He cringed, wincing as TJ did just that, pulling out the needles one by one without so much as flinching. The five of them did enough flinching of their own to make up for it. "Oh God, oh God, oh God."

"How can you just pull them out like that?" Vince asked. "Doesn't that hurt?"

"Not really." He looked at the needles, now in his hands, before dropping them in a waste bin. He never used the same needles twice; too much risk for infection. Speaking of, he needed to clean himself up, so pulled his arm away, and he grabbed the tool box under his bed, where he kept all his supplies.

The others didn't know whether to be relieved that he had so much medical stuff, or to be even more horrified at everything that's happening right now. They watched him clean the cuts with carefully, but with ease that only came doing it frequently.

"Do you. . .do this often?" Vince asked. "Because Spinelli's right. This isn't okay."

"Self harm is often a sign of depression. Are you depressed?"

He paused, giving them a confused look.

"You're always by yourself, and you don't seem to have any friends, or in any clubs or teams or anything. If you're depressed then we can help you, ya know? I know we haven't hung out in forever but you can talk to us if you're not doing okay."

. . .Were they serious? TJ looked at each of their expressions. Despite a few of them looking quite sick and disturbed at seeing him in this state, they clearly looked concerned as well. Ah.

He couldn't stop of few chuckles from escape, and that quickly became a nice, breath loosing, stomach holding laugh.

"That's presumptuous of you," said TJ. "I'm taking a shower. Do me a favor and be gone when I'm done, yeah? Thanks."

Finished with cleaning his wounds, he stood to walk to the attached bathroom to his bedroom, but was stopped when he felt one of them grab his good upper arm.

"What?"

"We're serious, man. We don't want you to hurt yourself."

"I know, and that's unfortunate." He pulled his arm away and continued to the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. A hot shower was always nice after these sessions.

ZZZ

". . .Would someone like to explain to me what the FUCK we walked in on?"

"We walked in on TJ. In his room. Cutting up his arm with a knife."

"Jesus Christ he had needles in his neck!. Who does that?"

"Someone who is not mentally well, Gus. To say that this is concerning would be putting it extremely lightly."

"Did you notice how calm about us seeing that? Like he didn't care."

Then he's probably been doing it for a long time, especially if he had all that stuff under his bed."

"So what do we do? Do we tell someone or?"

"No, not yet. I think we should try approaching him. You know, try to talk to him first."

ZZZZ

By some miracle, they were gone by the time TJ finished his shower. He even double checked and looked downstairs, making sure they didn't just leave the room to let him get dressed in private. Nope, they were completely gone.

And now he has to worry about them knowing. It was probably going to come out one way or another but he'd rather it not come out in this particular way. In an ideal world they would convince themselves that it was some bizarre fever dream and leave it at that.

But TJ didn't live in the ideal world, and now they were watching him at school. e didn't have to look to know they were watching him whenever they were in the same hallway or in the lunch room. He was pretty good at keeping a neutral expression but goddamn was this testing him.

"I'm sorry, can you say that again?" he said to the particular girl that came up to him today. With this on his mind, he had little attention left to pay attention to anyone who would talk to him. But people talking to him didn't happen often so it was working out. Mostly.

"I was saying how the dance is coming up," she said. "And I was wondering if you had a date for it?"

"No."

"Um, would you like to go. . .with me?" She shyly asked.

"I'm sorry, but no. Don't take it personally, though. I'm not going at all, date or no date," he said. "You're sweet. But I'm not really into relationships."

"Oh. . .okay." He would've watched her turn and walk away if he didn't spot Vince out of a crowd down the hall, watching him.

Great.

ZZZ

"Hey, TJ, do you want to go to debate club with me?"

Out of all of them, TJ didn't expect Gretchen to be the one to approach him in such a blatant way. They had all of one class together and half the time he forgot about that. But he couldn't forgot today, because today was the day where she came over and sat at the empty desk next to his after the teacher let them work on their assignment. Most students got into groups, while he was one that opted to, as always.

"No thanks."

"I'm sure you'll like it, though. We debate a lot of topics for practice, I think you can really get into it, considering you used to do a lot of the same thing-"

"Gretchen."

"Yes?"

"I'm not going."

He turned his attention back to the textbook in front of him. This stupid assignment involved doing a bunch of equations, and his grades needed him to get through it, dyscalculia be damned.

But she still stayed next to him as he continued to make heads or tails of these problems. And TJ did his best to ignore her until the end of class. He was well on his way out the door until he felt her hand on his shoulder.

"We all just want you to know that we're here if you need anyone to talk to," she said.

"If you really want to help me then leave me alone," He said. "And tell the others to do the same and stop staring at me. I'd appreciate it." He adjusted his bag over his shoulder and left.

ZZZ

But that was to much to ask for, TJ found when he walked up to his house. Spinelli was sitting on his porch, waiting for him, because of course she would be.

He walked past her, not bothering to ask why she was there because he already knew why, but he wasn't going to feed into this. The sooner he was in his room, alone, the better.

"Hey Teej. You take History 401, right? you think you can help me out? I'm having trouble with this project-"

"You've gotten really bad at lying," he interrupted. "Either that or its the situation that makes it so blatantly obvious."

He continued past her, unlocking the front door and ready to leave her on the porch. just as he was closing the door, she pushed it open.

"Okay so maybe its really obvious, but im not lying," she said. "I really do need help with this history project and youre already taking the senior level class."

"Why do you know this?"

"C'mon, Teej! Help me out."

"No."

"Teej-"

"Stop calling me that and leave."

"Oh hello, Ashley!" Their conversation was interrupted when his mother walked into the front room to see what the commotion was about. "Its been a long time since I've seen you come over. TJ, aren't you going to let her in?"

". . .Yeah."

Spinelli smiled has he opened the door and she stepped inside, thankful for TJ's status as somewhat a mommas boy.

"What brings you over here, Ashley? I miss seeing you kids over here."

"I was hoping that TJ would help me with this project," Spinelli said.

They sat at the kitchen table, with their note and textbooks laid out and open. Spinelli was insistent on sitting right next to him, even though TJ wanted her on the opposite end of the round table. She explained her project, some 12 page essay on a social topic in whatever decade they wanted to pick.

"So I was thinking I'd do something in the 20s. You know, flappers, alcohol, world war 1 and all that," she explained.

"World War 1 ended in 1918," TJ said. He flipped through the pages of one of his old notebooks.

"See? You know a lot."

"It's basic history. Write your essay on Prohibition. There's a lot to work with." He pushed the notebook over to her to go over. "Can you leave now?"

"Hold on, I wanna read over this."

TJ settled in on getting through his math homework, doing his best to pretend that he was doing it alone. He wasn't even planning on indulging tonight; he wanted to get to bed early because being stared at gives him a migraine.

Spinelli was so full of bullshit, though. Mr. Morison didn't assign essays longer than 5 pages or cover the 20s.

He noticed the real reason she wanted to come over soon enough. Quick glances at his arms and neck for any signs of self harm. Those quick glaces became outright stares, and she only looked away when he look back at her. Too bad there was nothing to see. He never managed to get to his lower arm and the pin points on his neck were to small to see without getting close.

"Hey. . .Teej. Can we talk about last night?" She asked.

"No."

"We're all worried about you after seeing you doing that to yourself. What's going on? Are you okay? You can talk to us if somethings bothering you so much that you want to, you know, do that," Spinelli said. "Maybe you are depressed, we don't ever see you hang out with any friends or anywhere outside of school, which is weird because you used to be really social. You can get help for it, ya know? Cutting isn't a good way to cope."

He sighed, closing his books. "I'm going upstairs. Drop off my notebook when you're finished."

"Wait-"

"NO. I want to be left alone and I don't understand what you all don't get about that."

"Because you're not okay! Anyone who does what you were doing needs to get help."

His only response was a scoff before he went to his room.