We are brave.

Almost everyone at my school is a coward. They're either bullies or people who sat there and watched and thanked god it didn't happen to them. I think my old group of friends was different. I guess we were willing to risk everything to help people. Like how Feferi was willing to be friends with Tavros even though everyone hated him because he broke up with Vriska. That's how Tavros became one of our friends. All of us, at least then, had been brave. Now both Captor and Egbert had shown their true colors of being scared of becoming uncool or whatever. Maybe they had just pretended to be like us when really they were scared all along. I remembered what John had said to me when he'd 'broken up with me' or whatever. "Sorry Karkat. Sometimes you have to make decisions and let's be honest; you would have done the same in my place." Showed what our friendship was worth. John had just decided to keep climbing, getting higher on the popular scale or whatever. Well now I was so low I could keep climbing for a million years and never make it very high at all.

Finally first period was done and I was walking down the hallways. Science was pretty far from Language Arts. I thought about stopping to talk to Feferi just to see if she had managed to get the lipstick off her locker when I noticed something.

"Hey fish girl," Vriska said to Feferi as she was trying to get something out of her locker.

"Uh," Feferi made a weird unintelligible noise. She always freaked out when Vriska talked to her. Vriska sort of had that effect on people.

"What was that? I'm trying to talk to you. The least you could do is talk back," Vriska said harshly.

"Uh, h-hey Vriska," Feferi said, shakily, so quietly I could barely hear.

"Oh, joy. You've finally got the guts to say something to me, did you? It's been soooooooo long since you've spoken a word to me."

"Uh, um," Feferi said, looking at the ground, like somehow that would make Vriska go away.

"Oh, there she goes again. It's soooo sad how poor little Feferi can't even talk anymore after her boyfriend left her."

"We, we, we weren't going out," Feferi said, stammering.

"Oh really? So sad. He obviously didn't care that much about you anyway. Neither of them did. Remember how your stupid love triangle or square or whatever used to be such a big deal? You, Eridan, Sollux, and then Aradia and even Equius showed up and how whenever anyone talked about it you'd just say it's working out. I guess it did in a way. I guess unexpected things just happened don't they FF?" Vriska spat out the last word and Feferi winced at the sound of her old nickname and Vriska pretended like she didn't notice. It felt like Vriska was just working on what she knew would hurt Feferi. In all their conversations she had never called her FF and I guess she was trying it out, seeing how much it hurt her. I felt like I should do something, yet I didn't. I just watched it all play out.

Finally Feferi took in a deep breath, "W-what do you want Vriska?"

"What was that? I couldn't hear you. My god you're the most pathetic thing in school, maybe besides Nitram. I mean, even Vantas is better than you, even if just barely."

"Ju-just leave them out of this." She said clenching her teeth. Her binder was pressed up against her chest with one hand. The other one was at her side, holding a chocolate bar. Feferi told me one time that she stress eats, which basically means when she freaks out, she calms down by eating something, usually chocolate. She said it was sort of like how chocolate was like medicine in Harry Potter. Eridan had loved Harry Potter and Feferi had read it just to make him happy, and then ended up loving it. The only time she seemed really mad at Eridan is when he told her some spoiler and she flipped. She'd gotten over it of course. She was such a major fangirl sometimes just like Nepeta used to be. Though I try not to mention that, in my mind or out loud.

"Leave them out of this? Why should I?" Vriska said. "You guys have no leverage against anyone and I can talk about you any way I want. You don't have any power any more Fef." Now she was using Eridan's nickname for her. It was sad that this wasn't the worse I'd seen Vriska be before. Vriska casually shut Feferi's locker, took a step closer and pushed Feferi back into the locker, hard. Feferi let out a moan of pain and by mistake dropped her books. She got down to pick them up and Vriska stabbed her high heel into Feferi's hand.

"Ow!" Feferi cried and then the bell rang.

"I guess I should get to class," Vriska said. Before she left she grabbed the chocolate bar Feferi dropped "But you won't be needing this. You're fat enough already. See you later FF," and with that Vriska left.

"Feferi," I said going over to her side. "You OK?"

"Karkat, you should just go to class." She looked up at me and I could see the tears forming in her eyes and knew she was going to cry. I couldn't tell if it was because of the physical pain or the emotional or maybe both. She picked up her stuff quickly and darted into the girl's bathroom. Part of me thought about going in to make sure she was OK, the other part thought I should leave her alone. So I went to math and got yelled at for being late. I slumped down in my seat and listened to the stupid math lecture. Feferi didn't come to class at all and I could picture her crying, alone in the girl's bathroom.

Maybe I'm not so brave.

R.I.P. Olivia Engel, 6, July 7 2006 - December 14 2012 and Josephine Gay, 7, December 11 2005 – December 14 2012