SEVEN
Monday Morning rolls back around again. Alex feels like a sleepwalker through most of her classes— Even with plenty of sleep Saturday, Sunday night was two hours of decent sleep filled with nightmares. Not a good mixture for learning. But she has a water bottle full of iced coffee and sheer force of will to get her through the day. Which is what she usually does. By the time seventh period rolls around, she's pretty much crashed. Talking to Mrs. Long a bit has perked her up, but she's still nodding off during notes.
Signal stations, radios, pools of brackish water. Submarines, stacked rocks, that green jacket. Alex manages not to jump when Mrs. Long calls her out of her stupor.
"Alex? Are you alright?"
"Oh— Yeah, no, I'm— I'm right as rain! Just… didn't sleep well last night."
.
Jonas had been focused on doing actual TA things, but her name pulls him from his concentration. As soon as he recognizes that fact, he immediately tries to hide it, because he was definitely getting a couple of odd looks from students at the beginning of class, and he's decided it's because of Alex's stay on the couch Friday. It doesn't feel like a horribly inaccurate assumption, either, because there's at least one pair of eyes glancing back to him when Alex is called out. He looks back down to his work, tries to ignore heat creeping up the back of his neck. Puts on that indifferent face he's become so good at.
"Do you need to go to the nurse's office? Or maybe the water fountain?"
…Is it that noticeable? Like… there were looks earlier. And he's pretty sure he got a look when he showed up during fifth period, as well. This is why this was a bad idea. This was a horrible idea. Why had she sat down next to him? God, now there's going to be suspicion and rumors and…
He can't help it, his eyes wander off of the papers he's grading again (and they're actually kinda interesting papers, syllogisms are weirdly fun to grade), and they're caught by the girl who sent Alex a note on Friday. She raises her eyebrows at him - a minute gesture, but a pretty clear indication of her curiosity. Aaaand he looks down again. Bad idea. All of this has been a bad idea.
If they're gonna communicate it should only be outside of school. Or only on days he's not in class with her. All he can think about is the rumors that circulated around a super cute assistant teacher at his last school, and how there was enough suspicion that she was accused of sleeping with students just because some assholes purposefully monopolized her after school hours. And yeah, he's not a teacher, but still. How creepy is it for a college student to date a highschooler. He's only ever heard that it's a creepy, desperate thing.
Wait, they're not dating. So that's— it's not—
But if people think they're dating—
They haven't even texted that much since Saturday night! (Well, Sunday morning.) A brief mention that the dreams were… weird. Which— yeah. They were. They are. All kinds of weird. He'd hit up the community center gym Sunday (because you can't get bugged about church if you aren't there to bug; he knows this, he has a perfect schedule of sleeping through it and then avoiding his mom for the rest of the day until she forgets to guilt him about it. It's been working for approximately a year now) and there had been a brief moment of weird vertigo in the pool, feeling deeper than he was, the light shifting green, a shadow in the distance, and he'd struggled to the surface to pant at the ladder until a lifeguard came to ask if he was alright.
Yeah. The dreams were weird.
.
For a second Alex just gnaws at the inside of her lip, before nodding. Water is probably a good idea. Even though it's something she both hates, and needs to live. "Yeah. Maybe." Mrs. Long is quick to head back to her desk and start writing a hall pass, while Alex starts moving her things around to actually stand up. Which may have been an absolutely, positively, terrible idea.
It starts with ringing. A high pitched whine in her left ear, like radio static, and she squeezes her eyes shut against it. Then her vision goes spotty, and she doesn't know when exactly she ends up on the ground, but she's definitely on the ground now. Hard linoleum flooring pressing cold through her jacket. To the rest of the class, it looks like she's standing fine one second and crumpling into herself the next, breath shallow and shaky. Jonas's mother lets out a noise of surprise, just staring at the scene for a half second, before looking over to Jess.
"Jess, go get the nurse please."
.
Jonas's hands have tightened around the papers, but he manages to keep himself from jumping to his feet. Just barely. It would just be weird not to stare, at this point, and there's a mix of shocked silence and varying degrees of alarm from the rest of the class. He feels a muscle in his jaw tighten, pulse racing and breath tightening, because this feels familiar in a way he really doesn't like, because that way reminds him of pages of handwritten notes from the spring, reviewed only yesterday after months forgotten. Minimal entries that eventually, once he'd been assured he wasn't about to be committed for them, became more and more detailed, the margins filled with shitty doodles that he's realized he still draws. Those radial hash marks. Radio signals. Triangles.
And there was an entry like this. A classroom, and a body collapsed. A girl with eyes gone red, murmuring unintelligibly.
Luckily there's no red eyes or murmuring here. Not yet, anyway.
Still, he's staring with the rest of them, knuckles white and frozen to his seat. No wonder his mom had gone for a student to do the errand running. And a good choice too, she's out of the classroom quickly, eager to help a friend.
She's on her way to the back of the class, his mom is, with that no-nonsense look she gets. "Excuse me." Desks are moved out of her way as she comes to Alex's side, taking her wrist for a moment and tracking a pulse, checking her breathing. She pulls Alex's bookbag from her desk and props the girl's feet up on it.
"Is she-" Whoever spoke goes quiet before Jonas can spot who it was. His mom doesn't even look around to check.
She briefly touches at the back of Alex's head, then squeezes her hand, taps her shoulder gently. "Alex, are you alright?" How she manages to sound so calm is anyone's guess.
"Mrs. Long-"
"She'll be fine, she just fainted." It's not dismissive, but her tone is relaxed enough that she manages to cut some of the tension in the room. "It happens. Kind of scary to see, but it's not the end of the world." He's not sure if she's faking her casual demeanor for the benefits of her students or if she really is that confident in her assessment. And if he can't tell, that bodes well for the rest of the class.
Alex starts to stir.
His mom glances right at Jonas. "Can I have your water bottle, please?"
He's dumbfounded for a second, but then snaps out of it, reaching for the bottle lodged in the corner of his bag and passing it over.
She looks down at Alex and cracks a smile at her as she opens the water bottle, setting it aside. "Welcome back. You're gonna be okay, you just fell down and bumped your head. Got a standard pop quiz for you, Alex: you know what year it is? Who the president is?"
.
For a minute, Alex has no idea what's going on. She remembers standing, and then cold, and now Mrs. Long is sitting by her and the whole class is staring— Questions. Okay, she can do questions. The first one is easy, though the second she answers with a soft kind of snort. "Bold of you to assume I care about the presidency."
It seems to ease some of the tension in her classmates, one letting out a nervous laugh as they glance over. Mrs. Long lets out a tutting noise, though she's smiling now, rolling her eyes as Alex tries to sit herself up onto her forearms. Why are her feet propped up? Did she just trip over her backpack, or…? This is weird. She's missing some things. But that's probably because of the whole not sleeping thing. There's a part of her that wants to ask what happened, what's going on, but from the way everyone's looking at her it might not be the right choice. So instead she tries glancing around.
First to see if Jess is there - which she isn't, probably because Mrs. Long had asked her to do something - then to the whiteboard, then her teacher, still trying to blink spots out of her eyes. This kind of sucks. No, not even kind of. This sucks.
.
"You might not want to stand just yet," his mom is smiling, with a slight rueful tinge because Jonas realizes she knows full well that that's just how Alex is, already wanting to be on her feet even if the smart thing to do is to stay down. "You're gonna just kick back and relax here for a minute, hm? Feet up, it's good for the circulation." She pats the backpack with an air of finality before standing and heading back to the front of the room.
.
"Oh no, what a nightmare!" This was already a nightmare, but hey. Not like she has much left to lose.
.
Like Alex is gonna stay stretched out on the floor with her classmates looking on.
"She can have the couch. If that's better."
.
When Jonas offers up his couch, the attention is momentarily drawn off of Alex and onto him, her own eyes flicking over for a second before she offers up a shrug.
.
Shit. He probably shouldn't have offered. But his mom is giving him a smile - with that tiny touch of pride like hey, she raised her kid right - and nodding. "That's very thoughtful of you, Jonas, thank you." She glances to Alex again. "Take your time. Enjoy the thrilling experience of having everyone treat you like you're made of glass." There's a teasing lilt to her smile. She had too much of that, in her time. Jonas remembers it well enough. It had frustrated her to no end.
He clears off his papers, moving them to a spare chair in the back corner, as quietly as he can manage as his mother passes out a worksheet comparing one play to another. The girl she'd sent to the nurse arrives back, nurse-less, just as the phone on her desk rings, and she answers quietly, glancing at the back of the class. "She's alright. I'll send her down when she's feeling up to it."
Jonas looks back at Alex, hesitantly. Is he… supposed to help her?
.
After a few minutes, Alex manages to tug herself up into a sitting position without getting another head rush, rolling out her shoulders before starting to stand. She stumbles once, but she's alright. At least she thinks she's alright. Those flashes are still in the back of her head. Green jacket, red eyes, brown hair— different little ticks she doesn't understand. Something about a chair? A stupid chair? Ow. Ow, ow, that's a migraine.
Apparently she's still not all that up to moving. Maybe it's because she gets a red-green ring around the edge of her vision, or maybe because for a moment it looks like the white board is playing hangman, but it definitely doesn't do anything good for her. The scratching of chalk, the world turned upside down, Clarissa… Clarissa? Alex trips on her own two feet again and has to grab onto something so she doesn't take another spill right after recovering from her first one. That something ends up being Jonas's forearms.
To be honest she doesn't really care. Her head is screaming at her, and nothing really makes sense, but that's been her life for the last year and a half or so. A bunch of different coincidences and situations that just don't make sense. Alex mutters curses under her breath, and tries again to keep her vision intact.
.
There is very little that can be done to stop gossip if the girl you're worried you've been linked to in rumors is literally falling into your arms. Jonas frowns. Well. Might as well. His expression is grimly resigned, and not at all amused, face stoic despite the pink coloring his ears.
She's doing her little swoony bit, so he hooks an arm around back of her knees and picks her up for the last few feet to the couch, setting her down with little to no ceremony, and thrusting the water bottle into her hands before stepping away to the other corner to return to his work. Professional. Nothing more than that.
And he will pointedly ignore her for the rest of the class. That's a promise he's making to himself, because socially this whole thing is too stressful. He slips back on that distant, apathetic guise, shedding his previous concern, and listens to the steady scratch of pens on paper as the rest of the students complete their classwork. He makes a concentrated effort not to turn to look at Alex.
.
Okay? Okay, that was— That had been a thing. Instead of saying anything, Alex makes the pointed choice to close her eyes and try to think of something other than vague bits and pieces. Maybe food? Strawberries would be good right now. Ren had invited her over to his house later, but considering how she's just fainted, that probably isn't going to happen. She's still holding onto the stupid water bottle.
After about five more minutes of just laying there, Alex can't take it anymore. She needs an out. To go running, maybe, but that'll have to be when she isn't in danger of just randomly falling. How long has it been since she last fainted? A year or so? Something like that. So she takes a swig of the water, kicks her legs over the side of the couch, and starts for the nurses office. Mrs. Long warns her to take someone else, just in case she has another spell, and after a withering look to the ground Alex picks Jess.
The two walk side by side in silence, for a while. Then her friend breaks it. "So… he was pretty cool back there, huh?"
"Who was?"
"Y'know. The TA." Jonas. Didn't anyone know his actual name?
.
Jonas is maybe too focused on his work. Not focused enough. But also… too focused. He's practically glaring at the papers until she leaves, and has to keep rereading them. Finally, once she's out of the room, things get a little easier. He remembers that he was actually enjoying this until she went scaring the crap out of him with her fainting spell. With third period (one of the classes he never actually sees) graded and out of the way, he hesitates before moving on to fifth.
His mother is immersed in rereading something or other, probably reviewing whatever she's about to talk about, who knows, he's not a teacher, the point is: she's distracted. Enough. And, he reminds himself, he's not actually a student here. If he wants to have his cell phone out… there probably isn't actually a rule preventing him? Probably?
Regardless, it's on do not disturb and he hides it in the shadow of his arm as he types out a quick text.
Alex Strickland
(You okay?(
There isn't a response. But that's to be expected, it's still school hours, and even without being a student he's heard the rumors of some pretty harsh teachers that very nearly cross the line on property confiscation. It's fair she wouldn't want to risk needing her mom called in to check back out her cell from some extra-strict teacher. Whatever. She'll respond later.
Another few minutes and the door pushes open and Jess shoots Mrs. Long a thumbs up, and Jonas feels a knot he hadn't realized was forming loosen a bit. He watches the girl for a second too long, and she catches his eye before he looks away again, tucking his phone back into his pocket. The next glance he shoots is more surreptitious, but just in time, as he spots the changing hands of a note.
Seriously, did people pass this many notes at North Valley? Well, no, but there was a lot more texting in class. And carving into the desks. And just… well, just ignoring the teachers, really. …Wow, they were kind of the worst, weren't they? Compared to his peers at NVHS, this class was practically angelic.
Jonas's eyes narrow for a fraction of a second on the note being passed. Feels less than angelic. Despite the small upturned lips from Jess when she catches his eye again.
Finally, he gets himself to look away for good. Only fifteen more minutes of this. Then he can wait for the students to file out, make his excuses to his mom, and slip out amid the crowded masses.