Zach cried. His tears slid down his face and dripped onto the screen of his phone. His fingers trembled. His legs bled.

More hateful messages left in his inbox. More convincing that he was worthless. More hate. More thoughtless insults. More anger. More lies.

Zach was done. He didn't want to do it anymore. "Soon," he whispered to himself, then cut more lines into his arm. "Soon," he repeated, closing his eyes and letting the sliding drops of blood drip onto his phone.

"Blood for blood."

...

...

...

Zach chose a loose, long-sleeved shirt from his closet. It would sufficiently cover anything up that he didn't want anyone to see.

He glanced at his phone as it went off. More hate from Alyia. He bit his tongue, nervous that he'd lose it during school. He started rubbing the cuff of his sleeve, a habit he had developed.

He went to school and sat down in the cafeteria for breakfast. He curled his legs to his chest, sitting like a bird on the chair. He nibbled on the bagel he had bought, looking around the cafeteria.

When no one payed anymore attention to him, he pulled out his small sketch pad. He started doing simple guidelines for two hands with their fingers intertwined.

...

Tyler glanced at the boy. Zach had shaggy, soft-looking black hair. He wore his headphones around his neck at all times.

In contrast, Tyler had light brown hair, cut short and teased up slightly in the front. He preferred to carry paintbrushes around, rather than muffs that sounded music. He always felt a small jump in his stomach whenever he saw Zach, but continually ignored it, blaming hormones.

"Hey, dude, there're gonna be so many hoes at the party tonight!" one of his friends, Taro, said. "You're totally going, right?"

"Hell yeah! Wouldn't miss out on that!" Every time. Every time, Tyler would lie. He felt a sick lurch at the fact that he said he wouldn't miss out on sluts, but he would much rather be at home with a game in his Xbox One.

Hell, he'd rather be home and play on an Atari than bang girls. But he kept the act of a stereotypical jock up, just to keep his popularity status high and mighty. He was practically the king of the school at this point.

"Hey, man, I'm gonna go grab some food; be right back." Tyler jogged to the shortening line as fast as he could. He didn't want to talk about Taro's slut hunt, and he didn't want to talk about his confirmed spot as king of the party--in fact, he wanted to talk about something of more interest. All he and his friends talked about day after day was the same old gossip--who was dating who, where the next game was and who it would be against, and all the boring fillers that seemed to be everywhere at this point.

Tyler wanted someone who would actually be there to talk about more than sluts, games, and parties. He had a field in his mind he saved for more psychological words--thus his high grade in English. His essays were impeccable. His points made it seem like there was no other way to believe. But the euphoria of his beautifully executed words quickly passed, leaving one to return to daily life with hardly a change.

Tyler shook himself from his short daze as a person who had stepped in behind him shoved him lightly, hissing at him to hurry up. "Sorry," he apologized, going forward and beginning to take the food he wanted.

After he got out of the line and paid, he passed Zach. The black-haired boy was drawing two hands, holding each other tightly. One hand had small slits in the wrist, dots beading as Zach filled them in with pencil.

Are those cuts? was Tyler's immediate thought.

He couldn't dwell on it any longer, as Taro dragged him to their normal table, filled with other mindless people.

...

Tyler and Zach had first period together. They sat with an empty desk between them, which occasionally had its surface covered with Post-Its from the tenth period of the previous day. Tyler and Zach would do their own things, barely noticing each other.

Tyler was looking over at Zach, who had an intricate pattern of mosaic-like geometric figures covering the sheet he was supposed to be taking French notes on. Zach lifted his sleeve to itch slightly, and Tyler immediately noticed the raised lines. His eyebrows twitched up.

What... The fuck? Several possibilities for the injuries flicked through Tyler's mind, but one kept appearing. They looked too purposeful, too neat and organized. But before his icy blue eyes could register anything more, the dark sleeve was down again, and Zach was unfazed by Tyler's cool stare. Zach didn't even look towards the other boy.

But then his eyebrows slowly raised into his shaggy hair, and Zach glanced over at Tyler, who was still staring at him. His eyes widened. Zach knew that Tyler had seen by the dumbfounded look on his face.

Shit! ran through both of their heads as they looked at each other. One of their thoughts was laced with panic, the other with surprise and worry.