The Mayo Clinic website describes Schizoid Personality Disorder as "an uncommon condition in which people avoid social activities and consistently shy away from interaction with others. They also have a limited range of emotional expression."

"If you have schizoid personality disorder," the website says, "you may be seen as a loner or dismissive of others, and you may lack the desire or skill to form close personal relationships. Because you don't tend to show emotion, you may appear as though you don't care about others or what's going on around you."

Some of the symptoms of this personality disorder include, but are not limited to:

-Prefer being alone and choose to do activities alone.

-Don't want or enjoy close relationships.

-Feel little if any desire for sexual relationships.

-Feel like you can't experience pleasure.

-Have difficulty expressing emotions and reacting appropriately to situations.

-May seem humorless, indifferent or emotionally cold to others.

-May appear to lack motivation and goals.

-Don't react to praise or critical remarks from others.

It is a difficult, scarring disorder that some of us have to deal with every day, and that has branded me and many others in ways that will require extensive therapy to even function properly. 

And some sick fuck watched us one day and say: that's hot as hell. 

Ever since not being able to give a fuck, or convey said fuck giving, has become the new hot, since we seem to be attracted to sociopaths, we "bad boys" have been hunted down for sport. Which is why we of all people are more susceptible to plot. 

The universe, in its infinite wisdom, has chosen us, the only ones who are unable to give a fuck, to fall in love with. As we don't love it back, the universe treats us like a passive-aggressive toxic ex-partner, posting things on social media like "nobody has loyalty anymore shm" and the like. Only, the universe chooses to knock us down, put us in harm's way, or make us blackout.

Seriously, this is the second time I blackout this week. That's brain-damage amounts. But the universe is not done with me. No sir, it ain't. Otherwise, this would've been the climax of the story, and I would've been forced to learn an important lesson about life and true love and shit. 

I just wanna graduate, man. 

What I'm trying to say is, stop fetishizing mental disorders. Depressed people aren't sexy. They need milk and Jesus, and help. Mostly help. 

Now, why am I saying this? Cuz I feel someone sitting on my bed, which I assume by the smell and texture that is from the infirmary. I've been awake for twenty minutes, but I've yet to open my eyes. Nobody who is willing to wait next to a sleeping bad boy for more than twenty minutes straight is up to some plot shenanigans, misguided love, or both. And I'm too scared to find out which. 

Maybe, just maybe, if I stay completely still, and don't move at all, I can last until the end of the day.

That is, until the unmistakable smell of chocolate and liqueur punched my nose like a playful kitten who can't measure its strength. Or at least it pretends it doesn't. Crafty kittens, making us lower our guard. 

Of course, Hayden is the one next to me. He must've felt bad for, you know, slaughtering me and my crew, and dooming me to a year of rashes. I hear the distinct noise of a plate with the approximate mass of a slice of cake — a Black Forest cake, if my nose is not mistaken — being placed right next to me on that flimsy plastic shelf/nightstand thing next to hospital beds. You know the one. 

To take a page out of the cat book while we are at it, I reach out to it, not opening my eyes, of course, and knock it down while muttering a simple, yet effective punch to his ego, and I hope it bruises it as much as he bruised the inside of my skull. "Man, fuck your cake."

"Mr. Wilson told me you would say that," says a voice very much not male, and very much like the velvet sweetness of the all-natural shampoo a nymph would use to clean her armpits. Honeydew and lavender. Not Hayden at all. 

I open my eyes only to stare at a void of curly hair, perfect brown skin, and natural eyelashes that would make Bambi wish the hunter would've killed him instead. 

Sitting in front of me, leg crossed like the queen she was meant to be in a past life, is Lee Vazquez.

And I just tossed cake on her lap. 

"Ugh. Sweet Jesus, I'm sorry!" I say, trying to stand up. Fun fact: trying to stand up after a concussion-related blackout hurts like hell. I feel as if Lightning McQueen himself just Kachow-ed me right in the cerebellum.  

She holds a hand up, as if she's holding steady the air between us. Such an imposing figure. Did you see me use ugh in that dialogue there? I'm starting to come apart. 

"Don't be," she says, sweeping the whole cake I just tossed from her skirt to the ground. "Mr. Wilson warned me about how you like to, and I quote, tossed his shit like he's a salad."

Bad choice of words there. 

"Besides," she says, taking out a second piece of cake from a Tupperware, "I needed to find a way to make you open your eyes. I dunno why you were awake for twenty minutes without opening your eyes."

Oh shit. She knew. 

"Yes, I knew," she says. 

Wait, is she reading my mind? Shit, I haven't encountered a psychic in a while. Think of gross stuff, think of gross stuff. Like shoe lint, belly lint, lint in general. Wait, what if she's into lint?

"I live with five older brothers that pretend to be asleep whenever I enter their room," she says. "I can tell whenever someone is sleeping or faking. Among other things. Here, eat the cake. It will give you strength."

"Sorry," is all I can say, taking the cake, which I won't eat. I know better. This is just diarrhea with extra steps. "Why are you here? Not that mind you here. Thank you very much for being here, and all, but, uh, why are you here? I thought Hayden would be here instead, like-" 

Again, and thank you very much for that, she raises a hand. "We have established that I am here. You don't have to repeat it so much." 

I'm glad I'm cinnamon-colored, because I can feel redness swallow my face whole. Brown don't blush. 

"As for why I'm here," she continues, "as the student council president, I was the most reliable person around, so I was sent here with you to make sure you didn't die."

"Oh, I see," I say. "Sorry. Thank you. Say, wasn't there supposed to be a school nurse around to do just that?" 

For the first time since I've known her for almost a week, she looks uncomfortable, playing with the hem of her skirt. "Yeah, no. We don't talk about her anymore. She's no longer....well, let's leave it at that. Pretty dark stuff. Very plot-heavy. But if you want, I can tell you." 

"No, thank you," I say, almost immediately. "That sounds like a plot thing. I'm trying to avoid it like the plague."

She shows me the slightest of smiles, but only for a second. But it is so bright that it becomes like those funky splotches your eyes make when you try to win a staring contest with the sun. Another fund act: sunglasses are not glasses made to see the sun. One would think they would advertise that thing straight away, like no-tear shampoo. It's tear as in tear, not as in tear. Like tearing you a new one. Don't be one of those idiots that puts that thing in your eyes to see if you cry. That's another way to fuck your eyes. 

Why does capitalism want us to fuck your eyes?

"Are you done with your monologue?" she says. 

Damn, she's good. 

"Sorry," I say. 

"You know, you are awfully apologetic for a bad boy," she says, crossing her fingers over her knee. "If I didn't know any better, I would say you don't wanna be a bad boy." 

"Well, that is because I don't," I say, with a smile. 

She leans down, taking a small notebook from a small bag. Probably made to fit the small notebook. That's style for you. "And yet, ever since you came here, you have gone into a fight, and subsequent relationships with the school's star quarterback; had a sexual harassment scandal with the star cheerleader and ex-girlfriend of the star quarterback; heckled the sexual harassment seminar triggered by it; found a, and excuse my vernacular, butt-ton of corpses on a secret notch; got a student in your care into a comma-"

Crap, I forgot about Leila-Sue. 

"Don't worry, she woke up and got home, muttering something about revenge," says Lee. "And, finally, you've been in detention every single day you've been here. That doesn't seem like a person trying not to be a bad boy. Got anything to say about that?"

"In my defense," I say, trying to scoot my way up, like a man with a cat on his belly trying to reach the remote, "none of that had been my fault. I've just been fucked by fate. Pardon my French." Also, is she keeping tabs on me? That seems pretty sus. 

"Pardoned," she says, closing the little book. "But it seems like hell is paved with good intentions. You have been the center of quite a clusterfuck. Pardon my French. However, I think your problem is more with who you're hanging with than yourself." 

Hayden and Brayden? Well, yeah. They're chaotic evil, those two. But I wouldn't put it like that. 

She puts her book back in the bag and swings it behind her. With two clean sweeps of her skirt, and avoiding the cake that is now laid discarded on the ground, she stands up, shaking her beautiful curly hair around. Oh, to be a louse on that head, munching at her perfectly hydrated scalp. 

"Just think about it," she says. "You were there, laying on the bed, for, what, twenty minutes? And nobody bothered you. No crazy shenanigans, or homoerotic innuendos, or crazy cults. Nothing. Complete peace. Something to think about, doesn't it?"

That...is true. I think this is the first time I've ever been in total peace here. It feels nice. It feels very, very nice. 

"It's not about being alone either," she says. "It's about being properly accompanied. We will finish this conversation after you have recuperated."

And just like that, as fate would have it, a woman walks inside the infirmary. This woman seems to have seen better days, and worse days. She is dressed all in white with a hint of faded yellow, mostly due to excessive cleanings. A ring of tobacco smell swirls around her, impregnating the whole room with the musky odor. 

Such ambivalence can only come from a seasoned school nurse. 

"Thanks for checking the corpse while I smoked," says the nurse in a coarse, almost Barry-white-esque voice. "He woke up?"

"He woke up alright," says Lee. "I'll go back to class."

"Hey, didn't you tell me that-" I begin to say, but I'm quickly interrupted by one of Lee's now-patented hand raises. 

"I just wanted to test you, is all," she says. "Any other person would wanna know whatever gossip comes their way. You're no-nonsense. I like that in a partner."

Wait, what? I can't even say a word in edgewise before she takes two huge steps with her slender legs that go for days and disappears into the hallway, leaving me there, alone with my thoughts, the ghost of infirmities past. But oddly enough, I'm at peace. 

No Hayden, no Brayden, no Okayden, no Laila nor Leeland. Just peace. 

Maybe there is something to what she was saying, whatever that is.

Also, she left without cleaning the chocolate cake off the floor. Rude.