Rather than trying to explain away the very, shall we say, uncomfortable topic of death, Oliver instead retreated back to his room.

It was a concept he was a little too familiar with and he knew just how little of it he could handle, so he opted not to handle it at all.
On some level he knew Dindet recognized that, and decided to believe that her reluctance to divulge was because of that.
Of course, he planned on perhaps bringing it up later. Maybe after a somewhat decent night's rest.

Six in the morning, still dark out, but Oliver's eyes popped open regardless, almost expecting to see the clown somewhere invading his personal space. She wasn't though, in fact, she was nowhere to be seen.

Groggily, he sat up and rubbed the sting from his eyes and blinked away a little leftover sleep. He still ached.

Considerably, and sometime in the night he rolled over on one of his sides and accidentally bled through his shirt and into his bedsheets.
Oliver threw off his covers and began unbuttoning his night shirt, tossing it onto his bed before fumbling in the dark toward the bathroom and temporarily blinding himself with the light when he flipped it on.

It didn't look as bad as he expected, a stain on his tank top and his right arm was crusty with dried blood, the left was less so, but his gauze unraveled a decent amount too.
He pushed the door close with his back and began gingerly taking off his badly kept bandages, throwing them in the trash in exchange for new ones.
After another run under water and gentle scrubbing, followed by a quality slathering of antibiotic cream, he quickly wrapped them up again and tested with a few incredibly painful flexes.

Then, he moved onto clothes, quickly realizing a grave repercussion that, up until this very moment, he hadn't even thought of.

There was no way. He wouldn't be able to get it on, let alone take it off without accidentally tearing either it, or himself.

The boy grimaced, staring at the binder he held up, knowing exactly how aggravating it was to put on without being in pain. He didn't want to imagine trying with it.

Today was going to be a really bad day.

Reluctantly, he threw on the absolute most baggiest sweater that fit the weather, which went over at least two other shirts before he frumped downstairs for breakfast, catching Dindet just as she tried to discretely slide the back door close.

"What are you doing?" His frank tone made her jump and she swiveled around with a small startle.

"Feeding...the, uhm, cats." She was an awful liar, but Oliver didn't have the patience to want to know what she was actually up to. He furrowed his brow for a moment, still deliberating on whether he should call her out or not, and came to the conclusion that it wasn't important.

Just about as immediately as she saw him, Dindet tasted something weird. She couldn't exactly put a name to it but it was something she recognised as entirely unpleasant.
She followed him to the kitchen, resting her elbows on the island while she watched him meagerly pull out his cinnamon toasts and grow increasingly more uncomfortable with whatever strange feeling he had.

"Oliver, you taste really weird, are you okay?" She asked, leaning a bit over the counter. The boy turned around, and almost slammed his bowl onto the island when he set it down.

"I want you to think really long and hard about what just came out of your mouth, and never say it to me ever again."

Wow. Very unpleasant indeed.

Dindet clamped her mouth shut and nodded, still a little shocked at his mean attitude. He wasn't mad though, and she could see the hole in him was getting smaller.

After an extraordinarily quiet breakfast, the two of them began the trek to the bus stop where Douglass was already standing looking particularly drowsy.

"Hey-aahhh....guys." he yawned, waving as they walked toward him, he dropped his hand, already starting his morning monologue. "Sorry I didn't wait up, I've been up all night helping my dadOliveryou'renotwearing-"

Oliver smacked his hand over Douglass's mouth, briefly ignoring the ache of his arm and quickly spun him around and away from the clown.

"I swear to god Douglass, if you say a single word about it, I am going to sneak into your room tonight and personally burn every last copy of Jane Eyre you own." He threatened softly before pulling his hand away and retreating back to an even more confused looking Dindet.

If Douglass wasn't already a consistent thorn in Oliver's side and Dindet wasn't bobbing around him trying to figure out what his deal was in the most annoying ways possible, the day may have been slightly manageable. But alas, Murphy's law struck him and struck him hard.

"Class, my name is Mrs. Schreuder!" A short, old, and angry looking woman stood at the front of the class room, with her hair tied up in a bun so tight she was showing signs of tension alopecia. It didn't matter what her name was, even as she harshly wrote it out on the white board, she was infamous. She was The Bun Lady.

"I will be your substitute teacher for Mrs. Hardgreeves today." She practically yelled every word she said, probably because she hadn't turned on her hearing aids, or she just liked to be loud as well as mean. "We will begin with roll call."

Immediately, Oliver slouched down and crammed his face into his desk, dreading the very thought, and that dread just about doubled each time she called a student's name as she went down the list, knowing he would be the very last one called.

"Dendise Synope, Dindi...Din-"

"Dindet." Cassidy corrected, causing the woman to snap her head toward her direction with a scowl.

"I know how to pronounce it, thank you Cassidy." She retorted roughly, repeating the clown's name once more and marking her here when she finally replied after a decent moment of trying to figure out what was going on.

She was far more distracted with Oliver and his ever increasing anxiety until it seemed to come to a head with one utterance.

"Olivia Tarsul." The Bun Lady called, and in less than a second, every single student had their eyes trained on Oliver while he was not so very discretely banging his head on his desk. The boy let out an incredibly soft whimper and sat upright to call a meager 'here' before just ask quickly sinking back into the depths of his dysphoria and returning to his rythmic and gentle head banging.

This was something he had thought at some point he would become accustomed to. Of course, he usually had something else to distract him. Most of the time it was Dindet being ludicrous but right now, he wanted nothing more than to rip his skin off and crawl out of the shell like an abomination just so he didn't feel so intrinsically horrid.

On the bright side, the class was just going to watch a movie, and as soon as English was over, every other teacher would address him correctly. So, Oliver delegated all his attention toward his sketchbook and kept his head low as best he could. At least- until a ruler smacked down in front of him and caused him to jerk up to see the very stern eyes of The Bun Lady.

"Young lady, you need to pay attention. No doodling in class."

Oliver stared up at the substitute teacher, still reeling from the slight startle and gulped dryly, feeling his skin crawl under her glare until he closed his sketchbook and set it aside, at which point she lifted up her ruler and went on to hopefully torment anyone other than him.

Dindet sat quietly behind him, still in the process of trying to figure out why he was being so odd until Douglass interrupted her struggle with an elbow to her side that was almost hard enough to pierce her completely.

"He's gonna be like this all day." He whispered, briefly pulling her attention away. "It was a lot worse when he first came out."

Dindet had no idea what he was talking about.

As soon as the bell rang, Oliver bolted out of his desk and went straight for the hall pass before making a B-line down the hall so he could get as far away from everyone as possible. Dindet took the same opportunity and quietly followed him out to try and get some sort of explanation.

He veered left, then right, walking at a slowly increasing pace until he finally whipped around to give her a daggar glare.

"What do you want?!" He snapped.

The clown's eyes flitted back toward the classroom for a moment before she spoke. "I wanted to try and help."

"Make you feel better..?" She offered, a little more quietly.

Oliver relaxed, a little guilt panging him as he softened his glare and closed more in on himself.

"It doesn't work like that." He mumbled, stepping a bit to the side as she came up with a more optimistic smile. "It's not something that goes away."

Dindet nodded and purposefully butted into him, knocking him just enough off balance that he giggled and did the same, though he almost fell through her on his attempt.

"I'm sorry I don't understand." She replied finally while he steadied himself again.

"It's alright," Oliver gestured away her apology, "I don't expect you to."

He offered a small smile and turned heel to head back to class shortly after the bell trilled. Dindet hung behind, contemplating an idea that grew silently in her head. If she didn't understand, maybe she could find someone who did.

By lunch time Oliver was ready to go home and avoid everyone in a ten foot radius around him. It didn't matter if The Bun Lady was gone for the day, tormenting some other class, the damage was done and every student got real quiet when he came anywhere near them. They made it clear and concise how unwelcome he was regardless of intention.

It definitely didn't help that Cassidy was actively sneaking from desk to desk trying to police them all until she eventually half meandered to Oliver and tapped his shoulder.

"Why didn't you say anything?" She questioned. "You don't have to put up with that."

The boy shot a glare at her, and folded his arms as gingerly as possible so he could shove his head under them and ignore her entirely. Cassidy retaliated by flicking his ear and forcing him to clap his hand over it with a groan.

"There's no point." He argued, turning his head over so he could see her. She stared down at him with her lips puckered up in a slightly exaggerated frown.

"If I said anything it would have just made it worse." Oliver sat up and leaned back in his desk with a sigh. "And I don't need your activism so just leave me alone?"

His words were meant to come off as biting but his tone was more exhausted than anything else and Cassidy's screwed up scowl softened somewhat with sympathy. She fidgeted a little, still deciding on what to say back before nodding a little in retraction.

"Okay. Fine. But..if you ever want to talk about it, I'm here."

"I don't."

He'd already returned his head to his desk and only half muttered the words, intent on not letting her, or anyone else talk to him and incredibly intent on not seeing anyone at all, if he could help it.

He remained that way for nearly the rest of the day until lunch came around and he sluggishly stood up to head to the cafeteria.
He waited for a bit for Dindet to pop around as she usually did, but she didn't this time, so he assumed she went off with Cassidy or Douglass- which was fine.

"Oliver!" The clown's voice pulled him temporarily out of a dysphoric daze and he swiveled around to see her jogging up to him with some senior looking kid walking behind her.

Dindet wrapped her arm around Oliver and spun him around in a little excited twirl to get him to lighten up a little, but it really only startled and embarrassed him when the senior boy strolled up with a laugh.

"What are you doing? Who'd you go and bother?" He pulled her off of him and straightened up a little, giving a hesitant smile to the guy that was apparently in the know, while Oliver was still waiting for some explanation.

"I went to find someone who tas-" Oliver quickly interrupted her, snatching the only thing on her person he knew to be real and pulling her silly hat over her face before she could even finish.

"Heard you had The Bun Lady as a sub." The senior boy remarked, pulling Oliver's attention away from Dindet for a moment. "Rough."

The older kid scratched his head through his beanie and chuckled a little at Oliver's beet red face. By now Dindet had resituated her cap and elbowed him lightly in the arm.

"I found someone like you." She whispered with a cheeky sly grin.

"Your friend said you wanted someone to talk to, and I figured math was less important so I skipped. I'm Cody." The senior held out his hand for Oliver to very dumbly shake as he put two and two together and glanced back at the quiet, smiling clown.

"O- Oliver." He replied, still rather dumbfounded by the general situation. The other boy held back a bit of laughter.

"I like that, kind of wish I picked it myself." Cody chuckled, and dropped the handshake to put his hand back into his hoodie pocket. "Every other year or so some poor kid has to deal with Schreuder so trust me, I know how it feels."

Oliver felt his face burning at the thought, and kept his eyes to the floor in effort not to give away his blush.

"How long have you..."

"Been in transition?" Cody finished, sensing his hesitant broach of the topic. "About a year on T now, just after I turned eighteen and left the house, how about you?"

Oliver squirmed a little under his soft smile and pushed his hand through his hair in effort to slow his whirling thoughts.

"Everything kind of got put on hold after my mom.." he trailed off for a moment and rubbed his arm, still looking down at the ground. "so only a couple of months."

"I get that." Cody replied, causing Oliver to glance up for half a second to see his empathetic eyes. "I'm sorry about your mom."

Right. The only other thing the whole school knew him for. Oliver nodded, continuing to shrink away from the conversation only for Cody to drop a hand on his head and tousle his hair a little.

"It'll get better." He smiled, and glanced back at Dindet, who was distracted with a pile of crickets in the corner. Oliver ducked under Cody's hand and followed his gaze. "And you've got a good friend to support you."

"Yeah."

Dindet stumbled along behind Oliver as they made their way home. From the looks of it he hadn't really noticed anything out of the ordinary but that could have been because he was all pink and listless, thinking about Cody and other things she probably didn't understand.

Oliver came to an abrupt stop and the clown nearly slammed into him, but popped around to the other side to avoid the collision.
He looked her in the eyes in his small moment of hesitation.

"Hey, thanks..by the way."