Eleanor didn't know what the hell was wrong with the people around her but, whatever it was, it was really starting to get to her. Usually, the degrading looks and comments rammed into her senses with no hope of reaching her head or her heart. She had always believed the cause of this to be her own strength and will to overcome anything that the world threw at her. But unfortunate circumstances had led her to the miserable truth. She was not independent. Not nearly as much as she had previously considered herself to be. 

Without realising, she had been leaning on the people around her, brushing off the insults easily by reminding herself that there were people who appreciated her. It was only now that the two people she deemed as her closest friends seemed content on ignoring her that she was hit with the force of her true lack of self-sufficiency. Now that her support base had crumbled beneath her feet, she truly knew what it meant to fall. And that she had been unknowingly falling for quite some time. She had no one to talk to. No one to lean on so that she could reassure herself that she was still cared for.

As far as her father was aware, her school life was just freaking fantastic.

Nate hadn't shown up for their usual meeting on Sunday, leaving her to sit there with a cold cup of coffee and over twenty unanswered calls and messages. He didn't really talk to her in music either, going off to compose his part of the piece without even consulting with her first. And she tried to catch him in the corridors but he was scarily good at avoiding her. He blended into the crowds, joining the thrum of the other students so that she had no hope of catching up to him. He ignored everything she said and hardly ever looked her in the eye. All hope would have been lost if she hadn't seen him threatening some guy to never insult her again.

Thalia, on the other hand, had been using far more alarming avoidance techniques, usually out of the room by the time Eleanor woke up and cranking up the volume in her headphones whenever they were in the same room. They had no classes together. Every once in a while, Thalia would apologise for absolutely nothing, just whispering the word as her eyes welled up with tears. And, when Eleanor came to comfort her, she would scream and push her away. Then she would usually leave and not come back for a few hours. Eleanor couldn't help but be concerned for her friend, watching with pure worry as Thalia trundled down the school corridors, eyes downcast and head facing the floor as she made her way from class to class. Eleanor wasn't sure that she had seen her eat anything other than the occasional energy bar.

The lack of support from her friends was really starting to undermine Eleanor, as much as she attempted to ignore it. She missed them more than she cared to admit, needing things that she had never really considered as necessities: the late-night sessions with Thalia when they would laugh and giggle over pictures of hot male models; the disgusted expression Nate wore when discussing someone that he didn't like, and the look of pure horror on his face whenever they walked past him. It was the little things that made her laugh, made her smile and temporarily forget the dark cloud of thoughts residing in her mind.

Without the distraction of their friendship, Eleanor was dangerously susceptible to the thoughts circling her mind. Her head had become the equivalent of a broken solar system, thoughts orbiting in all the wrong areas and drawing unhealthily close to her actually considering them. Planets had fallen out of their assigned place, leaving only the unhabitable ones for her to take care of.

Her death, for example, was lurking threateningly close to causing an eclipse over all of her other thoughts. It was looming ever closer to the inner workings of her mind, casting a shadow over every thought she even considered having. But she was still pushing it away for as long as she possibly could, determined that if she was to think about such horrible thoughts, she would do it in complete privacy. Where no one could see her cry.

Not that she took the opportunity of being alone, of course. She much preferred to distract herself with something a little less disheartening. 

And this was mainly what her English lesson consisted of, forcing herself to focus on the teacher's voice rather than the plague slowly but surely spreading across her mind. But she wasn't doing an all too brilliant job, the evidence for this shown in the way she snapped back into reality for a few seconds, only to find that she had no idea what was going on because she had unintentionally spaced out for a few moments. Her pure lack of focus meant that when the classroom door burst open, it took her a couple of seconds to realise that Liam McAllaistar was standing in the doorway. Panting. Eyes wide and out of breath, hunched over and pressing his hands onto his knees as he attempted to gain the correct amount of oxygen to breathe. 

The teacher, a middle-aged woman with classic half moon shaped reading glasses, looked more than a little shocked at the sudden intrusion to her classroom, mouth half open as she stared at the boy in front of her. The whole class was silent, listening to Liam's laboured breaths as he attempted to mumble out incomprehensible words.

In the seat in front of her, Eleanor could see Flynn ready to spring out of his seat, arms pressed on the table in a position ready to uncoil and comfort his friend. He stayed put though, for some reason. Perhaps he wanted to hear what Liam had to say.

Eleanor was just about pulling herself back into reality when Liam spoke, his warm brown eyes meeting hers as he braced an arm against the doorframe, still heaving from exertion. He was looking straight at her the entire time that he spoke and, after hearing his words, she somehow knew that he had come to this particular classroom for a reason. For her. He wanted her to be among the first to hear. And she didn't quite know what to make of that. But, nevertheless, she couldn't quite bring herself to look away. 

"I...it's Thalia. Thalia...Thalia Blake. She's not...she's not breathing."

The classroom erupted in a matter of milliseconds, people yelling and standing up from their desks in alarm, hollering, shrieking, screaming. There were students falling into the conundrum of chaos left and right, ignoring the teacher's commands to stay calm and pushing past Liam to get out of the door. To see. It was so loud that everything blended into one ginormous uproar, each sound cancelling the other out in Eleanor's ears. She felt as if she was being transported away from reality once more. Only it was more severe this time. Everything merged into one, both sight and sound combining into something akin to a wet watercolour painting held vertically. The picture distorted. Colours in all the wrong places and intricate designs running into each other until the original outcome was incomprehensible. There was a ringing in her ears.

She still held Liam's gaze. Seated in a classroom transformed into a circus with an expressionless look on her face. The wheels in her brain were still just only beginning to turn, metal screeching against metal as the ringing in her ears became stronger. It was as if her head was fighting back against her common sense, refusing to believe that it could be true. Purposefully stalling so that she could spend a little while longer in ignorant bliss.

But she pushed back. Living in a messed up illusion wasn't going to change the truth. Besides, Thalia couldn't be dead. She wasn't dead. She just...she just couldn't be. Because Eleanor had only just got her back. She...she had just fainted or...or something and then...then she would be back in the dorm this evening and...and Eleanor would give up with her questioning and she could...they could reset their friendship back to how it used to be. They...she...Thalia was still alive. She...she just was. It wasn't a question. It was a statement. Thalia was alive. 

With a new sense of determination to prove herself correct, she abruptly rose from her chair, the object pushed back a few metres with the pure force of the action. Her hands were shaking, trembling at her sides. She folded them into neat fists, nails digging into her palms in an attempt to pull herself together, hoping that the presence of some pain could bring her back to reality. 

She felt as if she was sleepwalking, following the throng of students out of the door and passing Liam on her way out. He followed her. Her head was fuzzy, still wrapped up in denial and determined to see Thalia alive and breathing. Thalia had gotten her through so much. She knew the girl almost as well as she knew herself. Or...at least, the parts that Thalia wanted her to know. But that was....okay...because everyone deserved their privacy...right?

The gathering crowd parted for her as she walked forward, the students for once holding something other than disgust in their eyes. Pity. It was somehow worse. Because there was no need for it. Because Thalia was not dead. There was no need for their pale faces and concerned eyes because she wasn't dead. They could all just go back to class because Thalia was still alive. 

The students had made a clearing in the middle of the corridor, a wide expanse of white tile acting as a sort of no man's land between the two sides. The tile remained pristine and shining, reflecting the fearful faces of the teenagers as shrill whispers echoed around the hallway. There was no blood. No trace of a struggle. Just a girl in her school uniform, laying on the ground with her eyes closed, a position so deceptively peaceful that she could have been asleep. Surely she was asleep. But Eleanor could hear the headmistress as she knelt down next to her body. Her skin was cold. There was no pulse. Seeming to have been dead for quite some time.

Eleanor blinked.

Eyes not fully taking in the scene. Just focusing on her best friend who...who couldn't be dead but somehow...somehow was. She didn't even have the emotion to cry, not even feeling her own heartbeat as she simply stared ahead of her, lips pressed together in a tight line as she silently pleaded for someone to pinch her. To wake her up. Or tell her it was another stupid prank. But what could possibly be funny about this?

She didn't quite know how to feel.

But Flynn did, and, as he followed Liam and Eleanor out of the classroom, his perceptive gaze caught the eye of the boy being questioned by the lockers. Apparently, he was the one who had witnessed her sudden death, the one who had raced to get help originally before Liam walked by the scene. Apparently, his story panned out. Apparently, Thalia had no injuries. No sign of struggle. Apparently, she had just collapsed. Collapsed in front of the only witness. Brendan Stone.