A/N: Well, I lied. I started writing and it got a little out of hand/felt like there was a more natural chapter ending that happened, so this is a somewhat short chapter and then there's going to be one more chapter after this.

"Seth?"

Seth looks up, brow furrowed quizzically, as if he'd actually been reading the book in front of him, as if he hadn't been clocking Mr. Lyman's every move as he got up to answer the ringing phone and then sat back down and then sifted through his desk until he found the pad of sticky notes he used for hall passes and then started scribbling on the top sheet and then pulled it off and then held it out and then opened his mouth and then said Seth's name.

So much of his life seemed to be like that, trying to act like a normal person while inside of him there was somebody whose job it was to make frantic note of everything going on around him.

Mr. Lyman gives Seth a smile and a little nod, one hand outstretched, a yellow sticky note affixed to the end of his finger.

Praise Hashem that the man had learned to cool it a little with the theatrics.

The first few times Seth had gotten called out of English class at the end of the day, Mr. Lyman had gotten cute with it.

Like some variation of"Seth Cohen, it's your lucky day,"or"Seth Cohen, come on down. You are our next contestant on Going Home Early,"spoken in a big booming announcer's voice.

Real teacher humor.

But he must've either run out of fresh material or figured that whatever was pulling Seth out of school twenty-five minutes early every Wednesday afternoon probably wasn't so lucky.

Twenty-five minutes—not enough time to get any real benefit out of missing school, but plenty effective in making it feel like a giant blazing spotlight was shining on him every time he shoved his stuff into his backpack and hiked it up on his shoulders and made his way to the front of the classroom.

"Your dad's here." Mr. Lyman waggles the little sticky note up and down as Seth approaches the desk.

Reaching for the pass, Seth flinches when Mr. Lyman snatches his hand away at the last second.

"Hang on," hesays. "I have something for you."

Seth watches as Mr. Lyman rummages through stacks of papers no on his desk before pulling one out, coming away with the paper Seth had just written onThe Outsiders,the title page now decoratedwith a few handwritten paragraphs scrawled in red pen.

"I was going to hand these out at dismissal, but since you're going..." Mr. Lyman grins at him. "You did a great job, Seth."

"Oh, uh, thanks." Seth's face flushes as he unzips his backpack and shoves the paper inside without looking at it.

"Do you like to write?" Mr. Lyman leans back in his chair and sizes him up curiously.

"Um, yeah." Seth clears his throat, some stupid part of him forever haunted by his mom's frequent admonishments about appropriate word choices. "I mean yes. I guess."

"I can tell." Mr. Lyman's grin expands. "You're very good at it."

"Thank you." Seth gives him a tight-lipped smile, his eyes drifting down to his sneakers.

"I'd love to hear more from you in class," Mr. Lyman adds. "We could really use your voice in here."

Seth's strained smile wilts into something more like a grimace, and hewonders if it would be rude to grab the pass and run and then maybe fake his own death, never to return again.

He was usually too busy taking frantic note of everything around him and/or instructing himself on how to be a normal person to get around to much in the way of classroom participation.

And saying or doing basically anything was handing his classmates ammunition to be used in their campaign against him.

He had a running mental list of everything he'd been mocked mercilessly for that school year, a list which included-amongst other things-the way he moved his arms while running laps in gym class and the way he said 'here' during morning attendance, and Mr. Lyman wanted him to raise his hand and share his deepest thoughts ona book?

He'd have to pass on that one.

Seth shifts awkwardly on his feet, not sure what to say or do in the face of Mr. Lyman and the intensely earnest and eager expression on his face.

He's also painfully aware of each second ticking by, with Mr. Lyman looking at him expectantly, and his tormentors in that particular class no doubt taking note of how long he'd been standing there, and no doubt deciding how best to later accuse Seth of wanting to have sex with their teacher.

Mr. Lyman clears his throat and looks away for a moment, maybe realizing that Seth is never going to respond to his well-meaning encouragement, that he will just stand there silently staring at his sneakers, eyes bulging awkwardly and face flushing redder by the second, having abandoned all hope of appearing normal the second this interaction went beyond the exchange of a hall pass.

"Oh right, your pass." Mr. Lyman grabs the sticky note from his desk and holds it out to Seth. "Have a good day, huh?" His cheeks puff out in a kind of half-smile, half-wince that Seth seems to inspire in a lot of people.

"You too," Seth says quietly.

ooo

Seth trudges down the hallway, head low, pausing briefly to scuff at a pink rubber eraser nub with the toe of his shoe, sending it skittering under a row of lockers.

He hopes he doesn't see anyone.

He's sure a lot of kids get picked up early by their parents, have to take the blue office slip-or Mr. Lyman's not-exactly-regulation yellow sticky note-and meet their mom or dad at the front desk, and somehow with those kids it's probably cool, or at least fine.

But he can't seem to make the walk to the office without feeling like a toddler.

And always accompanying that feeling was the vague dread that his dad would see things about school he didn't want him to see, or that one of his classmates would see him with his dad and then suddenly and inexplicably know Too Much, as if a single glimpse was enough to convey that he was the kind of dad that still insisted on kissing him goodnight, or the kind of dad who still called him goofy nicknames, or the kind of dad who skimmed the pool on Sunday mornings wearing a ratty old t-shirt and tattered boxer shorts while he belted outThere's No Business Like Show Businessat a truly horrifying volume-

Or worse, that he was specifically the dad who, almost exactly a week ago, had found him cowering in the corner of a Nordstrom fitting room, swim trunks tangled around his ankles-

Seth winces, suddenly aware of a sharp pain in his thigh and a loud thwacking sound echoing off the lockers.

His eyes dart up, heart falling rapidly in his chest, a surge of panic rising before tapering off somewhat as he realizes that the hallway is empty, that no one was there to see him, that he didn't have to stammer out some kind of excuse to an adult, that of course they hadn't just seen him attempting to beat his legs into a bloody pulp-that would be crazy.

You see, he'd just spied a bee taking up residence on his jeans, and given his suspected allergy to bee venom, drastic measures had to be taken...

Seth swallows, head light and hands shaking as he smooths his hands down his pant legs, sending a sickly satisfying whisper of pain radiating up through his body and to his brain.

He's never done that where someone else could see.

He's really only ever done that in his room or his bathroom, usually when he was tallying up his fuck-ups of the day, or when he couldn't stop the jumble of thoughts and images and feelings that played on a loop, that seemed to come and go as they pleased and without warning, that he could very easily drown in if he let it go on too long.

The pain was maybe the only thing that seemed to help him surface, made his brain jump to a different track, at least for a little bit, until it inevitably found its way back to the nightmare loop. Still, he had to take what he could get in terms of respite from his own mind.

Seth takes a long slow breath as he approaches the office.

He spies his dad through the glass, suit rumpled and tie loose on his neck, frowning down at his watch.

He doesn't see Summer Roberts though, so his ongoing fear that he'll walk into the office and Summer will be there for some reason and his dad will give him a big dorky grin or throw an arm around his shoulders and say "Ready to roll, Sethy?" probably wasn't going to come true today.

So that was, perhaps, at least one thing to be thankful for.

ooo

Seth knows he's in trouble when his dad starts fidgeting with the volume knob on the stereo, and he knows it's bad when his dad clears his throat three times in the span of about fifteen seconds, so it's really no surprise when he comes out with:

"I wanted to let you know that I talked with Dr. Max about what happened at the mall last week."

Of course he did.

Why should Seth be allowed any privacy?

Why should he get to make the decision about what he talked about or didn't talk about in the therapy that he was forced to go to?

"You know you don't have anything to be embarrassed about, Seth."

Seth wants to plug his ears.

Or maybe tuck and roll out of the car.

His dad seemed to think that being a broken record with this stuff would be helpful, as if one day, if he repeated himself enough, it would finally get through Seth's thick skull and he'd realize it was actually totally fine to wake up incoherent and vomiting on a regular basis, to need a parent to follow him to the fitting room at the mall or to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

Summer Roberts would find that incredibly attractive.

"I mean it," his dad says.

Seth had hoped that they could just never talk about the mall thing again, but of course his dad had just saved it for therapy day.

"But you know, you could've told me you were uncomfortable. You know you can tell me these things, right?" He pauses, then presses forward when Seth doesn't respond. "I wouldn't have made you…I mean, I would've listened."

Of course he would've listened.

He would've listened and he would've remembered, and then every time they went near a mall or talked about the subject of clothes shopping or two character in a tv show went clothes shopping, he would've clutched Seth's arm and demanded to know if he was okay, if he needed a grounding exercise, if he needed to vomit, if he needed to go call Dr. Max.

"You could've said 'Dad, I don't feel comfortable trying these on. Can we figure something else out?'"

His dad had no idea what that would be like, to force those words to come out of his mouth, to force himself to sound so frightened and childish and weak, to sign himself up for more parental worry and pity and scrutiny.

And he had no idea what it felt like to have this drudgedup again, when he'd schemed and planned and basically had a panic attack every night for a week figuring out how to do the mall thing unscathed, and he'd still messed it up.

"And especially when I dragged you to the men's section. I shouldn't have done that." His dad sighs. "And I should have known not to do that, but when your old man is being dense, you can let him know." He gives an awkward little chuckle. "Just ask your mother-he can handle it."

Seth bites down hard on his tongue, not sure why his dad insists on doing this, making him relive all the moments along the way as the wheels came off his master plan, as he lost control of everything.

And there it is: his dad hustling him through the men's section, a blur of suits in his vision and his stomach dropping, followed by the split second of panic feeling like he might pee himself right there, just a big old rapidly expanding puddle on the tile floors of Nordstrom, before-praise Hashem on that one too-he at least seized control back over that part of himself.

"You don't have to try to put yourself through that, you know," his dad continues, his voice wavering a little. "You don't have to be alone with all this, Seth."

There was no use in ever arguing that point with his dad.

It would only hurt him.

"Can you try that, Seth? Can you try talking to me a little more?"

There was no use in answering his dad truthfully on that one.

That would only hurt him too.

"Okay," Seth chokes out in a rasp. "I'll try."

"Thank you," his dad says. "That's really all I ask, just that you try for me."

Seth wants to let himself relax-awkward conversation done and he'd managed to get out of it having only said three words-but as his dad shifts in the driver's seat and his fingers tap on the steering wheel, he senses that the danger isn't over.

"And listen..." His dad exhales heavily. "I also talked to Dr. Max about the bruises on your legs."

"What?" Seth's voice spikes. "Why?"

"Because he should know."

"He should know I got hurt on the boat?" Seth demands. "I stubbed my toe on the bed this morning. Do you want to call and tell him about that too?"

"Honey, we both know it didn't happen on the boat." His dad pauses. "At least, not the way you're saying it did."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Seth says, trying desperately to blink away the black spots suddenly crowding his vision. "Or why you have to make stuff up about me."

Seth wants to throw up.

Or maybe tuck and roll out of the car.

"I know this is scary, Seth, but he can help you."

Scary was an understatement.

Seth doesn't know what they do to you in therapy if they decide that you're hurting yourself.

Part of him lived in constant fear that they'd lock him up one day, haul out the straitjacket and decide that he could really benefit from a few months under lock and key and plenty of electroshock therapy.

He should've just let his mom take him to the mall.

It was bad, the walls closing in on him as she passed him armful after armful of clothes, sometimes insisting that he try on multiple sizes of the same thing, sometimes stepping back and scrutinizing his stupid gangly body, musing aloud whether he'd get enough use out of a particular pair of pants, given'how fast you're growing,'but then again, those things would happen and then be over, and they'd never lead tothis.

"Will you talk about it with him?"

Seth grits his teeth.

"Or at least try?"

Seth squeezes his eyes closed.

There was no use in answering those questions truthfully either.