By the time school rolled around, regret fueled the sickening pit of dread that churned my stomach like the sea in a storm. I felt like I should have been used to that feeling by now, but it's something you never truly get used to.

I regretted flushing my pills, I regretted inviting Kaia over (technically letting Chris invite Kaia over, but I didn't have it in me to split hairs), I regretted letting my emotions drive me this whole time when I should have been driving my emotions. It was too late now - I'd lost control of a speeding train with no emergency break. I'd have to throw myself in front of it to stop it.

I always thought Spring was meant to symbolize growth and change and rebirth. But it was now May, and the flowers in my life that I'd tried so hard to grow were already wilting and dying.

I felt dizzy as I walked up the steps into school with Chris, and sweat dripped down the back of my neck and into my uniform shirt. I didn't even wear a blazer anymore.

"Maybe you should go to the nurse," Chris said as he reached around my backpack and handed me my water bottle. "You look like death tried to cook you and failed."

"I can't." I slugged down the water so fast, half of it ended up on my chin and down the front of my shirt. "I have a physics test later, and Fonarev docks you points if you miss an exam, even if you retake it, and I have to get an A to keep my GPA clean."

"Apparently that's been the only thing clean about you," Chris grumbled with a grin.

I scoffed in response. I caught Kaia's glance from across the hall, her gaze glazed over with discontent before she scurried into her homeroom class. We'd been dodging each other all week while I waited to confront Principal Maddox about Valedictorian, tension between us dense and crackling, like the air before lightning strikes.

Chris tracked my gaze and put a hand down on my shoulder. "I mean, do you want me to be honest with you or do you want me to lie to make you feel better?"  

I shook myself out of his grip, making a beeline down the crowded hallway to my locker, getting bumped and jostled in a way that . "About what?"

"You know what," he sighed out. "I think you're overreacting."

When I stopped at my locker, it felt like the world came out from under my feet. Stars flashed in the corners of my eyes, and I almost had to fall forward to lean onto my locker to keep myself from collapsing.

"Hey...hey you okay?" Chris put his hand to my shoulder again, but everything was amplified by 1000, his touch like a hammer to my shoulder and his breath too warm and too close.

"Back up," I jerked away from him. "I need some fucking space."

"Okay, okay." Chris took a step back and held his hands up in surrender. "I have to get to class. Unless you need help getting to yours."

Something flared up in me as I wheeled around on my heel to face him. "For fucks sake Christopher, are you going for a Boy Scout's badge or something? I'm not a senile old woman."

It wasn't until after my words had landed that I realized the hallway had fallen silent, and over a dozen pairs of eyes were pinned to Chris and I. When I glanced back at him, his gaze had fallen to his loafers, and a frown tugged his lips downward.

"Fuck," I sighed out. "Chris, I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"

"It's fine." He looked back up at me with a pinched smile. "Really. It's fine."

Nothing about today was fine, and I could feel my grip on fine slipping as I dangled over a sinkhole, my nails dirty and my fingers raw.

✗✗✗

I had scheduled a meeting with Principal Maddox during my lunch period. As I waited in the hallway outside of her office on that too familiar wooden bench, the dense silence of the air forced my thoughts forward and made me reflect on everything that had gotten me to that very moment. This monstrous thing I'd slowly become that fed on every negative feeling festering inside me. I'd started to understand that maybe he'd always been there, just biding his time and waiting for me to set him loose. I didn't have too much time to deliberate all the ways I was coming undone as the principal's secretary piped up behind her desk across the room.

"Mr. Gunther, Principal Maddox will see you now."

I wiped my sweaty palms on the front of my pants before standing up and making my way into her office.

"Have a seat, Dallas." She gestured to the wooden chair across from her desk without looking up from whatever file she had open in front of her. I had to assume it was my transcript. I did as she instructed and gingerly lowered myself into the chair as it squeaked under my weight.

"I understand you had some questions about your Valedictorian eligibility." She finally looked up at me over the tops of her tortoiseshell glasses.

"Um, yes," I breathed out, straightening up in my seat. "I'm under the impression that I'm no longer being considered."

Principal Maddox returned her attention to the folder in front of her, thumbing through papers. "That is correct."

There was a beat of silence, and I wasn't sure if she genuinely thought that was a satisfactory answer for me and that I'd just get up and walk out of her office. I let out a frustrated sigh. "Okay, but why?"

The moment the words left my mouth, I knew petulant was another feeling I'd just fed the thing growing inside me. I didn't care. I needed answers.

Principal Maddox finally gave me her full attention, putting the folder of papers aside and folding her hands together in front of her chin. "Well, where should I start?"

I let out an audible scoff, but she ignored it, unfolding her hands and giving me a sweeping gesture.

"Firstly, your less than appropriate appearance as of late."

"What?" I scoffed again. "Because I don't wear a tie? You haven't given me a demerit for not wearing a tie since I was a freshman. Why is it an issue now?"

"Dallas," she sighed out. "It's not just your tie, and you know that."

I looked down at the wrinkled hem of my button-down shirt and raked a hand through my hair - hair I knew was a mess without needing to look in a mirror. I could have been mad at myself, but the frustration of anyone only choosing to see it all now outweighed my better sense.

"Besides," she continued. "That's the least of your issues. You're starting tussles at sporting events that reflect badly on the school, you've dropped out of all your extracurriculars...and based on current academic standings, you no longer have a 4.0. As of now, you'd be graduating with a 3.9."

I didn't care how much ugly truth there was to her words. Yes, I'd dropped out of the tutoring program at the start of term, and yes, I'd gotten a C+ on one test in Physics which brought my class average down to a B+, and maybe the fact that I wasn't feeling like myself was more obvious to other people than I cared to admit. But who benefitted the most from all of that? Who could take direct advantage of my deteriorating state? She could.

I gripped the wooden arms of the chair until my knuckles turned white. "It's going to be her, isn't it? You're giving Valedictorian to Kaia."

"I'm not at liberty to say."

But that was enough of an answer for me. I jumped out of the chair and threw my body against the heavy wooden door of Principal Maddox's office, my head spinning and my heart threatening to rip itself out of my chest.

The hallways were empty as most students were still lingering wherever they were for their lunch period, either off school grounds or in the cafeteria. But I knew where she was, and at this point I'd run through a wall to get to her.

She was just finishing up lunch in the courtyard with Kennedy and Alexis, not a strand of perfect hair out of place as they sat at one of the wooden tables under the big oak tree, its flowers beginning to bloom in the warm spring air. 

It was the same exact table Chris and I sat when he warned me this would happen. He knew she'd put getting Valedictorian over everything and do whatever it took to remove me from the equation. Christopher the Wise Prophet, after all.

I stood by the door, my blood hot as it pumped through my veins, and the beating of the sun high above us only cooked me even more. The girls were gathering their things from the table and making their way back into the building on the other side of the courtyard when Kaia caught my gaze. She instinctively narrowed her eyes at me, and for a moment I worried she was going to resign herself to continuing to play our silent treatment game, but eventually she waved off Kennedy and Alexis. She readjusted the straps on her backpack as she approached me, a pinched smile tugging at her lips.

"Hey," she sighed out. "You done ignoring me?"

I bit down on my lip as I tried to turn words over in my mouth. Even after everything transpiring, I couldn't bear to say the wrong thing to her. But the wires between my brain and my mouth were all mismatched and frayed. Communication breakdown.

"That depends, are you done pretending you haven't already snatched Valedictorian from me?"

"What?" she scoffed. After the weight of my words sunk in, her humorous disbelief dropped into pure disdain. "Are you serious right now? What did she say to you?"

"Enough." I folded my arms over my chest. If she could bluff, so could I.

"Dallas..." she lowered her voice and took another step towards me. "Are you high?"

"What, you think if I am it's something else for you to just take advantage of? Let's kick Dallas while he's down and keep him down so you can slot yourself right into that Valedictorian spot."

Kaia took a step back and tore her gaze away from mine, taking a moment to digest the situation. Heat continued to build under the collar of my shirt, and I couldn't wait around for her to decide to be a decent person or not. I was just about ready to collapse, but I kept my chin up.

"Is that what this is about?" her voice was low, but there was a vindictive edge to her words. "You think I...took advantage of whatever shit is going on with you so I could edge you out for Valedictorian? How does that even work, Dallas? Enlighten me."

"You tricked me into making myself vulnerable," I swallowed the knot in my throat. "Vulnerable to you. I let you see me at my worst, and all you did was take advantage of that. Chris was right about you, he was right all along and I did nothing but shun him and tell him how wrong he was. But I was wrong, and I fucking hate being wrong."

"Right, okay," Kaia let out a wry chuckle. "I tricked you into kissing me and I tricked you into spending time with me...and my family. Because this wasn't ever something I wanted, I just strung you along for my own personal gain."

Behind all the venom and sarcasm, there might have been something sad to her words, but I only heard what I wanted to hear. I felt eyes from across the courtyard linger on us.

I heaved out a sigh. "Well that's what it looks like, doesn't it?"

Redness flared in Kaia's cheeks, and her voice rose an octave. "Don't act like whatever was going on between us didn't have any affect on me either. You and I fought each other tooth and nail about everything, and yet I chased you anyway. I let my feelings for you outweigh any decent sense I had, and it turned me into this person who argues with her friends over you, and cheats on her perfectly decent boyfriend-"

"Perfectly decent. Not perfect."

Now it was more than apparent that people were watching us, and I glanced at a group of sophomores on the lacrosse team huddling by a table.

"And you are?" she scoffed, wildly gesturing to me.

"No, but I cared. Whatever was going on between us meant something to me, but you...you didn't care at all, did you?" My voice was raw with emotion, and maybe if I wasn't so hyperfocused on the unshed tears glazed over Kaia's eyes or the the sound of the blood ricocheting through my ears as my heart throbbed in my chest, I would have noticed the group of people by the table had grown. Watching, waiting for the show to reach its climax.

Kaia took another step back and shook her head. "I can't control how much you're messing up your life, but I refuse to let you mess up mine too. So I guess you're right - I don't care."

Kaia gripped the straps of her backpack with white knuckles as she turned away from me, a breeze kicking up her dark hair and the flower petals that littered the ground. I stood out there for a moment or two, desperate to keep my last bit of resolve stitched together. But my grip on fine was gone. I'd gone tumbling down into the hole with no visible bottom.

this is the end, this is the end, this is the end of me
playin' pretend that I'm available emotionally
i'm off a benz, goin' 'round bends could be the death of me

@ my worst / blackbear

✗✗✗

if it wasn't obvious enough, dallas is going through withdrawal, although he doesn't really quite understand that. withdrawal can affect a person in so many different ways, and yes valedictorian was important to dallas, but his untreated anxiety plus the mental deterioration brought on by withdrawal amplified all of his emotions and took them out on kaia. it's not an excuse for his actions, as what he did wasn't right, but it is the reason.

there's 4 chapters left (plus an epilogue), and i'm really not ready to let go of this story. not even close. but alas, all good things must end.