did caleb end up coming home last night?

I suppose I should have been thankful for Lauren's series of missed calls from the night before, even though I'd ignored them. Deleting her number had been rash. I was crouched in a stall in the boy's bathroom block, clenching my phone almost hard enough to crack the plastic. I'd thrown up again in the toilet, whatever was left of my breakfast flushed away and leaving me feeling hollow.

Aidan would use lunch as an opportunity to spread what he'd overhear. I wondered if he'd cite me. My best bet was to warn Caleb, so he could pre-empt Aidan's attack. After the vicious way their friendship had ended, people would be wary of anything Aidan said. Caleb just had to be prepared.

Why the fuck had I deleted his number?

I had no way of reaching him, no way of knowing if he'd even shown up to school. As I tapped my feet, urgent for Lauren's response, I read the graffiti on the inside wall. For a good time, call Liv XXXX-XXX-XXX. Detailed drawings of dicks raining down the left wall. JACK W HERE. learn how to fucking aim, jackasses. BOOBS. Dick Was Sucked Here, 10/03/19.

Stay classy, Truman, I thought scathingly.

My phone chimed, and I reached for the toilet paper as I opened Lauren's message. I hadn't realised I'd been crying – leaking, rather – until my tears were soaking through my shirt and my lips were wet with mucus.

Now you want to know?

She was mad. That was fair. Thankfully, her messages didn't stop there.

He got home about one AM.

The family meeting went until three.

The mere thought of being on the receiving end of an intervention lead by Selene Proust, a woman at her limit if Reece was to be believed, terrified me. I wondered how Caleb was holding up, having his illusion of perfection well and truely shattered. It just made me fear for further damage at the hands of my loose fucking lips. 

I hit call, deciding the conversation would be easier to have in-person, and waited, only to be sent straight to voicemail. She texted as I wiped off my face again.

Dude, I'm in class ffs.

Right. I was hiding from my second period in the bathrooms, like the quintessential middle school cliché I was.

sorry.

is he at school today?

The door opened, and I lifted my legs off the floor, tucking my knees under my chin as I perched on the toilet seat. I was conscious not to sniff audibly, pressing more toilet paper to my eyes to stop the escaping anxious tears.

I mean he left to go to school but idk if he's there.

He drove Jake in.

Do you want Jake's #?

My shoulders tensed upon reading his name. I wasn't forgetting that her other brother seemed to be pursuing me with cruel intentions.

can i have calebs?

You don't have Caleb's #?

long story. please?

Her hesitation was so long that I wasn't sure she'd oblige. But her next message was a collection of digits, unfamiliar, but most phone numbers were. I seemed to remember Caleb's having a 3 somewhere in it, but it wasn't as if I was in any state to rely on recall faculties. 

Is he okay?

Lauren's message was devoid of her usual snark, so earnestly concerned that I didn't know how to respond. I don't know wasn't a fair answer. If I have anything to do with it was far too daunting. I imagined Lauren staring at her phone in her lap, sweating in her OLOT blazer, as a prudish teacher navigated their maze of desks in Poetry class, or Latin, or whatever they taught girls at Tranquillity. Table Manners 101? Soup Spoon Etiquette?

My mind was getting away with me.

i hope so.

sorry to bother you.

She sent me an upside-down smiley face, and a parting request.

Don't blow it.

And call me tonight. Let's catch up this wknd.

I didn't know how possible it could be to have a friend in Lauren, after everything. There was no way Caleb would want me anywhere near his family, especially after I told him how Aidan had learned his secret. If what he felt for me know was indifference, I had to prepare myself for loathing. Maybe he'd go back on his word. Throw me under the bus to save his reputation.

If I so much as suspect you've let something slip to anyone, everyone's going to know that Miles Stewart wears mini-skirts in his spare time. Maybe he'd twist Aidan's words to incriminate me alone. That messed-up kid is in love with me or something. You know he wears panty house on the weekends, right?

A bang on the stall door nearly sent me careening off the toilet seat to the filthy floor. I let out an uninhibited shriek, cowering back in anticipation of Aidan or Jake kicking down the door from the outside.

"Jesus," the voice outside was unfamiliar but sounded just as startled as I felt. Now that I thought about it, maybe the 'bang' had been more of a polite knock. "Are you alright in there?"

I realised I must have sniffled or choked or maybe I was just taking too long. The voice didn't sound all that nasty. I took a deep breath before responding. "Fine. Sorry."

There was a long pause. "Do you want me to get a teacher?"

"No," God, no. I muffled my face in my damp wad of toilet paper. "I'm just..."

"You're not getting high in there, are you?"

I scoffed aloud. "I'd probably be having a much better time if I was."

There was a long pause, and then the guy said, "Things are going to be okay, dude. Just hang in there."

It threw me, the reassurance coming so out of nowhere that I didn't respond - didn't thank him. Footsteps marched to the door and it slammed, leaving me in the echo-y chamber of the bathroom alone. I rested my head against the wall and closed my eyes, absorbing the stranger's support. A stranger, in the boy's bathroom at Truman High School, offering words of comfort to someone he couldn't even see through the bathroom door.

On the door, someone had written, 15 SIGNATURES & I DACK TRUDEAU @ GRAD. Thirty boys had scrawled their signature, or maybe one person had signed thirty times. They looked similar enough. Another person had written LIFELINE 13 11 14. Someone else had tried to turn the 3 into an 8. There were all sorts in Truman. Kind, cruel, idiotic... just kids. Who didn't know what they did could possibly have a ripple effect beyond themselves.

Caleb's phone rang to voicemail.

"It's me. I don't know if you're at school or some park or where but just... please call me. It's important. Not about us," I added for clarity's sake. "Just call me. Or meet me on the hill outside the emergency door."

I hung up, and then texted him pretty much verbatim what I'd said. From there, I could only hope he took me seriously. Could I compose what I'd done into text? Where would I even begin?

I tried calling him again. Voicemail.

Caleb likely hadn't deleted my number the night before. He knew exactly who was calling him, and he was ignoring me.

Or he's just in class.

The buzz of the lunch siren seemed to come all too soon. I slipped out of the bathroom after splashing my face with water and scrubbing my cheeks so that my red-rimmed eyes didn't stand out quite as much. The hallways were slowly filling with slinking students, sagged with exhaustion despite it only being a Tuesday. Overflowing backpacks ping-ponged me down the hall, lockers cracking open around me as I bee-lined for the emergency exit against the flow of the crowd.

Someone caught my shoulder and stopped me in my tracks, and I whirled around with my hands up. Please be Caleb, please be Caleb...

Max jokingly punch both of my raised palms and tossed a friendly arm around my shoulder. "Aaron's looking for you."

I cringed. I had enough to feel guilty about; ignoring Aaron, despite what he'd told me, only added to that. He wasn't the kind to say 'I told you so' – at least not right away – but I was embarrassed. Embarrassed that he had been so right about Caleb, and embarrassed that I hadn't listened to him despite his track record of being right about everything. "And you're not going to give me the option of hiding from him a little longer?"

"Nope. He's called in a favour," he cycled me around and started guiding me to the lunch hall, arm a vice grip around my shoulders. "So, what did you do this time?"

I rolled my eyes. "You do know that it isn't always my fault when Aaron and I are avoiding each other right?"

"Sure. But unlike you, I'm passing my science elective," he patted my shoulder. "Correlation does not equal causation, but you cannot ignore overwhelming evidence. 99 percent of the time, it was something you did."

I threw a jab into his ribs to separate us and stood firm with my hands on my hips. A hard task, with all the people ploughing past me; I planted my feet and glared at him. There was something different about his face.

"You cut your hair."

Max ran a hand through his short crop of dark half, halfway between self-conscious and relieved. "Yeah. Just yesterday. Good?"

"Great!" I assured him. It was going to take some getting used to, but the neater look suited Max. Despite being identical to Aaron, he'd never fully owned the floppy hair look quite like his brother had. "Uhm... and Aaron...?"

"...is still rocking Harry Styles circa 2014, thank you very much," he grinned. "I think he's relieved. He says I've been copying his look for too long."

"Har har," I glanced back. The emergency door was still two hallways from me, and I didn't think Caleb was about to wait for me. That was if he showed up at all. "Max, I have to do something first. It's important. I'll meet you guys..."

"No way," Max cut me off. "Come on, dude. It can wait."

"It really can't," I emphasised. I raked my brain for a reasonable excuse, which wouldn't make me sound like a terrible friend. "It's to do with Aidan. You know he's back today, right?"

Max's expression darkened. "You're not hiding from that asshole, are you? If that's your plan, you can't go better than the lunch hall. No way is he going to fuck with us in front of the entire school."

"Nothing stopped him before."

"Yeah, before he was on probation with the school administration breathing down his neck," he countered. "Despite how he comes across, I think he does want to graduate. And he wants back on the team. He made that clear to Proust this morning."

I snapped upright at the name. "Caleb? Caleb's here today?"

"Yeah?" Max said, puzzled. "I just had a class with him."

I wish I'd saved myself the indignity of texting Caleb directly; I'd forgotten that Max travelled in his same social circle. "Where'd he go? After class?"

"Lunch hall, I think?" Max sounded unsure. He narrowed his eyes at me. "I mean, where else would he go?"

I stepped forward and placed my hands on his shoulders. "Maximillian, please. Did he walk in the direction of the lunch hall? Do you remember him turning in that direction, or... did he, like look at his phone and then hurry in a different direction?"

He frowned, first in confusion and then deep in thought. "No... no, I don't think so. He was with a whole group of guys. Since when do you have anything to do with Caleb Proust...?"

I was already off down the hallway, arm around Max's shoulders, following the crowd to the lunch hall. Max stumbled at first and bombarded me with a series of half-questions, and suddenly seemed to realise exactly why I'd have anything to do with Caleb.

"Shit. Is he mobilizing with Jake?" the colour drained from his cheeks, "Miles, you know I'd go to war for you but two big brothers? I just got this thing set." He tapped his nose.

Jake Proust and his bizarre pursuit of me had nothing on my current predicament. "You don't have to worry. It isn't about Lauren."

"Then what..." the doors to the cafeteria parted before us and the crowds dispersed, leaving us standing in the clearing between tables. I scanned them meticulously, but the specific set of baby blues I was looking out for were not present. I saw Seth Proust hunched over a lunch table with a rag-tag collection of middle schoolers, but neither Jake nor Caleb were anywhere in sight.

Max steered me towards a lunch table off to the corner, which I didn't realise until I felt cold steel against the backs of my legs as he pushed me into a seat. I broke my gaze away from the heaving masses of students and met Aaron's eyes over the table. His arms were crossed over his chest, but his dark eyes were wide and uneasy. His lips were twisted with worry.

I focused my gaze on the metalwork of the table. "Sorry. I should have called you."

"Yeah, because I would have listened," his shoulders heaved. He glanced to my right. "Max, could you..."

"I'll go for a lap," Max stood, patting my shoulder as he clambered out. He gave Aaron a quick nod and Aaron mouthed sorry to him. He gave us both a thumbs up before departing.

Aaron leaned across the table and took my wrist in a velvet vice grip. "Are you okay?"

My mouth opened to reassure him, but no word came out. Just a tiny, strangled cry, before I dropped my forehead onto the cold steel table. Aaron's hands moved to my shoulders and shook me gently, probably making sure I hadn't suffered a spontaneous brain aneurysm. I raised my head weakly.

"Aaron," I murmured. "Everything is fucked."

"Don't be dramatic. Everything is not fuc –"

"Aidan knows I'm gay," I cut him off, and the words physically hurt to speak. Like recounting a nightmare or describing a traumatic life event in garish detail. "And he knows Caleb is too because I all but fucking told him."

Aaron didn't deny this at first, but that was probably because he'd apparently entered a state of shock. His eyes strained, and his eyebrows almost went flying off his face. His hand, still heavy on my wrist, tightened as if he planned to take off running with me in tow.

"He's going to..." I continued, struggling to place one word in front of the other. "He's going to ruin... Caleb... he'll never... he's going to... he doesn't want to be..."

"I know. I know," he assured me, his voice strained. "Okay. Okay, what are we doing?"

"I need to speak to him," I managed, the first coherent thought I'd had since sitting down. "I need to... warn him, apologise, tell him to deny it... Aidan has no proof... or I can kill Aidan."

"Let's just see who comes through the door first," Aaron had clearly clocked that neither of them had arrived. "Have you tried calling him?"

"He won't pick up for me," I insisted. "He... we didn't part on good terms on Monday."

He noted the quality of my voice and squeezed my wrist twice. It was enough to acknowledge he understood what was going on for me without knowing the full story. And that he was still on my side despite my colossal mistake.

I didn't deserve the reassurance.

"Don't look, but Caleb's just come in," Aaron told me. I immediately swivelled my head to stare.

Caleb looked dishevelled, no doubt from his late-night spent god knows where. His hair was a couple of eggs short of a bird's nest, his uniform was distinctly unironed, and his posture screamed exhaustion. His normal glow was somewhat muted from this scruffiness, but he didn't look nearly as worked up as he would have been if he'd spoken to Aidan yet. There wasn't an ounce of anxiety in him - he just looked wrecked. The tension in me released, but my heart still pinched to see him so visibly run down. It wasn't like him to wear his world-weariness on his sleeve.

Aaron dragged me back around before I got the chance to catch his eye.

"You need to tell him Aidan knows," he said severely. "You need to prepare him for whatever that prick is going to say to him."

"I know," but I couldn't exactly approach him in a crowded cafeteria. It had a chance of drawing attention, and if Aidan walked in with us huddled together, it would only add fuel to the fire. Maybe part of me was worried that he would ignore me outright even if I tried to talk to him. "I can't do it here. I need to get him out of here."

"Where the hell did Max go?" Aaron asked no one in particular.

His twin had disappeared entirely from the cafeteria, at just the moment he would have been most useful. Max could have dragged him outside under false pretence in a way Aaron and I couldn't, thanks to our vastly separate social circles. If Caleb was ignoring my messages – maybe he'd blocked me as I'd blocked him, and they weren't getting him to begin with – I had no way of reaching him. No way of warning him of the shitstorm I'd bought on.

Aaron's squeezed his eyes shut tight and sighed through his teeth. "Max couldn't have waited one more day to cut his hair, could he?"

I searched desperately for something, anything to solve my problems in the time restraints I had. Caleb had walked to his regular table and perched himself on the very edge, far from the expected position of the team captain. I watched as one of the boys tried to engage him in conversation, but Caleb simply folded his arms on the table and buried his head in them. If this concerned the other guys on his table, they didn't show it.

"Alright. Alright, I have a plan," Aaron tripped his way out from behind the lunch tables attached bench. He dug through his bag until he found a notepad, folding it open to an empty page and sticking a pen behind his ear. "Miles! Pay attention. Go wait outside the doors, I'll bring him out to you."

"How are you about to..."

He was already gone, walking as quickly as he could without getting served with detention from the teacher on duty. I watched him weave through tables, shouldering past people without apology in a very un-Aaron fashion. He came to a halt at the head of the table adjacent to Caleb, brandishing his pen with a flourish and dropping the notepad dramatically onto the table. The group occupying it, most people in the years below with a few faces I recognised from assembly addresses and prefect photos. They were a group with enough popularity to justify their proximity to the soccer team.

"Hello!" I could only hear him from the distance between us because he had raised his voice purposefully, so it could be heard by everyone in his immediate vicinity. "Sorry to interrupt, but I was wondering if any of you would be interested in joining Truman's Gay-Straight Alliance?"

I wouldn't say Caleb rocketed upright, but he certainly sat up at speed, eyes blown wide. He quickly recovered, shaking his head slowly and herding his face back to neutral, but he staggered to his feet all the same and made a bee-line for the door. I made a mental note to pay every cent of petrol money I owed Aaron with interest by Friday and leapt out of my seat to follow Caleb outside.

He walked with brand-new energy, head down, and paces twice as long as mine. I almost had to run to keep up with him.

"Miles Stewart!" I flitted my gaze to the side, where the Specialist Mathematics teacher Mrs. Cher, who I only knew on sight because of her excellent surname, was pointing at me in a way she likely hoped to freeze me in my tracks. "Slow that to a brisk walk or you're getting a slip!"

I nodded to acknowledge her and turned my attention back to Caleb. He might have heard my name, but it hadn't tripped in up in his escape to the double doors. It had probably added to his urgency. I decided to write off any detention I might get as a necessary sacrifice and broke out into a jog again, turning and twisting to slip through the packed in student bodies. It reminded me of the club in a lot of ways, bustling, loud, a short reprieve from the dreariness of everyday life. Friends embracing, animated chatter, even some shameless PDA, though Mrs. Cher was doing her best to break this up wherever and whenever this occurred with hand flapping and a tape measure.

Caleb reached the door well before I reached him, but before he could slip through them and lose me in the corridors, the left one was thrown open with a bang. Caleb paused, and took a healthy step back from the advancing Aidan, schoolbag low on one shoulder, lip sneer pronounced enough that you could slot a penny through it.

Dread speared through me as they regarded one another. I couldn't see Caleb's expression from where I was standing, but his fists were clenching and unclenching, as Aidan squared off his chest and huffed out something like a laugh.

My time was nought.

Every drag tip I didn't learn from Instagram and personal experience, I received from veteran queens in the backs of bars, usually over a cocktail, while I was somewhere between myself, who was too nervous to ask for advice, and peak Sephora Utah, who didn't need it. My favourite piece of advice, or at least the one that made me cackle until I was snorting gin cranberry out my nose, was from Dia Mounds.

"Worst comes to worst and they're not laughing, they're not clapping, and the tips have run dry," they advised me in their clipped city accent. "Pull a knife or the fire alarm. The last thing you want is for people to remember your set as the boring one."

I'd never had to apply that piece of advice on stage before, but I was glad to have filed it away. Because instead of standing there, frozen with fear waiting for the inevitable, I threw myself into action. I dove to the wall, and in two strides I made it to the little red box wired into the plaster – the one which garnered threats of expulsion for so much as touching.

Without a second thought for the consequences, I grabbed the lever framing it, and jerked it down.

The effect was as immediate as I'd hoped. The fire alarm blared to life, and the cafeteria erupted into chaos. 

a/n: hey'a, readers new and old alike! i'm so happy people have been enjoying Exotic despite my absence. 24k reads and 2.4k votes is more than I could have ever hoped to accomplish. 

I'll be trying to get a chapter up each fortnight from here on out; potentially sooner, but I don't want to overpromise and underdeliver. I have been reading your comments whenever I can manage and thank you from the bottom of my heart for your investment in my little ol' story. 

vote and comment, and i'll see y'all in the next one ;)

~lily bee